Colocation smart hands
Independent smart hands for data centre tenants.
Smart hands & remote hands
Smart hands and remote hands, day or night.
When your equipment is in South Africa and your team is not, IITECH engineers become your eyes and hands on site. We take the task, do it carefully and report back with photos.
What it is
Your team's hands on site.
Smart hands is skilled on-site technical work carried out on your behalf by an engineer who understands what they are touching. Remote hands usually means the simpler requests: a power cycle, a visual check, reseating a cable, reading a serial number off a label. IITECH does both, from the two-minute check to the careful swap of a failed line card during a change window.
We work to your instructions and your change process. If you have a method of procedure (MOP), we follow it step by step. If you don't, we agree the steps with your engineer on a call or on WhatsApp before we touch anything, and we confirm the device, rack and port before any cable is moved.
Our engineers are based in Johannesburg and cover Gauteng day to day, including the Isando, Bredell and Midrand data-centre areas. Work elsewhere in South Africa is scheduled or dispatched by arrangement.
Typical tasks
What we do as your smart hands.
Anything that needs a careful pair of hands next to your equipment, requested by ticket, email or WhatsApp.
- Power cycles and rebootsGraceful or hard reboots of servers, switches and appliances, with before-and-after status lights photographed.
- Visual checksLink lights, alarms, PSU and fan status, labels and serial numbers, reported back with photos.
- Cabling and patchingPatching, re-patching, tracing and labelling copper and fibre to your port map.
- Hardware swapsReplacing failed drives, PSUs, fans, optics, line cards and memory with your or the OEM's spare parts.
- Console accessConnecting a laptop or console server so your remote engineer can reach a device that has dropped off the network.
- Rack and stackReceiving, unboxing, mounting, powering and cabling new hardware, then clearing the packaging away.
- Deliveries and returnsReceiving shipments, checking contents against the packing list, and returning faulty parts with the right paperwork.
- Urgent calloutsUrgent callouts and planned maintenance windows, day or night.
Got a task or ticket for us?Send the site, the task and your time window on WhatsApp.
WhatsApp +27 78 243 6482How it works
How a smart hands request works.
The same simple flow, whether it's one reboot or a full night of changes.
Request
Send the ticket or work order by WhatsApp, email or your portal: site, rack, device, task and time window.
Confirm
We confirm the scope, access arrangements and any MOP, and name the engineer who will attend.
Execute
The engineer works to your instructions, stays in touch with your team and stops to check if anything looks different from what was expected.
Report
You get a written close-out with photos, serials and notes, so the ticket can be closed with evidence.
Response times and SLAs. Response times, on-site times and escalation contacts are agreed with you up front, by priority, and written into your SLA or purchase order. We don't publish one number for every job, because facility access rules, travel distance and time of day all make a difference. We would rather commit to something we can meet every time.
FAQ
Questions we get asked.
Something else you need to know? Ask an engineer directly.
What is the difference between smart hands and remote hands?
Remote hands usually covers simple requests such as reboots, visual checks and reseating cables. Smart hands covers skilled technical work such as hardware replacement, structured patching, console troubleshooting and installs. IITECH provides both, and you can mix them on one account.
Do you offer after-hours smart hands in Johannesburg?
Yes. We offer smart hands and urgent callouts, including nights and weekends. The response target for each priority is agreed in your SLA, so everyone knows what to expect before a fault happens.
How do I log a smart hands request?
WhatsApp or call +27 78 243 6482 (UK +44 7366 828663), email hello@iitech.co.za, or raise it in your own ticketing system if you add us as a vendor. Include the site, rack and device, the task and your time window.
Can you work inside colocation data centres?
Yes. The tenant arranges our access under their account and we follow the facility's induction, escort and safety rules. Our colocation smart hands page explains how that works.
What do we get after the job?
A close-out report covering what was done and the time on site, with before-and-after photos, serial numbers of any parts swapped and anything we noticed that you should know about.
Do you supply the spare parts?
Usually the customer or the OEM supplies parts and we fit them. If you need hardware sourced, our procurement service can quote.
Facilities
Smart hands at the world’s leading data centre operators
IITECH engineers provide smart hands and remote hands support for tenants in facilities operated by AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Equinix, Digital Realty, Teraco and many more.
Where we work
Book an engineer across Africa and around the world.
Headquartered in Johannesburg, with engineers across Africa and around the world, dispatched to your site.
- Johannesburg
- Cape Town
- Durban
- Nairobi
- Lagos
- Accra
- Addis Ababa
- Gaborone
- Cairo
- Kinshasa
- All of Africa
- IT services South Africa
- Namibia
- Lesotho
- Mozambique
- Eswatini
- Cameroon
- Global coverage
Related
Related services and areas.
Data centre support
Rack and stack, installs, decommissions and audits.
Hardware break/fix
Server, storage, network and device parts swaps.
Johannesburg
Our home base: Isando, Bredell, Midrand and all of Gauteng.
See all IITECH services · Services overview · About IITECH
Product and company names on this page are trademarks of their respective owners and are used only to describe the equipment, platforms and environments we work on.
Let's talk
Need hands on site? Let's get it done.
Tell us the site, the task and your time window. An engineer will get back to you, day or night.
+27 78 243 6482UK +44 7366 828663hello@iitech.co.zaHead office: Johannesburg, South AfricaLondon office (global markets): London, United Kingdom