• Network Analysis & Reporting
• Network Design & Advice
• Network and Internet Security Services
• Network Management & Monitoring
• Systems Migration
• Web Application Development
  
  

VITECH is an information and communication technology driven organization and as such empowered her Information Technology network infrastructure with state of the art Gigabit enabled transmission network and secured authentication mechanism to protect your data and information in our possession.

Technologies such as Video conferencing, VoIP, secured portals, real-time messaging application, real-time field observation tools, document Control System, File server e.t.c are usually employed to ensure secure, effective and reliable communication and transmission of data, voice and images during projects.

“Your data is safe in our hands and the confidentiality of your information is non-compromising. As an IT driven company, we'll surely get your projects to the next level”.

VITECH’s detailed analysis and reporting service provides a comprehensive overview of the network infrastructure and details of any weaknesses and potential vulnerabilities.

With the advent of converged voice and data technologies and the ever-increasing reliance placed on network services, network downtime has become even more costly.

To maintain a flexible communications infrastructure it is important to fully understand the current network environment and develop a plan for future requirements.

One of the fundamental requirements for optimum Network Management is the basic knowledge of how a network is operating on a day to day basis and to be able to recognise any changes. There are often tell-tale indicators and minor symptoms that could alert of impending problems and unless it is known how the network operates normally, any changes could be over-looked. The best way to become familiar with what is normal operation is to collect and plot statistical data about the network. This should include a breakdown of the activity present on the network and profile statistics about the users on the network, often called a network analysis or baseline report. Once a reference point is established, regular comparing and monitoring of the network will produce trend analyses and alert to any significant deviations. This will help maintain a healthy network long term

Network Design and advisory service is suitable for all organisations in both the public and private sectors, from SME businesses through to multi-national corporate enterprises.

Keeping up with ever-changing technology is hard enough. Choosing the best way forward for your business can be a real headache whether you are planning a new network or enhancing your established infrastructure. Then there's the added pressure to 'do more with less.'

VITECH's consultants are able to assist with the analysis of current and future organisational needs and the subsequent effects to your network infrastructure. A solution can then be designed to meet both your business and budgetary requirements and enable you to efficiently build, expand and integrate your business through best practice processes and technologies.

Recent security surveys indicate that the number of security breaches and the losses incurred as a result of these breaches are on the rise. VITECH offers a comprehensive suite of security assessment, management, and consulting services. Our strong record of delivering superior internet security services to our clients demonstrates our ability to deliver high quality results in a timely manner.

Specializations

• Intrusion Detection/Monitoring Services
• Internet Security Assessment Services
• Internet Security Architectural Design
• Firewall Audits / Tests
• Security Policy Development and Deployment Services
• Antispam and antivirus mail gateways
• Virtual Private Network (VPN) Gateways
• DMZ Integration Services
• Secure Remote Access Services

IT plays an ever increasing role in optimising essential business tasks. VITECH’s network monitoring and management services keep your business up and running by alerting to any potential issues before they occur.

The network infrastructure has emerged as one of the most mission critical elements of any organisation. Users have become system dependent and any interruptions in service have an immediate impact on day-to-day activities and overall productivity. Therefore, it is critical to maintain optimal network performance.

In an ever evolving environment this is often very draining on both personnel and financial resources. It is important to maintain a balance between managing and maintaining the existing infrastructure and working on other projects and developments.

VITECH monitoring and management services offer multiple operating system support and will provide complete control of your systems whilst enabling you to spend more time on your business.

As a result, the factors that contribute to most system failures can be anticipated, assessed and dealt with well before they cause problems.

VITECH’s systems migration service ensures that platform migrations and upgrades are effectively implemented with the minimum amount of disruption to your business. In this emerging technological age of quest for more flexible, rugged, secure and commercially viable technology; migration trend from closed source technology to open source technology such as Linux is being more prevalent.

The network infrastructure is no different to any other element of the organisation, in that it requires continual care and attention. This is made even more prevalent with the ever evolving nature of technology, the necessity for hardware and software upgrades and natural growth requirements of the business.

VITECH Business Managers are able to manage all aspects of systems migration and upgrades from procurement to completion, with the minimum amount of disruption to your employees and business operations.

Our team of professional developers can help in the area of web application services. Examples of these services include the design and development of interactive web sites, advanced ecommerce systems, online private communication systems, and solution specific internet or intranet/extranet modules.

