Irvine, CA – I have become somewhat enamored by the LifeLock commercial titled, “Fix it.” In that commercial, bank robbers come storming into a bank breaking a display and yelling, “Everybody on the floor.” As everyone hits the floor a man in a security uniform remains standing and one of the customers whispers, “Do something!” He replies, “Oh, I’m not a security guard. I’m a security monitor. I only notify people if there is a robbery.” After a brief glance around he passively says, “There’s a robbery.” The commercial narrator then says, “Why monitor a problem if you don’t fix it?”
We have watched that commercial a few times at Alvaka Networks and we chuckle in agreement. That is because nearly all of our competitors boldly state they monitor your systems 24×7, but by 6 PM all the staff goes home and they do not return until 8 AM the next morning. Unless they have dedicated staff sitting at monitoring consoles during the day, which many don’t AND during the evening they are not catching your critical events in a timely manner. When something does happen, they are not even awake to lend a hand and solve the problem for you. You users will be reporting the problems when they try to start work. That is the Alvaka Networks difference. As our name means in Icelandic, we are always awake and ever vigilant.
Alvaka Networks is staffed by US personnel 24 hours per day, seven days per week and 365 days per year. Not everyone needs that kind of vigilance, but if you do Alvaka Networks is on the very short list of those who can deliver.

You want to enter in a fully burdened labor rate for this field. What that means is that you want to take the base hourly rate, plus 25-30% for employer payroll taxes, benefits, vacation/holiday time, etc.
Smoke testing is a type of software testing performed by Alvaka after a software patching sequence to ensure that the system is working correctly and to identify any misconfigurations or conflicts within the patched system.
This is a basic cost calculator for you to compute your typical monthly cost for patching your servers, PCs, laptops, tablets and associated application software. It also forms the basis for you to begin calculating your Return on Investment for software patching, or for comparison with alternatives to the manual process of patching operating systems and application software—such as Patch Management as a Service, also known as Vulnerability Management as a Service.
Smoke testing is a term used to describe the testing process for servers after patches are applied.