LAYERED-THINKING HELPS JUSTIFY NETWORK UPTIME ASSURANCE

Aka – Technology Maintenance Agreements

As network design and engineering professionals, it is peculiar to find ourselves in the role of insurance salespeople. But that’s where we seem to find ourselves now, every day.

A large part of our responsibility to our customers is to help them keep their networks, and the applications that ride them, up and running optimally. This job can be relatively easy or horribly complex, depending on a lot of factors. One of the most critical is a customer’s decision to invest in, or not invest in, UPTIME INSURANCE in the form of Technology Maintenance. I refer to this purchase as an investment in that, if managed correctly, it will always yield a return.

Many small-to-midsize businesses have trouble justifying annual costs for technology maintenance. When an entity chooses to not renew their maintenance agreements for software updates and failed equipment replacement, they put themselves at risk and they make the job of keeping the network up and optimized extremely difficult.

A great analogy to use is that of your car. Most of us don’t think twice about taking our cars in for oil changes and regular maintenance. Why? Because if we don’t we know there will be a much larger price to pay if the engine in our car fails.

A similar case can be made for your voice and data networking equipment, it’s just that it’s harder to quantify. The cost for rebuilding the engine in your car is very real and easy to consider. The loss of your network or your phone system for a day or 2 is not.

For many customers, as time marches on and their equipment keeps functioning, they lose perspective of their risks. Many customers will buy maintenance for the first few years of ownership. And then after making the investment for a few years without any incident to re-enforce the justification, they stop. “My system has been running for 3 years without fail. Why am I buying maintenance again?”

This logic is completely upside down. Using a layered-thinking approach can help justify the investment in technology maintenance. The longer your voice and data networking equipment runs without failure, the greater the chance for failure in the coming year. Combine this fact with the increasing risks from environmental factors, most notably inconsistent power which can wreak havoc on sensitive computer equipment. Add these factors to the relatively low costs for annual maintenance on most equipment. And then consider the inefficiencies of not having the most current releases of operating firmware on your networking equipment.

How do we make the claim that a Technology Maintenance purchase is an investment?

To my way of thinking, your Technology Maintenance purchase should always be coupled with a periodic (quarterly) review of your equipment “state” and performance. At Starnet Data, we also like to include periodic user and administrator training to create a more comprehensive Technology Maintenance option.

Most technology suppliers come out with 2-3 software updates per year. These software updates typically include bug fixes, performance enhancements and new features. Usually a quick review of the “Release Notes” on a new release can identify what benefits can be gained by applying.

For a nominal sum for most technologies, customers can provide their network a periodic boost in performance while also having protection against hardware failing.

Starnet Data is aware that many customers today need to cut costs. But for most enterprises today, the network is the heart of the business. When the network, or a component within, is not running optimally, productivity suffers. When a component is down the impact is significant.

If it’s hard to make the business case in your mind to purchase NETWORK UPTIME INSURANCE, please contact us. We have some programs we can offer to minimize the cost and cash-flow impact of protecting the heart of your business, providing you access to all software updates and onsite replacements within 4-24 hours, while including periodic network tune-ups.

We're Looking for Some Good Vendors

In a previous writing, I shared my thoughts on how customers might make their technology selections. My premise was that customers should consider who they are purchasing the technology from and if that provider can insure that 6-12 months after installation they were receiving the return on the investment they were expecting.

In the same light, I thought I would write about how Starnet Data, as a Value Added Reseller, chooses the Vendor it decides to invest time and effort in, and whose technologies to recommend to our customers.

The decision criteria are not dissimilar.

For Starnet Data, the expectation of local ongoing engineering support is of utmost importance. This links directly to our Value Proposition to customers.

There are numerous products in the industry that we are consistently being introduced to. Many appear to have great feature sets and competitive price points. But, if we have no local engineering personnel from the vendor to interface with our engineering team, we are likely not interested.

Our value proposition is tied directly to our ability to maximize our customer’s return on their investments with us. As such, we must base our product selection criteria on vendor’s ability to provide what we need to enable us to deliver on that proposition.

To us a good vendor is one who not only offers strong price/performance value. But also one who has local engineers that can develop strong working relationships with ours.

One of the biggest detractors from Starnet Data considering a new vendor is one who looks for us to invest large sums of money on equipment and training at the onset of the relationship. I feel this is inappropriate. My reasons; the equipment becomes obsolete, the vendor changes reseller programs, the local sales and engineering teams change. This inevitably happens and in many cases the reasons for us wanting to partner in the first place are no longer in play.

The request from a vendor of Starnet Data to invest money upfront in the relationship is not the example of partnership we seek.

We want our vendors to recognize that we have been in business for 21 years and that our time is valuable. And that if we are willing to invest our time, should the prospective vendor really value the potential partnership with Starnet, that they should make their products and training available to us without charge.

I can understand the vendor argument that they do not want to waste time with partners who are just “kicking tires” and who have a very small probability of being successful with the product. And as such are looking for an investment to prove sincerity.

But, this test should be applied on a case-to-case basis. As for Starnet Data, because of our track record and successful partnership with our current vendors, our commitment to customer service by maintaining a large staff of competent and skillful engineers, and by our ability to identify numerous satisfied customers, we should be held to a different standard.

A vendor who cannot see our position is likely not one we would care to partner with as their focus would appear to be on short-term revenue opportunity as opposed to long-term reseller and end-user satisfaction. And, in direct contrast to our “value-proposition”.

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