Specializations include:

• Custom Application Development
• Advanced Ecommerce Systems
• Systems Integration Services
• Wireless Application Development
• Database Development Services
• Database Integration Services
• Systems Management Services

Our core areas of expertise include but not limited to:

PHP web database integration
Java, Java servlets,
J2EE
PHP and Perl
MySQL

Education Focused Services

Specialized products to Schools, Colleges, Universities and other education bodies. Some of our products for educational institution s include e-learning portal, on-line randomization test, Management Information System e.t.c. Those are VITECH’s products which are built to your specification. Please call in for further information on these products.

A form of networking technology that implements a high-speed short distance method of computer communications, such as in a department, office, home or building.

Most LANs connect together multiple devices so that users can use, for example, one printer or one set of applications instead of having an individual printer or application on each personal computer.

LANs are capable of transmitting data at very fast rates, much faster than data can be transmitted over a telephone line; but the distances are limited, and there is also a limit on the number of computers that can be attached to a single LAN.

The most common wiring technology for a LAN is Ethernet, although wireless technologies are evolving.

A Wide Area Network is a data communications network that spans a relatively large geographic area eg linking LANs between buildings, cities or countries.

WANs make use of public networks, such as the Internet, phone lines or dedicated communication lines and may be privately owned or rented. WAN technologies generally function at the lower three layers of the OSI reference model: physical, data link and network layers.

Mobility is no longer a barrier to productivity and efficiency but now provides a true competitive advantage. Accessing real-time data whilst at a customer site, whilst travelling or whilst working outside of normal office hours now allows a more flexible and efficient approach to business processes.

Wireless networking technology, fuelled by the emergence of cross-vendor industry standards such as IEEE 802.11, has produced a number of affordable solutions that are fast becoming a realistic business benefit for all types of industries where the installation of network cabling is not practical.

Over the past decade voice and data cabling requirements have merged and today, cabling infrastructures are able to support voice, data and video applications on a single cable type.

The cable media used within the infrastructure reflects the network topology, protocol and size. Understanding the characteristics of different cable media and how they relate to other aspects of the network is necessary for the development of a successful infrastructure.

Unshielded twisted pair (UTP) and shielded twisted pair (STP) are the preferred media in Nigeria with at least 85% of structured cabling installations being UTP. Twisted pair cables are more cost effective and flexible than system specific cabling such as Coax, Twinax and other non-generic cable types. VITECH extensively recommends Cat 6 cable, to prepare a gigabit Ethernet backend infrastructure.

Traditionally organisations were required to invest in dedicated remote access servers in order to manage access for staff working away from the office. However dedicated dial-up or fixed-line connections made this an expensive and inflexible solution. A virtual private network (VPN) is a more flexible, and often cheaper, alternative.

A Virtual Private Network uses the public telecommunications network, such as the Internet, rather than leased lines to transport encrypted traffic. VPNs are also recommended to secure 802.11b wireless LANs. The data being sent is encrypted and cannot be intercepted, read or otherwise interfered with. As VPNs use an existing shared wide area network (WAN) infrastructure, costs are lower and deployment is faster than traditional private networks.

A remote-access VPN provides a connection for employees from various remote locations. Remote workers can then dial-in and use the VPN client software to access the network.

A site-to-site VPN provides connection to and from multiple sites. This can be Intranet- or Extranet- based. An Intranet-based VPN is used to connect LANs within the organisation, whereas an Extranet-based VPN connects to other organisations providing a shared environment.

A server is a host computer on the network that stores information and performs critical functions for a particular purpose.

Examples of types of server:

• File server - General data and file storage.
• Print server - Management of print queues.
• Web server - Storage and availability of web documents.
• E-mail server - Directs email to the appropriate destination.
• Firewall / IDS Appliance
• Internet Access Control Engine
• Backup server - Provides redundancy by copying the contents of
another server.
• SQL server/Database server - Provides access to database files.

The operating system is the single most important programme on a computer and provides a platform to run applications. The most popular PC operating systems are: DOS, Mac, Windows and Linux.

Routing is the transportation of data across a network where the data passes through at least one intermediate device.

Routing and bridging are often compared as they appear to carry out the same function. However, there is one distinct difference. Bridging occurs at the OSI Layer 2 (Data Link Layer) and utilises MAC addresses, whilst routing occurs at the OSI Layer 3 (Networking Layer) and utilises IP addresses.

As organisations introduce wide area links to their infrastructure the speed, capacity and performance of applications running over the links has become critical. The network sees all applications as equal whether it be mission critical applications or personal web browsing. In fact, more often that not, the less-critical applications win the fight for bandwidth causing bottlenecks, slow response times and saturation of the link resulting in loss of productivity and network downtime.

