Getting reliable internet services at cost-effective prices have always been difficult for most organisations.  Low cost service providers have often offered poor services – both in quality of the link and in response to resolving customer issues when they arise.  Higher quality service providers are so costly, that it has become uneconomical to secure more than a fraction of the desired internet bandwidth – typically no more than 512k for a large agency.  However, by leveraging economies of scale, Galaxy is now able to offer high capacity bandwidth (2 Mbps & more) at highly competitive prices, and the provision of such facilities with private-sector style service level agreements – which guarantees quality of service.

For many organisations, the ability to connect their remote offices to their Headquarters and to one another is always a major challenge. However, Galaxy’s new nationwide network backbone helps to remedy this by offering connectivity for all sites, regardless of their geographical location.

Such services are achieved using a variety of technologies, based on the requirements of the environment. What is important is that remote offices are able to communicate transparently to all relevant sites – at very cost-effective prices.

The public sector has always been at a disadvantage when it comes to identifying ways of using information & communications technology to support an organisation’s objectives.  In-house competency & capacity has often been limited; trying to fill the gap by using external private-sector consultants is not always a suitable palliative. 

In the few cases where they even understand and appreciate the real requirements of the public sector, such (expensive) private-sector consultants often try to push their own agenda, rather than uphold the interests of the client organisation.  In response to this pressing need, Galaxy has begun developing a substantial Professional Services practice. 

The unit’s leading consultants are all private-sector ICT & services experts with years of experience in working with public sector entities.

The Consulting Services Galaxy Backbone offers include:

• Conduct of needs analysis exercises
• Development of ICT strategic plans
• Development of Best Practice-based ICT policies & standards
• Certification of network designs (including integration requirements for the National IT Backbone)
• Development of detailed ICT specifications and preparation of RFP documents
• Assistance in the identification of suitable vendors
• Technical assessments of vendor RFP responses
• Project management of service deployments
• Coordination of workshops (technical briefings, as well as General Solution Awareness Fora)
• Post-implementation project monitoring & assessment

Organisations sometimes need to offer secure and reliable access to their web sites or to certain open or closed-user group applications round the clock.  Establishing such availability 24 x 7 x 365 can be very expensive.  Using overseas parties to provide such services can also expose the integrity of information that is sometimes best kept within local (Nigerian) control. 

Fortunately, Galaxy Backbone now offers similar qualitative services for organisations either wishing to host web sites, or whole servers running secure applications, in an environment that is within direct physical access. 

All necessary support services, including management of IP addresses, domain names, and the like are also available.  Most importantly, with its broadband connectivity to most government agencies, as well as upcoming connectivity to the national Internet Exchange Provider (IXP), traffic destined for Nigerian subscribers will be accessible at high speeds, without ever having to leave Nigerian shores.

In reality, very few organisations have any concrete plan on how to recreate their key documents and computer data should any major disaster (fire, etc.) occur at their premises.  Some have made tape backups of some of their information, but it is often not up to date.  In some cases, copies of those tapes are often not kept in safe places; in others, the tapes have never been tested, to ensure that the data is still intact.  Many organisations with backup computer servers keep such systems in the same room as the main servers; should a disaster strike, both systems would be unavailable. 

More over, far too much critical information is still in paper format, for which there is no off-site copy.  Galaxy is now able to offer disaster recovery and business continuity solutions which can help organisations address such shortcomings – at very affordable fees.