Fully Comprehensive IT With Atlantic liberator, ATLANTIC SMECOM provides everything: hardware, software, and network infrastructure as well as all services. These include procurement, configuration, installation, maintenance, and support. You also get a fully automatic off-site back up and archiving services as well as virus and SPAM control. With Atlantic liberator you do not need IT staff.
	Guaranteed Availability ATLANTIC SMECOM guarantees that your installation will be up and running 99% of the hours between 0800 and 2000 and 95% of evenings and weekends. That means that down time averages less than 6 minutes per day. Should we fail to meet that goal in any contract quarter, we will refund one month's service fee.
	Total Data Security With Atlantic liberator, your users can access the system from anywhere with total confidence. Your company's data will be available only to authorised users and to no one else. Moreover, our fail safe design means that we are always able to restore any data that might be lost or damaged. Every email sent or received is permanently archived.
	Fixed Cost IT With Atlantic liberator you pay a single quarterly fee that covers all aspects of your IT. No capital expenses, and no maintenance or support charges. The fee is based on the applications you run and your number of users. Unless you add users or applications, the fee stays fixed.

A Comprehensive IT Service

Guaranteed Availability

Total Data Security

Fixed Cost IT

Atlantic liberator Product Plan

This document presents a brief overview of the relative costs of the Atlantic liberator Service compared to current IT practices in a typical SME.  Atlantic Business Resources aims to provide a framework for analyzing the cost in a particular SME and for comparing a prospective customer’s costs with a particular Atlantic liberator proposal.

Atlantic liberator Costs

There are two main elements to the Atlantic liberator cost structure.  These are:

The total annual cost for the Atlantic liberator service will, therefore, range from £1,800 to £3,000 per user with most customers spending around £2,500.  A 20 user service would cost £50,000 while a 50 user system could cost as little as £90,000.  There would be no other costs. No IT salaries and no on-costs, no maintenance or support charges, no capital expense, no leasing charges, and no disaster recovery fees.  Most importantly, there are no costs associated with down time and/or lost data.

Alternative Direct Costs

Direct costs for the traditional IT in the SME environment can be analyzed into five main elements.  These are:

The sum of items A through D would give an annual direct cost per user of between £1,100 and £2,100.  For large user groups, thee cost is approximately the same as for Atlantic liberator.  For small groups, however, the cost can be nearly double of the Atlantic liberator service. 

Mover, the traditional approach requires significant management while Atlantic liberator does not.  For providing management, traditional SMEs have two choices.

They can employ an IT professional.  In the London area, the minimum annual full cost for an IT management professional will normally exceed £50,000, while in the rest of the country, at least £40,000 per annum would be required.  Firms with up to 100 users that currently employ a full time professional will always find the direct plus management cost of the Atlantic liberator service less than that they currently spend.

Alternatively, SME managers can directly plan and control the IT environment.  With a good relationship with a first class managed IT services supplier, a senior manager might be able to spend as little as 20 to 25 hours per month on IT matters and still receive a reasonably good IT service.  At that level, that manager’s company might spend about as much as it would spend on Atlantic liberator.  Most would spend much more.

Service Level Costs

Atlantic liberator normally has a direct plus management cost that is less than prospective customers currently pay.  The main benefit of Atlantic liberator is that users receive a far more stable and secure IT service. 

Most office bound employees in the UK work between 1,500 and 2,000 hours per year.  SMECOM guarantees that users will have at least 99% availability during normal business hours (0800 to 2000).  That means that users are guaranteed to have no more than 15 to 20 hours of IT downtime during the year.  In practice, Atlantic liberator users suffer less than 5 hours annual downtime.  Few traditional IT operations suffer less than 30 to 40 hours of downtime per year.  At some sites, it can be much higher.

Downtime is expensive.  When an IT service becomes unavailable, workers very quickly run out of things they can do.  Fully costed labour rates for office staff range from £20 to £40 per hour.  For professionals, the rate can be far greater.  For many companies, the annual cost of downtime will be over £1,000 per user.

The cost of lost or corrupt data is much harder to quantify than lost staff time.  When information is not available on a timely basis, confidence falls.  The main cost of data loss is often the reputation of the firm.  While these costs are hard to quantify, these costs can be both real and very significant.