A significant loss of data could be catastrophic for your business...
Support - like computers, it comes in all shapes, sizes
and prices. The best support for you is a package
that gives you peace of mind, so when a problem
occurs, it will be rectified with the minimum
of fuss and impact on your business. Hardware
is more reliable than ever, but when a major failure occurs,
the cost of parts and the associated
labour charges can mean a repair is not economically
viable.
Manufacturers' warranties go a long way to alleviating
the hardware risk and have become fairly popular over the last few years, but they often fall short in the
expectations of customers who purchase them
as there can be significant delays in achieving
a satisfactory resolution. In addition, it is
often down to you - their customer - to prove that a hardware fault
really exists. We know, because we call upon
them on our customers' behalf from time to time!
Imagine this scenario - Your
system is intermittantly crashing and its rapidly
become much more than an irritation. The manufacturer's
'help-line' might guide you through re-installing
the operating system and all your applications
without any regard for your data ("you did take
a backup, didn't you...?") before admitting
that the motherboard, hard drive or RAM might
be faulty and despatching a courier to collect
your equipment. Several days or maybe even weeks
later when its eventually returned, you find
they've probably wiped the hard
drive anyway in order to return
it to its 'factory supplied' condition!
Of course, you may not have a hardware problem
at all, in which case your extended warranty
will be of no benefit to you. Very often, this
type of problem is associated with a recent
change or addition to your system or its configuration
- possibly caused by spyware, adware,
virus or breach of network security.
What then? Can you unravel the changes made
over the last few weeks, uninstall that patch
a colleague recommended or perhaps you need
to search hard and long on the Internet for
a further patch to fix a problem created by
an upgrade or hardware addition? Maybe a full
restore to a previous 'known working' state
is the right thing to do? "You did take a backup,
didn't you...?"
We are a technical company, and the staff here
have been supporting customers just like you
on a huge range of systems for well over a decade.
We can offer anything from telephone support
for those niggling problems, through to fully
managed proactive fault detection and resolution
for your critical system components. You just
choose the level of 'peace of mind' you want.
And with many businesses permanently connected
to the Internet via low cost ADSL, our secure
remote support and administration capability
via VPN is more affordable and secure than ever.
Above all, developing a relationship with a
support organisation you can trust to help you
when you need it is key. A Company that knows
who you are, what your Company does and how
you use your systems is much more likely to
resolve your difficulties than someone sitting
in a call-centre in India. Computer systems
cannot fix themselves (yet!) and have a habit
of failing when you need them most - usually
just as you approach that 'critical deadline'!
"...You did take a backup, didn't you?"