Most clients come to us escaping something. A provider who stopped answering the phone. One who charged for every small change - until the right thing to do and the affordable thing to do stopped being the same. One so buried in firefighting they never fixed the root cause, or one who left on bad terms and took the passwords with them. Whatever you're walking away from, our first job is always the same: get you fully in control of your own systems. Then we make the problems stop.
We've taken on clients who were locked out of their own systems by a departing provider - no credentials, no documentation, no goodwill. Getting them back in and back in charge, with admin accounts and passwords that are finally theirs, is often step one. Your IT should never be something someone else can hold hostage.
We usually inherit years of neglect: unpatched systems, backups nobody ever tested, risks nobody owned. We put out what's actively on fire, then work through the backlog - until the environment is stable, documented, and predictable.
Patches tested and applied, backups verified with real restores, Microsoft 365 kept secure and correctly licensed, and monitoring that catches trouble before it reaches your desk.
Aging servers, a switch from VMware to Proxmox (the software servers run inside), Microsoft 365 moves: we plan each one, schedule it for a time agreed in advance, and verify every piece before we call it done. You keep working while we upgrade the platform underneath.
Our managed IT puts one Edmonton team in charge of the technology your staff use at work, under a month-to-month agreement. That team starts with the person who can't sign in this morning and works back to the server and firewall behind them.
When someone can't print or gets a strange sign-in prompt, they call us. You reach us by phone, by email or by letting us connect to your screen remotely, and we come on-site when the fix needs hands on the hardware. We support people in the office, in the field and working from home, including staff based at client sites.
We handle Microsoft 365 licensing, user access and security settings, along with the collaboration tools your team uses to share files. In your office, we look after Windows Server and Active Directory (which controls staff logins and permissions), shared files and printers, and server updates. We also manage Linux, OpenBSD and Red Hat systems, so an office running more than one kind of server doesn't need a second provider.
Our network support covers the office network, secure remote access (VPN) for staff outside the office and the firewalls between your systems and the internet. When a system is better off in the cloud, we run it on Amazon Web Services (AWS). We use immutable backups, which can't be changed or deleted, to protect your data against ransomware, and we keep copies offsite.
We work with organizations whose day depends on specialized software, and we have hands-on experience with these applications.
If your organization doesn't fit one of these groups, tell us about your setup anyway. The pricing request has a field for the core tools you run.
Start with the problem you already know about, like a server that keeps dropping or a setup no one on staff owns. We'll look at it and give you a straight answer on how we'd fix it.
Once you sign on, we handle coordination with your technology vendors, which takes that work off your staff.
With everything stable, we sit down with you to plan when hardware gets replaced, budget forecasts and a roadmap for the next round of upgrades. That planning is the IT consulting side of the relationship.
We provide managed IT and on-site support in Edmonton and surrounding Alberta from two Edmonton offices: our home office on 145 Avenue NW and a downtown office on Jasper Avenue. Our IT services in Edmonton include on-site visits whenever a problem needs a technician in the room.
Regular support hours are 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Alberta Time, Monday to Friday. For full outages, active security incidents and critical failures, our emergency response extends to evenings and weekends.
With a lot of providers, you pay a monthly support fee and then approve a separate quote each time a server needs replacing or software needs an upgrade. You end up weighing each fix against its invoice, and some fixes wait for next year's budget.
We put the ongoing upkeep of your systems inside your agreement instead. Upgrades and replacements are part of it, along with the remote-support tools, monitoring and backup licensing we run for you, all at one predictable rate. There's no lock-in, since you can leave in any month, and we've never needed a long contract to keep a client.
Your rate depends on how many people we support, the systems they use and the coverage your business needs. The pricing request asks for your team size, current software and equipment, monthly IT budget and most urgent IT problem, and we reply with a pricing direction.
Managed IT is an arrangement where an outside company runs your technology for a recurring fee, rather than billing you each time something breaks. That company is called a managed service provider, or MSP, and it handles support requests, maintenance, security and backups as ongoing work. Brown Walrus is an independent managed service provider in Edmonton, founded in 2011, and our agreements run month-to-month.
Brown Walrus managed IT covers help for your staff when something breaks, Microsoft 365 administration, Windows and Linux servers, Active Directory (which controls staff logins and permissions), your office network, secure remote access (VPN) and firewalls, VMware and Proxmox (the software servers run inside), backups that can't be changed or deleted plus offsite copies to protect against ransomware, and cloud systems on Amazon Web Services (AWS). We set the exact coverage in your agreement, based on what your business needs. Ongoing upkeep such as upgrades sits inside the same rate, so you don't get separate project or upgrade invoices.
The cost of managed IT depends on the size and condition of your systems. Providers generally price by the number of users and devices, the servers and locations involved, and how much work the setup needs before it runs reliably. Brown Walrus charges one predictable rate for the ongoing work. For a pricing direction that fits your organization, send a pricing request with your team size and current software and equipment.
Yes, Brown Walrus sends technicians on-site across Edmonton and surrounding Alberta. We handle problems like a locked account or a broken mail rule by phone or remote session, since that's faster than driving to your office. A technician comes to your site when the job needs hands on hardware, such as a failed network switch or a new computer to set up.
Managed IT is worth it for an office that depends on its systems but can't justify a full IT department. An in-house hire means a full salary for one person's skills, and nobody to call when that person is sick or away. Break-fix billing, where you pay by the hour each time something breaks, means a bad outage brings a large invoice on top of the lost work. Brown Walrus agreements run month-to-month, so you can judge the value without a long contract.
Managed IT improves cybersecurity by making security part of the daily routine, so your provider fixes weak spots before an attacker uses them. Most breaches start with something ordinary, like an old account nobody disabled or a reused password. At Brown Walrus, a dedicated Cybersecurity Analyst leads our security work, and we watch client systems continuously and respond fast. Brown Walrus has never paid a ransom.
Yes, a managed IT provider can support cloud infrastructure, and Brown Walrus runs cloud systems on Amazon Web Services (AWS) as part of managed IT. Many organizations run a mix: Microsoft 365 in the cloud, a file server or business application in the office, and backups kept offsite. We administer Microsoft 365, the servers in your office and AWS, so one team handles a problem that crosses between the cloud and your office.
A real person picks up, with genuine emergency response when it counts. We staff with spare capacity on purpose - the exact coverage is set in your agreement, tailored to what your business actually needs.
Credentials, licenses, and documentation that belong to you, always - never held over your head.
Patching, tested backups, monitoring, and security run as routine, not as emergencies.
No per-change invoices, so what's needed and what you can afford stop pulling in opposite directions.
Windows and Linux servers, VMware and Proxmox (the software servers run inside), including planned moves from one to the other, office networks, secure remote access (VPN) and firewalls, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and backups that can't be changed or deleted, to protect against ransomware, with scheduled restore tests for clients who want proof.
Security monitoring (SIEM) that flags suspicious activity in client Microsoft 365 accounts, threat alerts, MFA and passkeys rolled out across most of our managed clients, tighter control over who can get into what, and incident response that runs until recovery is confirmed.
