Following the government’s announcement that NZ is now in an Alert Level 4, we wanted to touch base and let you know about the developments that are happening at our end and how we can continue to support your IT needs. Our priority is and continues to be, making IT work, so you can too.
We are open for business
We meet the Government’s criteria for Essential businesses ‘critical support services to ensure businesses and workers can continue working from home are considered to be essential. This includes functions such as IT and Payroll.’
What does this mean?
- We have a skeleton crew in the office that are in place to support Essential businesses both remotely and on location.
- We are currently supporting our Non-Essential businesses with virtual support, remote hardware configuration and delivery of IT hardware.
- We are seeking clarification from MBIE as to whether we are able to visit non-essential businesses onsite. When we receive this clarification, we will let you know.
- We can resolve most IT issues remotely. More than 90% in fact.
Current Jobs
Thank you to everyone for their kindness and understanding as we work through all of your enquiries and logged jobs. These continue to flood in. We had more than 200 jobs on Tuesday alone. Your business is important to us and we are grateful for your continued support. I wanted to personally reassure you, that we are working through these as quickly as we can and our expectation is that Shereena, our Service Dispatcher will attempt to get in touch with every one of you in the next few days.
Product Orders
- We have computers, phones and high use infrastructure products on hand in our office.
- We are still able to order further product, and have it shipped to your remote location.
- In some instances, we may not be able to secure the product you are familiar with however we will endeavour to source you an alternative that will satisfy your short-term needs.
Our Preferred Communication Tools
In recent days when a Government announcement has been made, the cell networks have been overloaded. So that you can continue to be in touch with your business partners, employees, suppliers and customers, we prefer the use of VoIP, which is secure, low cost and can handle the volume of data transfer.
For video conferencing, we recommend the use of Microsoft Teams for a reliable and secure connection.
Keeping Employees Connected
We found out yesterday that some of our clients have employees without internet access. This is deemed an essential service and we can work with Chorus to ensure every one of your team members have access to an internet connection.
Application Speed
In New Zealand we have no issues with the speed of the Fibre connection. Even yesterday where we saw the highest volume of bandwidth across the country being utilised, we still had ample capacity available and this will not be a constraint for NZ businesses. What is being affected however, is some of the global software applications where the number of users is doubling, tripling and even quadrupling overnight to support remote workers. One example of this is SharePoint. One step they are taking is to slow down the addition of new users and permissions for new users. This will be resolved, it just won’t be an instant fix. These situations are beyond our control and these companies are doing everything within their power to get you up and running or keep you running at an optimal speed. There will be other applications that are affected in a similar way and we are happy to keep you up to date with these developments as they come to light.
If you would like to find out more or have any other questions please contact your Account Manager directly or the team at [email protected] or on 0800 942 002. Alternatively, we encourage you to follow our LinkedIn page where we will place more frequent updates.
In these challenging and unprecedented times, please take care of yourselves, your families and be kind to one another.