Business IT
We can build your entire IT from scratch.
An empty office and a broadband line, or a business that has grown past the setup it started with. Either way we design it, install it, secure it and document it — and it works the same whether you are five people or five hundred.
Capabilities
What we build
- Network design and installation Routing, switching, structured cabling, wireless coverage, firewalls and segmentation — sized for the business you will be in three years, not just today.
- Servers and storage On-premises, cloud or a deliberate mix, with virtualisation, capacity planning and a clear view of what each workload actually costs to run.
- Identity, email and collaboration Accounts, groups, single sign-on, multi-factor authentication, mail and file sharing set up with sane permissions from day one.
- Endpoints Laptop and desktop standards, imaging and enrolment, patching and a joiner-mover-leaver process that does not depend on anyone remembering.
- Backup and disaster recovery Layered backups with off-site copies, plus a recovery plan that states how long a restore takes because we have timed it.
- Monitoring and alerting Knowing a disk, a link or a certificate is about to cause a problem before your staff phone you about it.
- Security baseline Least privilege, patching discipline, segmentation, logging and sensible defaults — the unglamorous controls that prevent most real incidents.
- Documentation and handover Diagrams, asset inventory, credentials in managed storage and written procedures, so the estate is supportable by whoever comes next.
Engagements
Where you might be starting
- New premises. A move or a first office, delivered to a date — cabling, connectivity, network, accounts and endpoints ready before anyone sits down.
- Outgrown the original setup. The consumer router and the box under a desk have become a business risk. We replace them without stopping the business.
- Inherited an estate. Nobody knows what half of it does and the person who built it left. We audit it, document it, and give you a prioritised plan.
- Preparing for scrutiny. An insurance questionnaire, a client security review or a certification push that needs the underlying controls to actually exist.
New offices and moves
What a new office needs before anyone sits down
Fitting out a new office, or moving one, has a fixed order of operations. Get it wrong and people arrive to a building with no internet.
- Connectivity, ordered first Business broadband or a leased line is almost always the long pole — installs are quoted in weeks and slip into months. Everything else can be compressed; this cannot. It is the first call we make.
- Structured cabling Cat6 or better to every desk and access point, patched into a labelled cabinet. Cheap to do during a fit-out, disruptive and expensive to retrofit once the floor is occupied.
- Firewall, switching and WiFi A business firewall rather than the ISP router, managed switches, and access points surveyed for actual coverage — with guest and payment traffic on separate VLANs from staff devices.
- Email, identity and files Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace with your own domain, SPF, DKIM and DMARC configured so your mail is not treated as spam, and multi-factor authentication on before the first account is created.
- Devices, ready to hand out A standard build, enrolled in device management, encrypted, patching enabled, and named to a convention — not a pile of laptops set up individually on the morning.
- Backup from day one A 3-2-1 arrangement with an off-site copy, covering cloud data too. Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace are not backups — retention there will not survive a deletion nobody noticed for months.
- Printing, phones and the rest VoIP with number porting scheduled well ahead, shared printing and scanning, meeting-room equipment, and door entry or CCTV if the building needs it.
- Documentation and asset list Diagrams, an inventory of what is installed and where, credentials in managed storage, and written procedures — handed over rather than kept as leverage.
Common questions
Questions we are usually asked first
How long does it take to set up IT for a new office?
The engineering is rarely the constraint. Cabling, hardware configuration and account setup can be delivered in days to weeks; a new leased line commonly takes considerably longer and is entirely outside our control. If you have a move date, the connectivity order should be placed as early as possible — long before anyone thinks about laptops.
What drives the cost of a business IT setup?
Headcount, number of sites, whether usable cabling already exists, the type of connectivity you need, whether you have compliance obligations, and how much of the estate you want on-premises rather than in cloud services. Two businesses of the same size can differ several-fold on those factors alone.
We scope the work and quote it before starting, so the number is agreed rather than discovered.
Do we need our own servers, or is cloud enough?
Most small businesses no longer need a server on site. The usual reasons to keep one are large working files that are painful to edit over a WAN link, line-of-business software that will not run anywhere else, equipment that has to be controlled locally, or a data residency requirement.
Where a server genuinely is warranted, it should be a deliberate decision with a plan for backup, patching and replacement — not a box that ended up under a desk.
Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace?
Either is a sound foundation. The decision usually comes down to what your team already knows, what your line-of-business software integrates with, and whether you need the device management and security tooling in the higher Microsoft tiers.
Whichever you choose, the setup work that matters is the same: your own domain, correct SPF, DKIM and DMARC records, multi-factor authentication enforced, sensible sharing defaults, and a separate backup of the data.
Can you take over IT that someone else set up?
Yes, and it is a large part of what we do. We audit what is actually running, document it, identify what is unsupported or unpatched, and give you a prioritised plan. Anything working well stays — there is no value in replacing a sound system to make a point.
What do we need in place for Cyber Essentials?
Broadly: a supported firewall with sensible rules, secure configuration of devices, controlled user access with no standing admin rights, malware protection, and patching within defined timescales. Most failures we see are unsupported operating systems and administrative accounts used for everyday work.
Our SecOps work covers certification and the evidence behind it in more depth.
Do you work alongside an existing IT provider?
Often. We are regularly brought in for a specific piece of engineering — a network redesign, a migration, a security baseline — alongside a provider handling day-to-day support. We document what we build so they can run it afterwards.
Small business, big business, same engineering
A five-person company gets a scaled-down version of the same thinking a large estate gets: segmented network, managed identity, tested backups, monitoring and documentation. The budget changes. The standard does not.