Your GIS IT Department.

Always On. Always Watching.

Leave the infrastructure to us. Black Thunder's managed services team monitors, patches, secures, and maintains your entire GIS and SAIMOS cloud environment around the clock — so your team can focus on operations, not servers.

24/7 Real-Time Monitoring

Continuous scanning of ArcGIS Server, Portal, Data Store and SAIMOS — with automated alerts on any anomaly.

Security & Feature Patching

Scheduled patch windows applied to all components — tested in staging before production deployment.

Automated Backups & Restore Points

Daily automated backups with tested restore procedures. Data is always recoverable.

Monthly Health Report

Written performance and security report delivered to your team every month — no surprises.

✽ MANAGED SERVICES

Managing Your GIS So You Can Focus on Your Mission

Running a GIS cloud environment demands constant attention - monitoring for failures, applying security patches, managing user access, maintaining backups, and responding to incidents. For most organisations, this is a full-time job that pulls valuable technical staff away from the work that actually matters.

Black Thunder's managed services team becomes your standing GIS IT department. We handle the entire infrastructure layer - from ArcGIS Server and Portal monitoring to SAIMOS analytics management - as a single, unified managed environment. One team, one contract, full accountability.

Unlike generic managed service providers, our team has deep GIS and operational intelligence expertise. We don't just keep servers running - we understand what's running on them.

✽ REAL-TIME MONITORING

Your GIS Environment Under Constant Watch

Our monitoring system provides continuous scanning of complex geospatial cloud environments - ArcGIS Server, Portal for ArcGIS, and ArcGIS Data Store. Every component is watched, every threshold is tracked, and every anomaly triggers an immediate response.

When something goes wrong at 2am on a Sunday, our team already knows about it before your users do. That is what "24/7 monitoring" actually means.

Proactive Anomaly Detection: Our monitoring identifies performance degradation and unusual patterns before they become incidents — giving us time to act before your users are affected.

Automated Incident Response: Critical alerts trigger automated responses and immediate escalation to our on-call engineers — minimising time-to-resolution on every incident.

Full Audit Trail: Every alert, action, and resolution is logged in an immutable audit trail — available for your compliance reporting and security reviews at any time.

✽ SECURITY & DATA PROTECTION

Experts Standing By.

Your Data Always Protected.

Automated daily backups with verified restore points
SSL encryption on all connections, auto-renewed
Enterprise firewall configuration and management
DDoS detection and active mitigation
Network intrusion monitoring and alerting
Antivirus and malware scanning and removal
Role-based access and user permission management
Dedicated private server environment per client
Security patch management on tested schedule
Immutable audit logs for compliance reporting

✽ FULL SCOPE

Six Areas We Manage for You

Every Black Thunder managed services engagement covers these six domains - handled by our GIS infrastructure experts, not a generic support team.

A1 Infrastructure Monitoring

Real-time visibility across your entire GIS cloud stack, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week

ArcGIS Server and Portal health checks
System resource monitoring (CPU, memory, disk)
Service availability and response time tracking
Automated alerting on threshold breaches
SAIMOS analytics layer uptime monitoring

A2 Security Management

Proactive security hardening, threat detection, and incident response across your cloud environment.

SSL certificate management and renewal
Firewall rule review and maintenance
Intrusion detection and alerting
Antivirus and malware scanning
Access log review and anomaly detection

3 Patch Management

All software components kept current - tested before deployment so updates never break your environment.

Security patch assessment and scheduling
Staging environment testing before production
ArcGIS Enterprise version management
OS-level patching (Linux and Windows)

A4 Backup & Recovery

Automated daily backups with verified restore procedures - your data is always protected and always recoverable

Daily automated backup execution
Geo-redundant backup storage
Monthly restore verification tests
Point-in-time recovery capability
Disaster recovery runbook maintained

A5 Identity & Access

Your user directory, permissions, and authentication configurations -maintained and verified to ensure the right people have the right access

LDAP and Active Directory integration
SAML and SSO configuration management
Role and group permission reviews
User provisioning and deprovisioning
Access audit log review

A6 Reporting & Advisory

Monthly written reports and proactive advisory — keeping your team informed and helping you plan ahead

Monthly infrastructure health report
Uptime and performance metrics
Security incident summary
Capacity and scaling recommendations
Quarterly strategic review call

What exactly does "managed services"mean in practice?

It means Black Thunder's team takes responsibility for the operational health of your GIS cloud infrastructure. We monitor your environment around the clock, apply patches and updates on a tested schedule, manage your backups and restore capability, handle SSL renewals and identity store configurations, and respond to any incidents. You receive a monthly written report covering everything we've done. You keep strategic control; we handle the operational execution.

Will we lose visibility or control over our own infrastructure?

No. You retain full access to all systems at all times. We work alongside your team, not instead of it. You receive monthly reports on everything we've done, and any significant change — such as a major version upgrade or architecture modification — requires your explicit approval before we proceed. Our goal is to make your team's lives easier, not to create a black box around your infrastructure.

How long does an architecture design engagement take?

This is one of our most significant differentiators. Generic managed service providers treat SAIMOS as an unknown third-party application — or simply decline to manage it. Our team has direct expertise in SAIMOS configuration, update management, GPU compute tuning, and integration with ArcGIS Portal. We monitor both systems on the same dashboard and treat them as a single unified environment. One alert, one response, one SLA — regardless of whether an issue originates in GIS or in the video analytics layer.

What happens when an incident occurs?

Our monitoring system detects anomalies automatically and triggers our on-call engineers. For critical incidents — those affecting service availability — response begins within 4 hours on Standard tier and within 1 hour on Premium tier. We diagnose, implement a fix, verify resolution, and communicate status throughout the process. You receive an incident report documenting the root cause and what was done to prevent recurrence. On Standard and Premium tiers, this process runs 24/7 — including weekends and public holidays.

Can you manage on on-premises or air-gapped environment?

Yes. We manage on-premises GIS infrastructure for several government and defence clients in the UAE. For air-gapped environments, we use approved secure access methods — or on-site visits where remote access is not permissible. Patches are delivered via verified offline media. Monitoring may require a local monitoring agent that logs to an internal system rather than a cloud-connected dashboard. We discuss the specific constraints of your environment during onboarding and design the managed service to fit your security requirements, not the other way around.

How do I get started?

The process begins with a discovery call where we assess your current environment, understand your operational requirements, and recommend the most appropriate service tier. We then conduct a brief environment audit — reviewing your current infrastructure, identifying any immediate security or configuration concerns, and producing an onboarding plan. Most clients are fully onboarded within two weeks of signing. Call +971 2 2367 933 or use the contact form below to begin.

✽ FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions

The questions we hear most from organisations evaluating managed GIS services for the first time.

Talk to an Architect

Let's Design Your Cloud Architecture

Start with a no-obligation discovery call. We'll assess your requirements and outline the right architecture for your organisation before any work begins.