Adding more bandwidth will not necessarily address the situation but merely open up a wider window for more traffic to traverse the network, and as such could in fact aggravate the situation to a greater extent. By managing the traffic at the Application layer of the OSI (layer 7) it is possible to classify and control traffic to ensure optimal network performance. Traffic can be kept moving at an appropriate pace through bottlenecks and any single type of traffic can be prevented from dominating the link.

Converged solutions are changing the entire communications infrastructure. The convergence between telecommunications and IT has made it possible for both voice and data traffic to be carried through the same cable networks.

VoIP uses IP Protocol to transmit voice packets over the Internet. In other words, VoIP can send voice, fax and other information in discrete packets over the Internet, rather than through the regular telephone network (PSTN). Each IP Telephone has its own IP number and memory and is easy to move, therefore making it easier to add and remove users and physically move handsets.

The choice and range of solutions is growing all the time. Most companies are choosing IP-enabled PBX (Hybrid PBX). The good thing about hybrids is that the business can reuse a lot of its existing components. The reliability of the traditional PBX and the investment protection of existing handsets, where there is no business case to replace it, are combined with a level of IP integration that best fits the organisation's requirements and where it really adds value.

VoIP can provide call switching and routing, interactive voice response, pre-paid telephony, emergency call-out, call centre and virtual call centre, interactive chat, multimedia messaging, internet service integration, audio conferencing, SMS and remote-worker management.

Many applications are very demanding on network links and as a result data is often inefficiently transmitted. To combat this, switches provide clear paths to and from each node whilst maintaining multiple, simultaneous data transmissions, unlike bridges and routers that process packets on an individual 'first come first served' basis.

Switching technology has therefore superseded bridging as the process of forwarding data from one segment of the LAN to another using layers 2, 3 and 4 of the OSI model. Switches are hardware based and provide enhanced throughput performance, higher port density, lower per-port cost and greater flexibility.

A switch examines the data and uses the addressing information to determine its destination. It then creates a virtual link to the destination and transmits the packet there.

Security is generally regarded as a cost, rather than a revenue generator. The return on investment is not readily apparent and is often difficult to quantify which generally causes a problem when it comes to budget allocation.

It is often necessary to look at the bigger picture for example, remote authentication enables employees to securely access the network away from the office therefore improving flexibility and in turn the effectiveness and profitability of the organisation.

It is necessary to authenticate the identity of users and computers, maintain an appropriate level of network service operations and optimal network performance.

There are four main security objectives:

• Authentication - Proving identity to gain access.
• Integrity - Ensuring only authorised personnel can amend data.
• Confidentiality - Restricting data access.
• Non-repudiation - Decisive tracking of actions to a specific user.

Business continuity and disaster recovery planning are now accepted as a basic requirement for every organisation.

In the event of a disaster such as fire vandalism, natural disaster or system failure, pre-determined plans and procedures will enable an organisation to set-up, reconfigure and continue with 'business as usual'. Events such as floods, earthquakes and fires can destroy buildings and computer rooms and therefore a backup stored away from the building can keep data safe and ensure a quick recovery.

Disaster recovery practice requires the maintenance of periodical backups from which the application or environment can be restored with full system and data integrity to the client site or a designated site alternative. The plan must be continually reviewed, updated and communicated and should reflect any changes in the organisation's processes or objectives.

Data storage is no longer just a matter of retention for internal use but now regulations stipulate that some data must be kept for certain time periods and in certain cases be available within just 24 hours. Therefore, storage solutions must address how data is kept, protected, shared and retrieved. In addition to adhering to data compliance regulations networked storage enables higher availability, better network performance and increased uptime.

It is necessary to perform a business analysis to highlight compliance commitments relating to each data type. This analysis can be used to assess the best technologies for your compliance requirements. In addition to a storage infrastructure solution it is also imperative to implement effective disaster recovery.

• Storage Area Network (SAN) - is a high-speed sub-network connecting storage devices and servers to provide consolidated storage and storage management. Data is not stored directly on to any of the network's servers, maintaining server power for business applications and releasing network capacity to the end user. SAN is highly scalable and can offer high system availability, extensive fault tolerance and low cost of ownership.

• Network Attached Storage (NAS) - relocates storage from application servers onto its own independent platform. The server still handles the data processing but a NAS device will deliver the data to the user. By consolidating storage, resources are more scalable and manageable and hard disk storage space can be added to a network without shutting down existing severs for maintenance and upgrades.

• Direct Attached Storage (DAS) - as the name suggests, is a storage device that connects directly to a single server for storage and retrieval of data and database applications or email. Performance is not as high as NAS and it requires high capital expenditure.