The Whole Specification. Inclusions and Exclusions.

A twelve-month initial term, then ninety days' notice at any point. On exit your data, documentation and tenant come with you.

One monthly fee, costed for your estate after a review. No rate card, because scope varies — and nothing added later that was not in the proposal.

A Master Services Agreement you read in full before signing. Scope, service levels, escalation and exit all in writing.

• Remote support requests for covered users and devices, within your covered hours
• Onsite attendance within the covered area, on the terms stated in your agreement
• A named account contact and a service desk coordinator
• Ticket logging by email or customer portal, with a status you can see
• A written escalation route, including to a director

• Monitoring of covered devices for health, disk, performance and hardware failure indicators
• Operating system and third-party application patching within a defined window
• A standard build and configuration applied to new devices
• Device encryption where the hardware and operating system support it
• An asset register kept current — what you own, who holds it

• User account administration — starters, leavers, changes and permissions
• Mailbox, shared mailbox, distribution list and group administration
• Multi-factor authentication and conditional access policy maintenance
• Licence assignment on joiners and reclamation on leavers
• Tenant configuration maintained to a documented standard

• Endpoint protection deployed, monitored and maintained on covered devices
• Email and collaboration security — filtering, impersonation protection and safe links
• Alert triage and response, following the escalation path defined in your agreement
• A security baseline maintained against a documented standard
• Security alerts triaged, with out-of-hours handling as stated in your agreement

• Backup of Microsoft 365 data, covered endpoints and covered servers
• Backup monitoring, with restores tested to the schedule in your agreement
• Recovery assistance when you need something brought back
• A stated retention period, written into your agreement rather than left vague

• Monitoring of hosts and guests for health, capacity and failure indicators
• Patching of host and guest operating systems within the defined window
• Backup of virtual machines, monitored and tested
• Capacity and lifecycle tracking, flagging hardware and licensing approaching end of support

• Documentation of your environment, kept current rather than written once
• Service reporting at the frequency stated in your agreement
• A periodic service review covering performance, open risks and roadmap
• Licence and renewal tracking, with notice before a decision becomes automatic

The Cost of the Hardware Itself

We specify, procure, supply, build and deploy it — desktops, laptops, servers, mobiles and tablets. Only the purchase price of the equipment sits outside the monthly fee.

Third-Party Licences and Subscriptions

Supplied and managed under Software, billed separately from the support fee.

Project and Change Work

Anything beyond maintaining the existing environment is quoted in advance as Consult work.

Unsupported and End-of-Life Software

Operating systems and applications past vendor support cannot be secured or patched, so they sit outside the covered service.

Systems We Have Not Been Given Access To

We cannot be accountable for something we are not permitted to manage or monitor.

Line-of-Business Applications

Vendor-specific systems are not supported at application level. We act as liaison with the vendor on your behalf.

Cabling and Physical Works

Structured cabling, containment and building works are arranged and quoted separately.

Out-of-Hours Work

Outside your covered hours unless your agreement expressly provides for it, in which case it is specified and priced.

Recharged Costs

Travel, parts and third-party attendance, recharged at cost with your agreement first.

Anything Not Written Down

If it is not in the agreement, do not assume it is covered — ask, and we will either add it or quote it.

Response Targets

Targets differ by service, so we publish no single number that would not apply to you. The targets governing your account are stated in your proposal, quote and agreement — and the website never claims more than the contract does.

Response Is Not Resolution

A response target is a commitment to pick it up, assess it and tell you where it stands. We do not publish resolution guarantees, because a resolution time depends on things outside our control — a failed part, a vendor, a third party.

Coverage Hours

Defined in your agreement. A request raised outside them is logged and picked up when cover resumes, unless your agreement provides for extended cover — which is specified and priced rather than implied.

How Performance Is Reported

You receive reporting on tickets raised, resolved and trending, plus performance against the targets in your agreement. It goes to your named contact whether the numbers flatter us or not.

A Covered User

A named person who uses your systems and can raise support requests — counted per person, not per device. One person with a laptop, a desk phone and a mobile is one covered user.

Shared and Non-User Devices

Shared terminals, warehouse scanners, meeting-room kit and similar are covered as devices rather than users, and listed individually in your proposal so nothing is counted twice.

