Smart Hands Plus
Smart Hands Plus is a different way to buy on-site technical support. Instead of raising a ticket and getting a different engineer every time, billed by the hour with the meter running, you get a dedicated engineer at a fixed half-day or day rate — someone who learns your estate, builds a relationship with your team, and gets through your whole task list in a single visit.
It’s smart hands, re-imagined and designed around how you actually work.
The Problem With Traditional Smart Hands
If you’ve ever used the smart hands service from your colocation provider, this will be familiar:
- You raise a ticket and get one of a hundred engineers — usually someone you’ve never dealt with and won’t deal with again
- You’re billed by the hour, often at £200 or more+VAT, with the meter running from the moment they start
- A job estimated at an hour stretches to two or three – or multiple tickets, and the cost climbs with it
- Each new task means a new ticket, a new engineer, and explaining your setup all over again
- You get no continuity, no relationship, and no one who actually knows your infrastructure
It works for a one-off reboot. It’s an expensive, frustrating way to run anything more involved.
How Smart Hands Plus Works
Smart Hands Plus replaces the hourly, ticket-by-ticket model with something built around continuity and value:
- A dedicated engineer. The same person travels to your data centres and offices as and when you need them. They get to know your estate, your kit and your team.
- Fixed half-day and day rates, including travel. No meter running, no surprise overruns. You know the cost up front.
- Multiple tasks in one visit. Rather than one ticket per job, your engineer works through everything that needs doing while they’re on site — no re-booking, no waiting for the next available slot.
- A call before and after. Every visit is bookended by a conversation — what needs doing beforehand, what was done and what to watch afterwards.
- An extension of your team. Over months and years, your engineer becomes someone who knows your infrastructure as well as you do — proactive as well as reactive.
Better Value Than Hourly Smart Hands
The fixed rate is priced to be stronger than a single hour at typical colo smart hands rates, but cheaper than the two, three or more hours that real jobs usually take. For anything beyond the simplest task, it works out better value — and you get a dedicated engineer and a relationship into the bargain, rather than a stranger and a meter.
What Your Engineer Can Do
Smart Hands Plus covers the full range of on-site technical work — reactive and proactive:
- Bespoke engineering and problem-solving
- Physical lift and shift — moving and repositioning equipment
- Installing components and parts in servers
- Decommissioning and removals
- Software updates and upgrades – CCNA, HPE, Dell, Juniper and more – fluent techs
- Troubleshooting and diagnostics
- Cabling, patching and rack work
- Audits and documentation
If it needs hands and expertise on site, your engineer handles it — across all of your data centres and offices.
Who It’s For
Smart Hands Plus suits any organisation with a data centre, colocation footprint or office IT estate that needs regular, reliable on-site support — without the cost and frustration of the hourly colo model. It’s particularly valuable for organisations with infrastructure across multiple sites, where a single trusted engineer who travels between them is far more effective than a different stranger at each location.
Pricing
Smart Hands Plus is offered on fixed half-day and day rates, including travel, with separate rate cards for the UK, Ireland and mainland Europe. Contact us for a rate card and we’ll talk through how it would work for your estate.
Get in Touch
If you’re tired of the hourly smart hands model and want a dedicated engineer who becomes part of your team, we’d be happy to talk it through.
