Support and Services

I run this blog out of my spare time. During my work hours, I’m employed by IDATA Resolutions. My colleagues are an equally talented bunch of folks, specialising in such key areas as:

• Storage
• Virtualisation
• Enterprise backup and recovery systems
• Data protection
• Archiving
• High availability

If you’re shopping around for any of the following services, you may wish to touch base with IDATA to see what they (including I) can do for you.

Services

If you’re in the Australia/New Zealand region, IDATA’s team of talented professional services engineers are more than capable at helping you out with:

• Implementation of:
  • Virtualisation roll-outs
  • Backup and recovery systems
  • Email archiving
  • Storage centralisation
• Configuration and Process Auditing:
  • Review -> interview -> analyse -> report. Regardless of whether you’re using NetWorker, NetBackup, BackupExec or any other of a multitude of other backup products, we can analyse your current data protection configuration and report on recommended changes, both to configuration and processes, to ensure you are running a backup system.
• Training:
  • NetWorker:
    • We routinely deliver a 2 day intensive NetWorker training course that is focused on ensuring staff have the right skills for their day to day jobs.
    • Customised on-site training that meets your companies goals.
  • Other products:
    • Custom, on-site training for such products as VMware, EmailXtender, SRM, etc.
• Remote services: See below.

Remote Services

If you’re not in the Australia/New Zealand region, don’t despair! There’s still plenty that IDATA can still do for you remotely. Remote services include:

• Per-incident training. (E.g., want to learn how to deploy SRM in a WebEx interactive session? Want to have someone go through configuring a new type of backup with you? Per-incident one-on-one WebEx based training lets you learn the tasks with an experienced consultant on the line watching what you’re doing.)
• Configuration and process auditing. If you want to know that your backup systems are up to scratch and need this investigated by an independent party you don’t normally engage with, IDATA can handle this for you.
• Support (see below for full details), monitoring and managed services.

Support

IDATA Resolutions is a Service Enabled Partner for EMC. We perform level one and level two product support, with the vast majority of escalations limited to actual bugs (aka “features”) in products. We have consistently maintained an “exceptional” rating (the highest) in the programme since its inception, meaning not only do our customers like our support, but so do EMC.

Here are just a few of the things provided in our standard support package:

• Support desks serviced out of Australia and New Zealand.
• Customer knowledge – while a different engineer may respond to your next inquiry than your last, we:
  • Keep, wherever possible, an affinity between staff and customers.
  • Keep records on your key site details.
  • Respond to your inquiry knowing about your site already.
• IDATA Tools Suite – a free yearly subscription to this excellent package is included in the support package.
• Notices and alerts:
  • Quarterly technical newsletters
  • Technical alert notices
  • Recommended versions
  • Weekly case reports – on request, we will provide weekly case management reports
• Testing:
  • Patch testing – we comprehensively test vendor patches in our labs before they are deployed on a customer site.
  • Lab testing and problem reproduction – we have an extensive lab environment that enables us to both recreate customer issues and test recommended solutions, allowing faster resolution of issues.
  • Beta testing – we routinely partake in a large variety of beta programmes, providing extensive feedback to our vendors when we do.
• Certified Staff:
  • All our support and technical staff have the requisite certificates, and most have been working with the products we support for 5 or more years.
• Lab environment:
  • Consultants have full access to a comprehensive range of equipment, both physical and virtualised, in order to test new releases, recreate issues, test workarounds and test solutions.
• Interactive support:
  • Phone, email, WebEx, even onsite (paid extra). We have no limit to the number of technical contacts.
• Ease of management:
  • Local license management – license management can be time consuming, so we manage usage analysis, maintenance renewals and authorisation requests, making all licenses for a site available from our secure portal.
  • FTP and Web Portal – easy access to software downloads, with a large number of versions available rather than just the most recent ones. In addition, from our Web Portal customers may check the status of cases, licenses, recommended versions, etc.
• Demonstrations:
  • IDATA periodically runs WebEx demonstration sessions on new/emerging technologies, updates to existing technologies and best practices examples of using products.

In addition to all these standard features, we have a range of options including:

• Managed services – certified engineers at either IDATA or onsite provide full management of the software/hardware environment. We support a wide variety of secure, remote access models.
• 15 x 5 support – 7am to 9pm Monday to Friday by certified engineers.
• 24 x7 support – around the clock access to IDATA certified engineers.
• iMonitor – keeping track of your backup activities daily, customers are provided a report of failures, recommendations to resolve these issues and exception reports for backups that did not start.

Contacting IDATA

If you want more information on these offerings, feel free to visit the IDATA website, email our friendly sales team for more information, or if you’re not sure, email me.