Servers and Virtual Infrastructure

In scope where you run them, scoped and priced against your actual environment — hosts, guests and their backup requirement are itemised in the proposal rather than absorbed into a per-user figure.

When Headcount Changes

The fee follows the covered count. Joiners and leavers are reflected at the next billing cycle, so growth is not a renegotiation and a quiet quarter is not a fight.

Billing

Invoiced monthly, with payment terms and method set out in your agreement. Licensing appears on the same invoice as a separate line, so you can always see what is service and what is subscription.

Work Outside the Agreement

Quoted before it starts, at the rate stated in your agreement. Where work is charged by effort, you receive an effort log evidencing the time against the invoice.

Discovery

Environment review, user and device inventory, licence position, access arrangements, and what we need from the incumbent.

Foundations

Management tooling deployed, security baseline assessed, documentation started, gaps identified and prioritised.

Transition

Support routes communicated to your staff, monitoring and backup verified, remaining access resolved.

Live and Review

Service live, onboarding findings presented with any recommended remediation, and your first review scheduled.

What We Do

• —Audit and document the environment before changing anything
• —Manage the conversation with your incumbent directly, if you would rather not
• —Explain what each access request is for before you approve it
• —Tell your staff how to reach us, in language that does not need translating

What You Provide

• —A few hours from someone who knows how the business actually operates
• —Approval of administrative access requests
• —Decisions on a small number of security settings that change how people sign in
• —A director available to sign the agreement

No Gap in Cover

Support transfers on an agreed date with both providers aware of it. Nobody is left unsure who to call on the morning it changes.

If the incumbent is uncooperative — it happens — we tell you early and work around it rather than letting it stall the date.

Term and Notice

A twelve-month initial term, then ninety days' notice at any point. No automatic multi-year rollover, and no notice period that quietly outlasts the reason you wanted to leave.

As You Grow

The covered count moves with headcount without reopening the agreement. A material change in shape — a second site, an acquisition, a server estate appearing — is scoped and priced as a variation you approve.

What Is Yours

Your Microsoft tenant, your data, your licences and the documentation we built. They always were.

On exit we hand over administrative access, asset and licence records and the environment documentation, within the period stated in the agreement.

Exit Assistance

The handover of access, records and documentation is part of the agreement. Where an incoming provider wants significant additional support, that is quoted — and we would rather quote it than obstruct it.

A customer who stays only because leaving is difficult is not a customer we want.

Do you support Macs and mobile devices?

Yes. Macs are supported and managed alongside Windows under the same agreement and the same security baseline. Mobile devices are covered for access, security policy and email rather than as full managed endpoints.

Can you work alongside our internal IT person?

Yes, and often that is the better arrangement. We agree who owns what in writing, so nobody is standing on anyone else's work and nothing falls between the two of you.

What if we have a server?

Servers and virtual infrastructure are in scope. They are itemised and priced against your actual environment rather than absorbed into a per-user figure, so you can see exactly what the server estate costs to support.

Do you cover more than one site?

Yes. Each site is listed in the agreement with its own onsite terms, since a Leicester office and a site two hundred miles away are not the same commitment.

What if we are still under contract with someone else?

Tell us the end date and notice period. We will plan the transition around it — and if the sensible answer is to wait three months, we will say so rather than push you into paying twice.

Do we have to buy new hardware?

Not to start. We audit what you have and prioritise. Anything that works stays; anything genuinely unsupportable gets a replacement plan with dates and costs, not an ultimatum.

Do we have to buy our licences through you?

No. It works better together, because assignment and reclaim then happen inside the support process, but it is not a condition of the support agreement.

What happens if you cannot fix something?

We tell you, in plain terms, and we tell you what we are doing next — vendor escalation, a third-party specialist, or a workaround while we wait. What we do not do is go quiet.

Who actually does the work?

POLARIS engineers. Nothing is offshored, and you are not passed to a call centre reading your history for the first time. Where a specialist third party is needed we tell you who and why.

How do we raise a ticket out of hours?

Email service@ptgtech.uk or use the portal at any time — it is logged immediately and picked up when cover resumes. Extended cover, where you need it, is specified and priced in your agreement rather than implied.

Researching Rather Than Buying?

Ask for the service description document instead. It is this specification in a form you can circulate to a colleague or a finance decision-maker — note it in the message field and we will send it over.