Today's networks have become a mainstream business tool playing an integral role in managing your business. As your network evolves, so does the complexity. With so many factors involved, many companies are challenged finding new ways of maintaining these networks. Our maintenance programs are designed to answer the challenge of your evolving network.
NCA is committed to improving customer productivity, protecting their investment, and maximizing operational efficiency. Our Support Program is a portfolio of services to help ensure that your network operate efficiently and grow with you meeting your future requirements.
Support Services offer the following benefits that can enable network investment protection and minimize downtime for systems running mission-critical applications:
Benefits:
Rapid technical incident resolution
Access to our highly experienced technical staff
Software investment protection
Around-the-clock support, as needed
Improved network stability and efficiency
An increase on your return on investment (ROI) through the reduction of operational costs.
Reduced Cost of Network Ownership and Operations
Increase your end user satisfaction by providing rapid incident resolution
The following is a description of each the services NCA offers as part of the base Management service offering.
We will monitor your network 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, 365 days per year. Our Support Center is staffed with highly trained engineers armed with “state-of-the-art” management tools. Our constant presence allows us to identify, isolate, and potentially eliminate problems before they impact your network. NCA becomes an integral member of your team in measuring the functionality and performance of critical components, servers and software applications within your network. This service is available for Servers, Applications and Network Devices.
Our proactive monitoring detects a problem or a potential issue in your network and our team of engineer’s spring into action. One of the first orders of priority is notifying key members of your staff. Our service level managers will work with you to define the exact process in which your organization will be notified during an incident.
Our philosophy is based on one simple premise - ‘no excuse’ problem ownership. This is, often sited by our customers as the major benefit of working with NCA, our approach to solving their problems. We perform problem isolation, root cause analysis, remote problem correction, vendor dispatch and repair, and verification of all incident resolution — all while being the single point of contact to your staff.
Our technical support center provides you with technical resources and expertise to resolve network incidents and restore systems to working conditions. We attempt to resolve all incidents remotely from our support center before dispatching an engineer to your site. Our support center solves 90 percent of all incidents before a dispatch is required.
Remote Telephone Support is available through our “state-of-the-art” support center 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and 365 days a year. You select the time coverage period that best serves your organizations needs. Your calls are prioritized and follow a predefined escalation process based upon the case priority. A support center engineer will assists with troubleshooting the incident at hand. The engineer logs all actions and activity into our case management system.
Having remote connectivity allows our support center to have immediate access to your network in the case of a network incident or outage. Our engineers will use modems, VPN, or a direct frame relay connection to your network to gain access and provide a high-level of diagnostic support. In most cases, incidents can be identified and resolved through remote diagnostics, thus reducing your overall downtime.
Equipment covered under your contract is documented on a Visio Network Diagram. Document updates are performed by our staff after any changes to the network are made by your or our support center. Typically, your documentation set contains other specific information as well and is a working document that evolves throughout the entire support process. A complete documentation set will include:
Visio Network Diagram
Equipment Serial Numbers
Equipment Contract Numbers
IP Address Information
Passwords
Software Versions
Backbone Link Connectivity
Physical Connections
Note: If network Visio diagrams, equipment asset identification, hardware and software versions, and existing manufacturer contracts are not readily available to complete the initial management support documentation, it maybe necessary for NCA to conduct a network assessment in order to document and prepare the relative information to support the desired managed service. This would be an additional step in the process and will require additional setup fees.
NCA downloads and centrally stores the configuration files of your network devices, when a configuration modification occurs, or on a scheduled time interval. The centrally stored data is used for configuring replacement equipment and downloading parameters after a software upgrade. When making your own changes, you are able to forward the configuration changes to us for centralized storage and future access. Configuration Archiving provides for a centralized and organized manner of storing your device configuration files and ensures that the most current file is always backed up and available for use when required.
NCA recognizes that the key to any partnership is communication. For this reason we believe that all support service plans should include on-site face-to-face communication time regarding all support issues. Our standard meeting time intervals are quarterly and are typically held on your premise for your convenience. Meetings are intended to cover a broad range of support functions including:
Review SLA parameters and delivery
Review outages
Review reports and service trends
Discuss changes in your business support requirements
Introduce new support programs
Review your satisfaction levels
Provide feedback to all NCA groups and senior management
When an anomaly turns out to be a carrier circuit outage, our staff will contact the appropriate carrier or service provider to report the problem and open a trouble ticket. We will drive the process to resolution, notify and report the status to you on a consistent basis, and when necessary, escalate the problems within the carrier’s organization in accordance with their escalation policies. Telco Reporting eliminates potential finger pointing when outages occur, and continues to provide a single point of contact.
When an anomaly turns out to be a manufacturer device outage, our staff will contact the appropriate manufacturer to report the problem and open a trouble ticket. We will drive the process to resolution, notify and report the status to you on a consistent basis, and when necessary, escalate the problems within the manufacturer’s organization in accordance with their escalation policies. Hardware assurance provides one point of contact and NCA ensures that hardware devices are properly diagnosed prior to initiating an unnecessary hardware replacement, thereby mitigating the increase for mean time to repair (MTTR).
Advanced Replacement service is offered during normal business hours. The advanced replacement is managed by NCA in accordance with the standard support agreement that is in place between the customer and the manufacturer. Most standard advanced replacement support agreements require your staff to install and configure the replacement equipment. NCA opens a ticket case with the manufacturer, oversees the advanced replacement process, and works with the customer to ensure the replacement equipment is operationally restored and can be remotely managed.
On-site hardware replacement service is managed remotely by NCA 24/7 staff in accordance with the standard support agreement that is in place between the customer and the manufacturer. NCA opens a ticket case with the manufacturer, oversees the on-site replacement process, and works with the customer and manufacturer to ensure the replacement equipment is operationally restored and can be remotely managed.
Software support provides the most current versions of software throughout the life cycle of your equipment’s operating software. This includes bug fixes and minor release upgrades.
Remote software upgrades are provided should NCA or the equipment manufacturer recommend software upgrades to apply new features or fix problems with your existing equipment. NCA manages and oversees the remote software upgrade process in accordance to the support agreement in place between the manufacturer and the customer. Remote Software Support is built into the base service offering for upgrades not exceeding 30 minutes per network device.
Note: Feature upgrades and major release upgrades are outside the scope of this service. These software upgrades are addressed with a defined scope of work (SOW), and charged separately based on a project rate or time and expenses.
Networks are no longer static entities; changes are a necessary part of network management. Our highly skilled engineers manage and implement all or some of the desired configuration changes to your network devices. By following a change management process, modifications are made in a timely manner and comply with all necessary security measures. MAC is built into the base service offering for changes that do not exceed 30 minutes per network device.
Our client portal places your critical network related information at your fingertips. It is designed to make it easy for you to access only the relevant information pertaining to your job responsibilities - whether delivering services to thousands of customers; preparing specific client reports and recommendations for a business unit, region or service, or acting as the help desk manager for your own IT infrastructure.
Advanced Replacement service is offered during normal business hours. The advanced replacement is managed by NCA in accordance with the standard support agreement that is in place between the customer and the manufacturer. Most standard advanced replacement support agreements require your staff to install and configure the replacement equipment. NCA opens a ticket case with the manufacturer, oversees the advanced replacement process, and works with the customer to ensure the replacement equipment is operationally restored and can be remotely managed. 
