Area 04 · Operations and infrastructure

IT infrastructure

In most small and mid-sized firms nobody ever designed the infrastructure; it simply accumulated. There is a server bought when the company had ten staff, a network drive a former colleague picked up, wireless access points from the shop round the corner and a handful of cloud subscriptions nobody can trace to a budget. When things slow down, the reflex answer is new equipment. Apply works in a different order. Step one is a full record of what you own. Step two is watching the systems when the pressure is highest. Only then comes the question of spending money. The fix may turn out to be one database parameter, a backup rescheduled to run overnight, or hosted desktops for the summer crew. We do all of it at a distance, and since there is no hardware catalogue behind us, nobody earns a commission on what we recommend.

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Read-only

read-only rights while we inventory and measure

€50

per engineer hour, plus VAT

€0

earned on hardware, because we never resell it

hosting locations for virtual desktops

Services in this area

The health check tells you where the risk sits, tuning tells you why things drag, and virtual desktops settle where programs and data should run. Begin with whichever matters most and bolt on the others later.

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Infrastructure health check

Ahead of switching IT provider, renewing cover with your insurer or a customer's supplier audit. You get a to-do list ordered by risk and by cost.

Performance tuning

When raising an invoice takes a minute and opening a project gives everyone time to brew coffee. Instruments, not hunches, show whether storage, RAM, the LAN or the database is to blame.

Virtual desktops and VDI

Useful for summer staff, a branch that has just opened or people who mostly work from home. The device can be anything; the files stay put on the hosted server.

The health check, stage by stage

Our engineers dial in; your people give up perhaps an hour of conversation in total. Nothing in your configuration is altered during the review. Any change waits until you have read our findings with us and said yes.

Inventory

Every server, workstation, switch, licence and warranty date goes on one list. For many owners it is the first complete picture they have had, and it nearly always surfaces a couple of boxes nobody remembered buying.

Data from the busiest weeks

A small collector runs quietly for a fortnight or three weeks. We schedule it so that it catches the pressure points: closing the books, a filing deadline or a web shop's sale weekend.

Findings in three colours

Red items need attention within weeks. Amber items belong in the coming budget. Green items simply get watched. Each finding comes with the engineering time it should take and, where relevant, an equipment price.

Your choice of who acts on it

We can do the work, your existing provider can, or your own staff can. The document is yours to use as you see fit, and commissioning it commits you to nothing further.

Local PC versus hosted desktop

Hosted desktops earn their keep by solving specific headaches, and trendiness is no reason to adopt them. Below, five everyday scenarios are run through both set-ups.

Model A

Local PC

Software and files live on every person's workstation. Simple, well understood and largely indifferent to whether the internet is up.

Money spent on day one

Hardware is already paid for, with no new subscription

A laptop forgotten on a train

If client records sit on its disk, you face a GDPR breach review and perhaps a 72-hour notification

Summer staff starting in May

Ten machines bought, configured and gathered back in October

A digger severs the fibre

Work stored on the PC remains usable

CAD and 3D visualisation

Rendering runs on the workstation's own GPU

Model B

Hosted desktop

Windows itself runs on a server elsewhere, and whatever the user holds, laptop, thin client or tablet, just displays it.

Money spent on day one

Monthly hosting and licensing for every seat

A laptop forgotten on a train

Nothing of value on it, and the login is disabled in minutes

Summer staff starting in May

Ten logins created in an afternoon and removed in October

A digger severs the fibre

Everyone stops unless a backup or mobile link exists

CAD and 3D visualisation

Calls for GPU instances, which get expensive quickly

In practice

A mix of the two

Decide job by job rather than for the company as a whole. Plenty of offices run both without friction.

Model A

Designers, engineers and anyone pushing pixels

Model B

Front desk, back office, temporary staff, remote branches

Both at once

Accounts and personnel hosted, the drawing office local

“The server can't cope any more” often hides a different culprit. Typical discoveries include a nightly backup that drifted to mid-morning long ago, whole departments working on large spreadsheets directly across the network, a power-saving profile throttling server CPUs, a database engine hoarding every gigabyte of memory, and branch office traffic looping through headquarters for no reason. A few hours of remote work fixes each one. Fresh hardware fixes none.

Frequently asked questions

Usually. Measuring for a couple of weeks shows whether the existing machine has genuinely run out of headroom. When it has, we write the specification, CPU, RAM and disks, that you then hand to your supplier, which stops you overbuying. When it has not, tuning tends to fix the symptoms and the replacement can wait another year or more.

Plan on two to three weeks of elapsed time. Your involvement amounts to a kick-off, a wrap-up and a handful of short queries. We bill €50 per hour plus VAT, and you see an hours forecast, derived from staff, server and site counts, before anything starts; a fixed fee is possible for a narrow scope. Running over the forecast requires your go-ahead.

Inside the EU. We use Microsoft Azure's EU regions or European hosts like Hetzner, OVHcloud and IONOS, and we write down exactly which provider and location hold your data so the details can go into your processing register. As your processor we sign the necessary agreement and handle encryption and access logs. Questions about informing employees or clients belong with your DPO or lawyer.

Far from it. Start with one clearly bounded team: say, seasonal reception staff at a hotel in Kranjska Gora, a pair of bookkeepers at a Savinja valley exporter who work from home half the week, or a fresh branch with nobody technical on site. Let it run for a few months, look at usage and cost, then decide on the next group.

Possibly. The Slovene Enterprise Fund, SID banka and EU-funded calls run digitalisation schemes from time to time, including vouchers, but the rules change frequently. Ask the body running the scheme whether your project qualifies. We make no promises about funding and hold no official consultant status; what we can supply is a quote, a scope of work and a written report laid out so they can accompany your application.

Visibility only. Our review accounts cannot change configuration or remove data. Each engineer uses a named login protected by multi-factor sign-in, connections run through an encrypted tool, and sessions are logged. The data processing agreement precedes any connection, and write permissions arrive only alongside your sign-off for a particular fix.

How healthy is your infrastructure?

Share your headcount, servers and sites and the thing that frustrates you most. Within one working day you will hear our suggested starting point and a rough time estimate.

Email
office@apply.si

When we work
Weekdays 9:00-17:00 CET, answers the same or next working day

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