The top tier support is often referred to a fully managed service. This is a much broader offering where the support company effectively acts as an outsourced IT department. As the name suggests there is an element of someone acting as your IT manager here. The support provider will invest some time and effort in taking care of your IT, for example: – thinking about capacity, looking for recurring problems, progressively removing weak points. If there is a problem they will typically take care of it, replacing hardware, software as appropriate with the minimum of input and in the quickest way possible.
A managed service is the best option if you don’t want to be involved in managing your IT, want the minimum downtime and the fastest response. It does require a bigger budget and high degree of trust though
The time it takes a support company to respond to issues is obviously important. Some customers may be happy to wait for a couple of hours for someone to call back and others want a response within ten minutes.
The SLA offers a guaranteed level of server and usually states that problems are responded to within a time window. Support providers may be able to demonstrate their typical response times which gives a good idea as to the quality of service.
Support providers take different approaches to application support. Most will support mainstream applications (such as Microsoft Office or Sage) but less common programs may be unsupported. Some support companies will pass the problem to the software provider and liaise with them on their customers’ behalf.
A typical support service will only cover the labour part of maintaining the computer network. It is possible to extend the support contract to include a hardware warranty so replacing broken parts and equipment will be free. Alternatively the customer can ensure that all equipment is kept under the manufacturer’s warranty and that the support company is aware of this.
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