Service Options with our Smooth Ride Service

Irides' Smooth Ride Service provides the best choice for managing your IT. Our focus is on the data center - housing, securing, managing and supporting servers, firewalls, switches and routers. Our experienced engineers support this back-end equipment allowing end-users, desktop support teams, web developers and others to focus on their tasks.

Irides offers a fully customized service that brings the benefits of our rock-solid data center infrastructure without breaking the bank. We offer:

Four (4) tiers of service to match the needs and budget of every organization
The ability to select different tiers of service for each part of an installation

A great example of a customized solution is for a company that has both production and test environments. The production environment requires a high level of support, the test environment less so. Irides' flexible Smooth Ride Service allows this customization; easily matching the service to the need while saving our customers money.

Our four tiers of service are laid out below. In short they are:

Fully Managed hosting
Managed co-location
Co-location
Remote monitoring and response service

Fully Managed Hosting

Irides' premier service provides fully managed Web + Application hosting. Our Fully Managed service takes the worry out of providing IT services for an organization, simplifying operation, providing access to high-level technical resources and reducing the total cost of ownership.

Irides' Fully Managed service takes care of both the long-term and day-to-day activities for one regular flat monthly fee. There are no hidden costs or extras to pay. We are responsible for the purchase and operation of all the servers, firewalls, routers, switches and the applications they support. A sample of the technical activities performed by our engineers includes:

Back-up management (back ups, test restores, tape management, off-site storage and retrieval, etc.)
Software and firmware upgrades
Security and patch management
User and e-mail account management
Warranty and license renewals
Asset tracking
Capacity management
Vendor management

As part of the Fully Managed service, Irides' engineers work closely with in-house customer experts to provide a seamless service. We support the full IT service lifecycle including:

Requirement specification (what do you need)
Capacity planning (how much of it do you need)
Procurement
Configuration Management (including managing Change Control Boards as required)
Service migration (from old to new)
Operation
Upgrade
End-of-life disposal

Key benefits include:

Allowing our customers to remaining focused on their business, Irides assumes the responsibility of running the technology
The ability to host part or all of your IT with Irides and be certain that it will integrate seamlessly
Access to solid infrastructure with redundant power, cooling and internet connections (more)
Access to experienced engineers who specialize in key technologies
On-site engineering support available 24/7 with well-rehearsed triage, escalation and management protocols for urgent items
No upfront capital costs for new hardware, software or licenses, it's included in the monthly fee
No separate costs for consultants for short-term technical needs
Lower total cost of ownership (TCO)

Managed Co-location

For our Fully Managed service, Irides typically owns and operates all the equipment on the customer's behalf. When the customer owns the equipment, our Managed Co-location service provides the same benefits of our Smooth Ride Service. We will house, secure, manage and operate the equipment but the customer remains responsible for hardware replacement.

Managed Co-location is the most common choice for our customers who have an existing hosted installation or currently operate their equipment on their own premises. Standard reasons for moving to a Managed Co-location service are:

Unreliable power or Internet service
Dissatisfaction with existing technical support
Need to reduce space used by IT equipment
Need to reduce costs

Over the years, Irides has built considerable experience in managing the migration from one installation to another. As part of our Smooth Ride Service, Irides will plan and execute the migration (see below for more on our Migration Support Service).

Key benefits include:

Allowing our customers to remain focused on their business, Irides assumes the responsibility of running the technology
The ability to host part or all of your IT with Irides and be certain that it will integrate seamlessly
Access to solid infrastructure with redundant power, cooling and internet connections (more)
Access to experienced engineers who specialize in key technologies
On-site engineering support available 24/7 with well-rehearsed triage, escalation and management protocols for urgent items
No separate costs for consultants for short-term technical needs
Lower total cost of ownership (TCO)

Co-location

Irides provides space in our data centers for customers who wish to manage their own installation but want to benefit from Irides' rock-solid infrastructure. We use standard 42" lockable racks and customers can pay for space by the server, the U or by the rack.

Co-location is the right choice for businesses that have all the necessary in-house technical knowledge to design and operate their IT equipment but do not have sufficient space to house their computing needs.

Key benefits include:

Improved physical security
Better network speed and reliability
Better power redundancy
Improved cooling and environmental controls
Access to Irides' network and server specialists
On-site remote hands available 24/7

Remote Monitoring and Response Service

Irides provides remote monitoring services to customers who have IT equipment located within their office space or at other data centers. Our remote monitoring provides near real-time access to hundreds of data points that cover all aspects of server, switch, router and firewall operation.

Our monitoring can also be configured to alert via e-mail or SMS; and with our Response Service, Irides' engineers will respond 24/7 to a reported problem.

Irides' remote monitoring capabilities include:

Basic port monitoring including periodic rescanning for changes in open ports
System available through ping or SNMP
Identification of hardware failures
High-level metrics including e-mail round trip monitoring and website content monitoring
Monitoring of web cluster performance including load balancers and individual node
Access to product-specific metrics for key technologies including Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SQL and RIM Blackberry Enterprise Servers
Real-time bandwidth monitoring and trend analysis

Key benefits include:

IT managers can be first to know that there is a problem BEFORE users or customers report it directly
With the optional Response Service, Irides' engineers are available 24/7 for remote diagnosis and repair
Independent monitoring of vendor SLAs
Much more than simple port monitoring available from many vendors
Access to vital information for system management and capacity planning
Simple, low-risk set up

Other Services

IT Move and Migration Planning and Support

Irides recognizes that one of the biggest handicaps to starting a new service is concern about how the migration from old to new will be handled. Irides has broad experience in key technologies that allows us to reliably plan migrations from existing installations to our Fully Managed or Managed Co-location services.

Website Mirroring

Another great service from Irides is website mirroring. Irides' technology will keep a back-up version of your website up-to-date and ready to go when you need it. This is typically used by organizations as part of their disaster recovery planning. It provides a secure off-site location that can house their website at a low cost but be available anytime a problem with the primary occurs.