What 24/7 IT support really means
Almost every IT supplier offers 24/7. Very few of them mean somebody is awake. The difference between a staffed shift and a phone next to a bed is roughly forty minutes, and it always shows up on the worst possible night.
There are two kinds of 24/7. On-call means an engineer is woken by a phone; realistic first response is thirty to sixty minutes. Staffed means somebody is already working; realistic first response is under fifteen minutes.
You need staffed cover if something in your organisation loses money or safety outside office hours. Shops on a Saturday, distribution centres on a night shift and care locations at any hour do. Most offices do not.
Ask a supplier three questions: is the night shift staffed or on call, where do those people physically sit, and what is the contractual first response time in writing at three in the morning.
On-call and staffed are not the same product
Both are sold as 24/7 and both appear identical in a proposal. In practice they behave completely differently.
| On call | Staffed shift | |
|---|---|---|
| Who answers | An engineer woken by a phone | Somebody already at a desk |
| Realistic first response | Thirty to sixty minutes | Under fifteen minutes |
| Second incident the same night | The same tired person | A shift with more than one person |
| Proactive monitoring | Alerts queue until morning | Alerts are seen as they arrive |
| Cost | Lower | Higher, and honest about why |
Neither is wrong. Buying the first while believing you bought the second is.
Do you actually need it?
The honest test is not whether an outage would be annoying. It is whether it would cost money or safety before the next working day.
- Yes: shops open at weekends, distribution and production running night shifts, care locations, anything with a customer-facing service that runs outside office hours.
- Probably: organisations with a compliance obligation that includes an incident reporting deadline, since that clock does not respect office hours.
- No: a professional services firm where nothing happens between six in the evening and eight in the morning. Extended cover to eight or nine is often enough and considerably cheaper.
How we cover the night
Everything is picked up locally, and that does not change at night. The evening and night shifts are worked by our own people, on a rota rather than an on-call phone, and the person who answers works from the same documentation and the same ticket history as the daytime team.
Two things follow from that. A night incident reaches somebody who is already awake, so the first response is minutes rather than the time it takes to wake up and open a laptop. And nothing is handed to a third party, so you never have to explain your environment to a company that has never seen it.
Your regular contact still sits in the Netherlands or Belgium and still speaks your language. The night rota is capacity behind that, not a replacement for the relationship.
What to put in writing
Four things, and vague answers to any of them are informative in themselves.
- First response time per priority, outside office hours. Not the daytime figure with the word 24/7 next to it.
- What counts as priority one at night. Agreed in advance, because at two in the morning nobody wants to negotiate it.
- Who can declare an incident. On both sides, with names and numbers.
- What happens at handover. How the night shift passes an open incident to the day team without you having to repeat the story.
What it costs
Extending cover from office hours to full 24/7 typically adds fifty to eighty per cent to a service desk contract, which sounds like a lot until you compare it to a single night of a distribution centre standing still.
The middle option is worth considering and is often skipped: extended cover to eight or nine in the evening plus weekend cover, without full nights. For a lot of retailers that matches the actual risk exactly, and it costs considerably less than the full arrangement.
The point of the night shift is that nothing happens
The value of staffed cover is not primarily the incidents you call about. It is the ones that get noticed and resolved before anyone calls: a backup that failed, a disk filling up, a certificate expiring at midnight, a site dropping to its failover line.
That is only possible if somebody is watching. Monitoring that raises an alert into an empty room at three in the morning is a log entry, not a service. How we monitor is described under managed IT, and what we report under service governance.
Questions we get about this
What buyers should ask before signing a 24/7 clause.
What is the difference between on-call and staffed 24/7 support?
On-call means an engineer is woken by a phone, with a realistic first response of thirty to sixty minutes. Staffed means somebody is already working a shift, with a first response under fifteen minutes and alerts seen as they arrive rather than in the morning. Both are sold as 24/7.
Does 24/7 mean my regular contact is available at night?
No, and it should not. Your regular contact works normal hours and knows your organisation; night cover is a staffed shift with access to the same documentation and ticket history. The point is continuity of information, not continuity of one person.
How much does 24/7 add to a support contract?
Typically fifty to eighty per cent over office hours cover. Extended evening and weekend cover without full nights is a middle option that fits a lot of retailers exactly and costs considerably less.
Is out-of-hours support handled by a third party?
No. Evenings, nights and weekends are worked by our own people on a rota, using the same documentation and the same ticket system as the daytime team. Nothing is passed to a subcontractor, so you never have to explain your environment to a company that has not seen it before.
Where this lands in our work
What the cover applies to.
Want this looked at for your own sites?
Half an hour on a call is usually enough to tell you whether we are the right party for it, and we will say so if we are not.