As of 1st June 2023, the price of our Lugo Support Package for new clients increased to £105 + VAT. As of 1st December 2023, the price existing clients pay will increase. We believe this increase is fair and competitive. We are grateful to partner with such wonderful organisations and are dedicated to providing you with the best possible value. The new pricing for existing clients will come into effect from your November invoice and your direct debit will be updated accordingly.
This decision was not made lightly; we understand it may be challenging for some of our clients. However, the increase in complexity of the systems we manage, the cyber security threat landscape and the services we provide have forced us to make this decision.
We are committed to an all-inclusive price to allow you to budget IT costs when you take on a new member of staff. We continually review the technology we deploy to ensure you have the right balance between productivity, security and price. This includes Microsoft 365 Business Premium combining best-in-class Microsoft 365 apps and powerful cloud services with comprehensive security that helps protect your business against advanced cyber threats.
As a Microsoft Solutions Partner for Modern Work, we have the experience and expertise to help our clients succeed with Microsoft technology. Our team is highly skilled and experienced, and we’re constantly investing in our training and development. Many of our team members have passed Microsoft exams and other industry certifications, which means they have the skills and knowledge to keep your IT systems up-to-date and secure. We regularly attend and host educational events aligned with our clients’ sectors and products. We are confident that our robust internal systems and Cyber Essentials Plus certification provide a strong foundation for protecting our data and clients. We are also committed to continuous improvement and are working towards ISO 9001 certification, further demonstrating our commitment to quality assurance.
Over the past decade, the way we work has been revolutionised by technology. We are more efficient, productive, and collaborative than ever before. During that time Lugo has continually added new features or benefits so our clients always have access to the latest technology. We have been mindful of our clients’ challenges in recent years, and we have therefore delayed increasing our pricing to reflect the complexity of the systems we now manage for you. We’ve experienced significant increases in the time it takes to manage our clients’ estates to our operational and security standards. These costs have put a strain on our bottom line, and we can no longer absorb them without raising our prices.
We held client focus groups on 15th and 16th August to discuss the service level and price increase in more detail. We invited questions from participants, and you’ll find these in the Q&A section below. Please watch the video below to hear how the threat landscape has changed and the steps we are taking to help you increase efficiency and protect your vital company data.
I hope you feel that we are there to support you when you need us. If you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to contact us. Thank you for your understanding. We appreciate your continued custom and hope we will work together for many years.
We have provided answers to questions asked by Lugo clients during our Service Level and Price Increase online meetings. Click the + to view.
Questions and Answers
Are there any Microsoft increases due in 2024 and if so are they included in the £85?
Yes and yes. In addition to Microsoft’s annual price rises, in the future, Microsoft will assess pricing in local currency as part of a regular twice-a-year cadence, taking into consideration currency fluctuations relative to the USD. This will provide increased transparency and predictability for customers globally and move to a pricing model that is most common in our industry. Read more.
Will we continue to get help for the extra things that Lugo helps with or will this be chargeable in the future, such as getting us through Cyber Essentials Plus?
Lugo will continue to support you through Cyber Essentials and Cyber Essentials Plus as part of your managed service contract. The certification cost and external audit cost will still be payable by you.
You mentioned increase in service provision. Will this apply to out of normal office hours to ease downtime in our business.
Core office hours are 9am-5pm and Lugo already operate the help desk from 8am to 6pm. Our helpdesk is underutilised at the beginning and end of the day so there’s not a big demand. We don’t envisage going much beyond 8-6 but we’re always open to suggestions. What we don’t want to do is limit the amount of support or affect the service that we offer during core business hours caused by offering a service that potentially wouldn’t be used that much out of office hours.
During January, we actually open during weekends as well to make sure we help with certain deadlines that happen at that time of the year.
In terms of solutions for BYOD approach, is this operating system agnostic – i.e. can it be used on any end user device?
If we’re talking about this in relation to a zero trust deployment, the important thing is knowing what you have and who and what has access. If you’re allowing people to have access, then you want a policy in place to ensure their devices are secure. To keep your data secure, the more you restrict access the better and the less people that access the data the better.
For example, you wouldn’t let people that you don’t know access your resources. So why would we let devices that you don’t know about access your resources as well? And then the next most important thing is to simplify and minimise that attack surface as much as possible. It’s not to say you can’t have Android and iOS and all these different operating systems accessing your environment, but it’s important to know what you have and what you want to allow access. The more you open that up, ultimately the more attack surfaces, the more vulnerable you are.
With Microsoft 365 Business Premium we can use their InTune platform and to set up policies for you. The most important thing is knowing what you have and then setting the policies appropriately.
Roughly what is the split in the price per user for products and service?
We don’t have an exact breakdown on a per user basis as some elements are a per organisation cost. We can provide a breakdown for your organisation on request.
The amount of time it takes to manage the products and services included in the package has increased. This is due to the increasing complexity of the systems we are managing, as well as the increasing number of cyber threats.
We have traditionally only increased our prices when the cost of the products and services included in the package have increased. However, we have now realised that we need to increase our prices based on the amount of time it takes to manage the package.
The average ticket used to take 15 minutes per user per month, but now it takes closer to an hour per user per month. This is because of the increased security requirements and could also be related to hybrid working.
You mentioned existing client pricing would align with new client pricing over the next 18 months to 36 months. How much do you anticipate existing clients will pay over the next 2-3 years?
It’s impossible for us to know what future inflation rates will be and how the cyber landscape will evolve. We will continue to evaluate our layered cyber security products and services to ensure they remain best in class and provide value for money. We are also looking for a product that will help our clients achieve zero trust in a more timely manner.
At this point in time, we envisage our annual price increases for existing clients will be somewhere around £15 user/month each year. If the global trend is to continue, IT spend will stay above inflation.
