Switching IT Provider: How It Works (and Why It’s Simpler Than You Think)
Switching IT provider
Thinking of changing your IT provider?
Managed IT and cyber security for Gloucestershire and South West organisations of 15 to 250 people. Local engineers, round-the-clock protection, and a switch-over built to be invisible to your team.
UKAS ISO/IEC 27001:2022 Certified · Cyber Essentials Practitioners · Microsoft Solutions Partner · Certified 3CX Partner · RIPE NCC Member · Supporting UK businesses since 2006
Is it time?
The signs it is time to move on
Most businesses do not change IT provider on a whim. They change because something has quietly stopped working. Any of these sound familiar?
Tickets sit too long
You chase for updates, and simple things take days when they should take minutes.
Backups you cannot trust
You are not certain your backups would actually restore, because nobody has ever tested one in front of you.
Purely reactive support
Things break, then get fixed, with no plan to stop them breaking in the first place.
Your provider was acquired
They were bought out, the people you knew moved on, and the service you signed up for quietly changed.
Nobody owns security
It is unclear who is responsible for your cyber security, Microsoft 365 and compliance, so in practice no one is.
No straight answer on cost
You cannot get a clear explanation of what you are paying for each month, or why.
You have outgrown them
A one-person provider cannot cover holidays, illness or the pace you are now growing at.
Recognising a few of these is usually the moment to talk. It costs nothing, and commits you to nothing.
How it works
Switching is simpler than you think
The biggest reason businesses stay with a provider they have outgrown is the fear of moving: downtime, lost access, the unknown. So we have made moving to System Force a structured process, not a leap of faith.
Welcome and kick-off
We confirm your key contacts, agree how you want to work with us, and introduce your account manager and onboarding lead.
Discovery and audit
We document everything: hardware, software, users, network, your Microsoft 365 tenancy and your current security posture. This becomes your baseline, and it belongs to you.
Tooling and deployment
We deploy our monitoring and management agents so we have full visibility and can support you proactively from day one.
Security baseline
We review and, where agreed, put essentials in place: multi-factor authentication, endpoint protection and patching alignment.
Backup validation
We confirm what is being backed up, check the schedule, and run a test restore to prove your data is genuinely recoverable.
Documentation and handover
Your whole environment is documented in our systems and your team is shown how to log a ticket. No knowledge stays locked in your old provider's head.
Go-live and first review
You move into full managed service, and we book your first service review to check everything is working exactly as it should.
Responsiveness
Response times you can measure, and check
Most providers promise "guaranteed response times" without ever telling you the number. We publish ours, and we publish how we actually perform against them.
| Priority | What it means | Target response | Target resolution |
|---|---|---|---|
| P1 Critical | Business-down: server, network or multiple users unable to work. | 1 hour | 4 hours |
| P2 High | Significant impact to a team or key system; a workaround is available. | 4 hours | Next business day |
| P3 Medium | Single user or non-critical issue affecting productivity. | Next business day | 3 business days |
| P4 Low | Minor issue, request or query with no immediate business impact. | 2 business days | 5 business days |
In a genuine emergency, such as a suspected cyber attack or major security incident, we respond regardless of your service tier. And you never have to take our word for it: see our live service performance and exactly how we measure it.
Proof, not promises
Twenty years of doing it properly, in the open
You should not have to take an IT provider on faith. Here is the evidence, and it is all verifiable.
UKAS ISO/IEC 27001:2022 Certified · Cyber Essentials Practitioners · Microsoft Solutions Partner · Certified 3CX Partner · RIPE NCC Member
Clear pricing
Pricing you can see, not a guessing game
Most IT providers near you hide their pricing completely. We would rather you knew roughly where you stand before you ever pick up the phone.
All billed per user per month on a 12-month minimum term. Secure Sentinel and Secure Proxima, our 24/7 and compliance-led tiers, are priced on application.
See an indicative monthly range for your exact size and requirements. No obligation.
Genuinely local
Local, accountable, and here for the long term
We are based in Gloucestershire, with our own privately owned UK data centre here, not a branch office of a firm headquartered somewhere else. Since 2006 we have supported organisations across Gloucester, Cheltenham, Tewkesbury, Stroud and Worcester, with the accreditations to back up the way we work. You get senior engineers who answer the phone, not a call centre and a ticket number.
Common questions
Switching, answered honestly
No. We plan your move confidentially and work around your notice period. Your current provider does not need to be told until you choose to tell them.
Yes. We routinely plan a move around an existing agreement so that go-live lines up with the end of your notice period, with no gap in cover.
Our migration is a structured process designed around no loss of service, including your phones. We manage the full PSTN switch-off with no downtime.
Everything is documented, your backups are validated with a test restore, and your environment ends up owned by and visible to you, not locked away with a supplier.
Most moves complete inside a structured first 30 days, and we only go live once everything is proven to work. Larger or multi-site moves are scoped to your timetable.
Business-down issues carry a one-hour response target and a four-hour resolution target, and we publish our real performance against those targets. In a genuine emergency we respond regardless of tier.
From £52 per user per month for fully managed IT and security, with an on-page estimator that gives you an indicative range tailored to your size in two minutes.
Have a confidential, no-obligation conversation
The easiest first step is a 15-minute call with a senior engineer. No sales pitch, no commitment: just an honest view of whether we are a good fit and what switching would involve.
Or call us on 01452 701355. Business enquiries only, response within one working day.