Centrally managed support services for distributed network systems

As Information Technology evolves, more and more businesses rely on network based distributed systems for day-to-day operations. Many of these businesses do not have the staff required to support these IT based systems, yet require near uninterrupted service. The challenge to the supplier is to provide a highly available system within a reasonable budget. This calls for a hybrid approach to traditional Support Services. Traditional Support Services have historically been provided to customers using one of the following approaches: 1. Products are returned to a central location for service 2. Service providers are dispatched to customer locations 3. Service providers are resident at customer locations. Each method carries with it an optimal solution, based on trade-offs, which takes into account the various elements of support such as: failure rate, time to repair, availability, cost and placement of spares and the logistics pipeline. Let us consider the Mail Processing business operation. As Mail Processing technology becomes more and more dependent on IT and network based systems, the need for these systems to be functioning becomes increasingly critical to daily operations. Criticality equates to availability, which is achieved through a proficient support solution. A Mail Processing operation comprised of numerous business units, linked together via a network, lends itself to a new support paradigm. Shortfalls of traditional Support solutions become apparent: Returning products to a central service location necessitates the need for each customer location to be equipped with adequately trained personnel, toolkits and spares Dispatching service providers to customer locations places the onus on the customer to identify the need for service and is logistically impractical when dealing with a Nationally distributed system Resident service providers are not cost effective when dealing with the large number of Nation-wide locations. The answer is a hybrid solution that maximises remote system monitoring and control capability, and provides dispatched service from equipment suppliers with established support infrastructures. This paper will address the approach, trade studies, design, solution, implementation and lessons learned of such a centrally managed support service programme.