What are the benefits to a Maintenance
Agreement?
- Total Immersion Support Maintenance Agreements are designed to ensure that your
systems will continue to perform their functions at a near flawless level.
We achieve this through providing such services as wellness checkups, patch maintenance,
version upgrades, diagnostic support and reactive support.
What is covered in a Maintenance Agreement?
- As for the specific devices, that depends on what you have and
choose to cover. To view the devices that are able to covered, please use
the Online Pricing Tool to generate a contract.
If I have an IT staff, why would I
need a Maintenance Agreement?
- We have priced our Maintenance Agreements in such a way that they are substantially
discounted for those organizations that have an adequate number of properly trained
full-time systems support professionals on staff. This changes our role from
that of an outsourced IT provider to that of an upper level on your escalation matrix.
With over 10 years of experience supporting these platforms and exceptional access
to resources both internally and through our vendors, we can ensure that your staff
will never come up short. Some organizations also choose to selectively outsource
a limited number of the components of their network that fall outside of their MIS's
core competencies. Other companies prefer to maintain a backup for their MIS
to provide additional support, or if he or she wishes to take a vacation.
What services are provided under
a Maintenance Agreement?
- Our maintenance agreements are designed to maintain the system in a proper
functioning state. This includes a great deal of proactive maintenance including
regular systems wellness checkups, patch maintenance and even version upgrades.
This is of course in addition to any appropriate reactive support if the need should
arise. We also will regularly provide additional services that are not listed
in the contract such as the occasional support of non-covered items, MIS training
and assistance with the future direction of the client's systems. Nearly all
of our clients have had some level of support from most if not all of our other
divisions in an effort to provide the most complete support practicable. It
is our mission to ensure that our clients continue to view having a Maintenance
Agreement through us as an excellent and cost-effective choice for their company.
How would the different payment options
affect me?
- There are two major differences in the payment options. The first is that
the Agreements are priced based on a quarterly payment structure. In order
to satisfy the differing cash management needs of our clients, we also provide options
to pay annually or monthly. The annual payment option provides a 10%
discount over our base prices, where a monthly payment option costs an additional
10%. The other primary difference is that we do not perform version upgrades
of systems within the first six months of a contract unless it is on an annual payment
plan. As an annual contract is only cancelable after the first six months,
we have a broader scope of services that we are able provide while still ensuring
profitability in the Agreement. It is worth noting, however, that by the end
of twelve months, both types of contracts will have provided an identical level
of services.
What can I expect from a quality of
service?
- All Total Immersion strive to provide the highest quality of service possible.
Our Atlanta call center is staffed with individuals who all have at least four years
of systems support experience, and are able to provide the quickest path to resolving
your issues. The vast majority of inbound calls are handled on the spot and
those that are made at a particularly busy time are almost always responded to within
10 minutes. If you are local to Atlanta, and we are not able to solve the
problem over the phone, we will immediately dispatch one of our consultants out
to your site to get the situation remedied. It is important to remember
that we view these Agreements as a cancelable annuity and are extremely motivated
to ensure that you continue to place your business with us.
What is the TIS RemoteKit?
- The TIS RemoteKit is a collection of hardware that is designed to allow us
to have complete control of the systems that are attached to it. This can
include all of the devices that are attached to a single existing KVM switch in
addition to a router or switch. It also provides a dialup method of access
in the event of an Internet router or Firewall failure. The system is the
property of the client and is thereby able to be used by the company's
IT staff once they have signed a waiver stating that there could be an increase
in response times if the device becomes improperly configured or inoperable.
If I have similar equipment to the
RemoteKit, do I have to buy it anyway?
- If you already have a TCP/IP KVM device that also allows for dial-in access in addition
to having an approved method for remotely administering your routers, you can request
a waiver that will allow you to forgo that cost. Although we try to be extremely
flexible about this issue, we must balance that desire with the need to guarantee
the time it takes us to repair any problems that may come up.
What steps do you take to ensure that
my systems are handled safely?
- As a services company, the most important step we can take to ensuring that your
systems are always treated with the highest level respect and professionalism is
to only employ individuals of exceptional integrity. We have always understood
that a service company can never grow beyond its reputation, and we guard the integrity
of ours vigilantly. In addition, we generate a login and password that is
unique to your system and will request that full auditing is turned on your
system. We will never ask you for the administrator passwords or any other
passwords in your organization. As an added precaution, also we monitor and
record all of the remote service that we perform on your systems in an effort to
both ensure the quality of service and to verify the extent of the work that was
provided.
Can I cancel the agreement?
- All Total Immersion Support Maintenance Agreements provide an easy method of canceling
without undue penalty if that is what is desired. The cancellation and early termination
clause can be viewed by downloading a contract here
. We believe that all of our relationships are predicated on our provided
a high quality of service, and if you feel that we do not live up to the agreement
we do not believe that you should be bound to a service that you obviously feel
you did not adequately receive.
How are the agreements priced?
- On a regular basis, we examine the amount of work that we provide to our clients
and generate a set of actuarial tables that illustrate what the cost of servicing
each type of device has been. We use those prices to generate a relatively
complicated formula that takes into account many external variables such as the
size of the system, the quantity of MIS's dedicated to supporting that system and
the volume of devices that are covered. This then produces a rate that can
best be identified by using the Online Pricing Tool
. It is worth noting that every year we have been able to provide more service
per hour, and over the last ten years have never had a rate increase, and in fact
have had our rates drop by nearly 50%
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