IT manager
Strategy, roadmap, budgeting, vendor and licence management, and a written report to your executive every month.
An IT department you don’t have to hire.
Ocalt takes over your entire IT function - strategy, infrastructure, security, support and development - for one fixed monthly fee. When something physical breaks, an engineer is at your branch within 24 hours.
R30 000
per branch, per month. Excluding VAT.
A full in-house IT department
Monthly cost to companyIT managerR65 000
Cloud architectR80 000
DevOps engineerR70 000
Cybersecurity specialistR68 000
Software engineerR60 000
Database engineerR58 000
Infrastructure engineerR55 000
Technical project managerR55 000
Data engineerR52 000
Network engineerR48 000
Frontend engineerR45 000
Support technicians, twoR44 000
QA engineerR42 000
Systems administratorR38 000
Fourteen roles, salaries alone
R780 000
The same fourteen disciplines, from Ocalt
R30 000
Indicative market cost to company for a full in-house team in South Africa, before recruitment, leave cover, training, tooling and workspace. Most companies never staff all fourteen roles - which is the problem this service exists to solve.
R30 000
Per branch, per month. The price does not move because a server failed on a Friday.
24 hours
Maximum time to get a qualified engineer physically on site for hardware work.
15 minutes
First response on a critical incident during contracted hours.
14
Disciplines covered under one agreement, with no headcount to manage.
What the fee covers
Leadership
Infrastructure
Infrastructure
Platform
Development
Development
Development
Security
Support
Support
Cloud
Data
Quality
Delivery
Every role a company normally hires for.
These are the jobs an internal IT department is built from. You get the function of each one, sized to your environment, without carrying the salary, the recruitment, the leave cover or the idle capacity.
Systems and infrastructure engineer
Servers, storage, virtualisation, patching, monitoring and uptime across on-premises and hosted environments.
Network engineer
LAN and WAN, switching, routing, firewalls, VPNs, Wi-Fi coverage, ISP escalation and connectivity failover.
DevOps and platform engineer
Build and deployment pipelines, infrastructure as code, containers, release automation and environment management.
Software engineer
Internal tools, line-of-business applications, integrations and ongoing maintenance of what you already run.
Backend and database engineer
Schema design, query optimisation, backups, restore testing, data integrity and internal API development.
Frontend engineer
Internal portals, dashboards, customer-facing interfaces and the usability of the systems your staff live in.
Cybersecurity specialist
Access control, endpoint protection, vulnerability management, phishing defence, incident response and audit support.
Service desk technician
Day-to-day user support by phone, email and WhatsApp. Password resets, device faults, printers, the lot.
Systems administrator
User accounts, permissions, mailboxes, identity, device enrolment, and clean onboarding and offboarding of staff.
Cloud architect
Architecture and migration across AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, local hosting or hybrid, with monthly cost control.
Data engineer and analyst
Data pipelines, reporting, dashboards and the business intelligence your managers ask finance for every month.
QA and test engineer
Test coverage, automated regression, release validation and change control before anything reaches production.
Technical project manager
Scoping, scheduling and delivery of IT projects, with a single point of accountability you can phone.
Depth in each discipline scales with your environment. A twelve-person practice does not need a full-time cloud architect, and we will not pretend otherwise - but when the question comes up, an architect answers it.
Hardware
Remote support stops where the cable starts.
A failed switch, a dead workstation, a server that will not post, a new branch to cable - none of it is fixed over a video call. So we send a person.
- A qualified engineer on site within 24 hours of a confirmed hardware fault, anywhere we have agreed to serve.
- Scheduled preventative visits, so faults are found before they stop work.
- New-site setup: cabling, switching, access points, workstations, printers and point-of-sale.
- Hardware procurement handled on your behalf, quoted at supplier cost with no mark-up.
- Decommissioning, secure data destruction and asset disposal with a written certificate.
Travel inside the agreed service area is included in the monthly fee. Sites outside it are quoted before any visit, never after. Replacement parts and new equipment are billed at cost.
The arithmetic
What cover actually costs.
A single branch, compared honestly. The middle column is a realistic small in-house team - not the full fourteen - because that is what most companies actually run.
| Capability | Typical in-house team | Ocalt |
|---|---|---|
| IT leadership and strategy | R65 000 | Included |
| Systems administration | R38 000 | Included |
| End-user support, two technicians | R44 000 | Included |
| Network engineering | Not staffed | Included |
| Cybersecurity | Not staffed | Included |
| Cloud and infrastructure engineering | Not staffed | Included |
| Software development and integration | Outsourced ad hoc | Included |
| Recruitment, leave cover, training | ≈ R18 000 | Not your problem |
| Management tooling and workspace | ≈ R14 000 | Included |
| Monthly total | ≈ R179 000 | R30 000 |
| Difference | ≈ R149 000 per month, with six more disciplines covered | |
Where in-house still wins
Four employees give you four people in the building all day. If your operation genuinely needs hands on site every hour of every shift, say so at the assessment and we will tell you straight - sometimes the right answer is a smaller internal team with Ocalt behind it, and we will structure it that way.
Project work
And the engineering we have always done.
Ocalt is an engineering company first. These are scoped as standalone projects, or folded into an IT department agreement when the work is ongoing.
Custom AI systems
Private assistants, internal knowledge systems and process automation. Online, offline or hybrid, scoped to your exact requirements.
Software and applications
Native or web, for any platform. iOS, Android, Linux, macOS, Windows and embedded.
Server infrastructure
Production-grade hosting and deployment for organisations of any size, including a business running from a single workstation.
Digital architecture
Custom systems for the places where off-the-shelf software does not fit. We design, build and maintain them.
Systems integration
Existing tools, databases, APIs and hardware connected into one coherent system that reports properly.
Research and prototyping
Proof of concept, feasibility studies and rapid prototyping. We assess, validate, then build.
How it works
From first message to running department.
The offer is on this page and the price list is published. If it fits, the route from here is short.
Tell us about your environment
Seven short questions on our site. Branches, staff, what you run and what is breaking. Five minutes, and you see an indicative price as you go.
We draft the agreement
Your answers go straight into an agreement: the branches, cover and add-ons you chose, priced exactly per the published list, with your company's details and service area filled in.
Agreement and first payment
You sign the agreement, the first month's fee is settled, and the start date is booked. Everything from here is covered by the fee.
We take over
A structured 21-day handover: full audit of your environment, documentation, credentials, monitoring, backups and asset register. Your existing staff are briefed, not blindsided.
We run it
Daily support, monthly reporting, quarterly reviews. Every system, document and line of code we build for you belongs to you.
Price it, then decide.
Eight short steps and you have an indicative monthly figure for your own environment, calculated from the published price list. If it works for you, tell us and we will confirm it in writing.
Rather talk it through first? Email info@ocalt.com or message us on WhatsApp. We reply within one business day.