We are not going to tell you OxygenIT is a 24/7 IT support provider, because it is not. What we do offer is a New Zealand team during business hours, a paid after-hours option, and a real gap in between that most providers never mention.
If you are looking for what day-to-day IT support in Christchurch and New Zealand actually includes, our IT support services page covers the full scope. This page is about the one part of the day that most support pages skip over entirely, what happens after 5.00pm.
What “24/7 IT support” usually means, and what it should mean
Almost every IT provider in New Zealand advertises 24/7 support somewhere on its website. Very few publish the staffed hours, the team location, or a contracted response time to go with the claim. An answering service that takes a message overnight is not the same purchase as an engineer who can act.
Ask any provider you are talking to for three things in writing: the hours a real person is on shift, where that person is based, and what happens to a ticket raised outside those hours. Ours are below.
The hours we are actually staffed
We are staffed 8.00am to 5.00pm, Monday to Friday, excluding New Zealand public holidays. That is a New Zealand team, with engineers in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch. During those hours, a full system outage is responded to in 15 minutes with a 2 hour resolution target. The complete set of response and resolution targets, for every priority level, is published in full on our IT support SLA page.
After hours, the paid add-on and the real gap
After-hours cover is available as a co-managed IT service, a paid add-on staffed by a team in the United Kingdom rather than an automated queue. We are not going to tell you it closes every gap, because it does not. Our engineers have lives, and a provider claiming instant overnight response around the clock is either overstating it or burning out their staff.
A co-managed arrangement also costs less than hiring your own after-hours staff, because a small team of specialists is shared across many clients rather than one generalist carrying a phone all night for one business.
Monitoring is not the same as support
Systems can be monitored continuously, and that is genuinely useful. But monitoring is a machine watching and raising an alert. Support is a person fixing it. Those two things get deliberately blurred in this industry, and they are not the same purchase.
Cyber attacks do not follow business hours either. A managed SOC operating around the clock detects and responds to threats in real time, which is a monitoring and containment function, not a promise that a helpdesk engineer will answer your call at 2.00am.
Who should pay for after-hours cover, and who should not
A business running batch jobs, e-commerce, or systems that serve customers outside New Zealand business hours has a real case for the after-hours add-on. A standard office business that closes at 5.00pm usually does not, because the risk it is paying to cover mostly is not there.
The honest way to decide is to work out what actually breaks after hours today, and what it costs you when it does. If nothing has broken outside business hours in the last year, that is useful information too.
Frequently asked questions
Does OxygenIT offer 24/7 IT support?
No, and we are not going to tell you otherwise. Our New Zealand team is staffed 8.00am to 5.00pm, Monday to Friday, excluding public holidays. Outside those hours, a paid co-managed add-on staffed by a UK-based team is available, but it does not amount to full around-the-clock cover.
What happens if something breaks outside business hours?
If you hold the after-hours add-on, the UK-based team picks up the ticket. If you do not, the ticket is logged and actioned when the New Zealand team is next on shift, per the response targets on our SLA page.
What are OxygenIT’s actual response times?
A full outage is responded to in 15 minutes with a 2 hour resolution target, during staffed hours. Three other priority levels are published in full, with what each one means, on our IT support SLA page.
Why do so many IT providers claim 24/7 support?
Because it sounds reassuring and is rarely checked. Almost no IT provider in New Zealand publishes staffed hours, team location and response times together. Ask any provider you are evaluating for those three things in writing, and see what comes back.
Is 24/7 monitoring the same as 24/7 support?
No. Monitoring is a machine watching and raising an alert. Support is a person fixing it. A managed SOC can watch continuously without a helpdesk engineer being on call to answer the phone.
Who should consider paying for after-hours IT cover?
Businesses running e-commerce, batch processing, or systems serving customers outside New Zealand hours have the strongest case. A standard office business that closes at 5.00pm usually does not need it, and should check what has actually broken after hours before paying to cover it.
Two ways to take this further
Book a 15 minute call with Tim to work out whether after-hours cover is worth paying for in your case, or call 0800 242 206 during business hours.
Not ready to talk yet? Read the full set of response and resolution targets, or see what is included in day-to-day IT support.
