renewals Archives

Centrally Manage Your Maintenance Contracts

Maintenance contracts are supposed to deliver peace of mind. Yet, when you have dozens of contracts with various vendors – all with different renewal dates, they can quickly become a headache. We work with our customers to identify what hardware, users, vendors, and services are covered, as well as those that aren’t. With this information, we put together a plan to ensure your business is protected from unexpected downtime while saving you money on unnecessary support costs.

Each year, maintenance costs swallow 15% to 25% of total enterprise IT budgets. IT staff must constantly reduce and control these expenses. This is where we can assist you with doing a full evaluation of your maintenance contracts and advise you on the most cost-effective way of getting the coverage you need to keep your business protected. This enables IT staff to contribute strategically and allocates resources toward innovation and business initiatives, and away from day-to-day maintenance.

Ways to Help You Save Time and Money

HPE Hardware Maintenance Audit Process:

Work with customer to identify Asset Inventory starting with HPE Asset Report (CAP)
Collaborate with customer and HPE to gather any missing information
Identify what services/deliverables are required to meet customer expectations
Work to consolidate multiple support agreements via co-terming or combining contracts. This makes your renewals less frequent and allows for simplified budgeting.
Terminate retired products and licensing – This eliminates wasted money for products that are no longer in production.

Software Maintenance Audit Process

A complete audit of your organization’s 3^rd party licensing may show licenses are allocated to users who no longer require the application to perform their duties. Or, your business requirements have shifted, and you may need more functionality in your existing platform. Whatever the situation, Zunesis can assist in identifying those needs and:

Work with the vendor to identify licensing entitlement, support expiration dates and service levels
Evaluate real usage and compare license utilization to entitlements
Negotiate a more cost-effective solution for your organization
Recommend alternative solutions to reach your business goals and objectives

In addition to hardware and software support management, we offer a full portfolio of IT services to ensure you are on track to meet your 2021 business objectives. Our IT assessment services can provide you with the information you need to make informed decisions on your cloud strategy, infrastructure, and much more.

IT Assessment Services:

Our IT Health Check Services compare your infrastructure design to best practices and support levels. From there, we make recommendations to improve service levels and offerings.

Reduce risk of downtime and lost productivity
Protect against ransomware and viruses
Work with a dedicated team of experienced IT professionals with a proven track record in managing industry-leading IT solutions.

IT Health Check:

An IT health check represents an essential way of evaluating your business’ inner IT workings to ensure that there are no security breaches or potential problems
Review and document your current IT environment, review current support requirements, and make recommendations for changes and updates according to best practices and supportability.

Migration Services:

Our Migration Services will bring our expertise and experience to make sure your risk is minimized and the project goes as smoothly as possible.

Dedicated Support Team with industry certifications and expertise
Dedicated Project Manager to keep your migration on schedule and keep you informed via planning, tracking, reporting, and accountability for your most important projects.

Installation Services:

Our IT Installation Services ensure that your technologies are implemented efficiently and effectively—the first time.

Our comprehensive installation capabilities include servers, storage, networking, security, cloud, and backup and disaster recovery solutions.
We have the knowledge, experience, and certifications to install and implement nearly every solution we sell.

As with any initiative, a well-defined strategy and a coordinated approach are critical. This helps to implement an effective maintenance cost reduction initiative that compliments your IT objectives.

Managing support warranties, licensing, and IT infrastructure can be overwhelming. Zunesis offers complete solutions in helping clients manage their IT infrastructure and warranties to avoid a gap in service. We provide the assurance that you are covered in case of an unexpected outage.

If you would like assistance in managing your multi-vendor support agreements, or to discuss solutions to ensure you have the most effective IT plan in place, please reach out to schedule a time to discuss how Zunesis can help your organization get your maintenance and infrastructure under control.

In today’s fast- paced environment, it is easy to forget about your hardware support and renewals. With a maintenance and support agreement in place, your organization can avoid costly outages and loss of productivity and time. This enables you to focus on more strategic business objectives.

When You Renew

Remember, when you renew, you can:

Download the latest software version and major releases for your product
Secure your system with bug fixes and patches
Manage your account and service requests
Get expert technical support — online, by phone, email and chat
Manage your licensing and assets as well as request license key assistance

HPE Renewal Cycles

Stay on top of your HPE renewal cycles and engage early with Zunesis to discuss your HPE support needs before you need them. I can assist you with the following:

Extend expiring HPE Support Solutions with Post Warranty Support Services or convert to contract. Check your warranty status here.
Renew HPE Contractual Services
Consider co-termination to consolidate expiring stand-alone support services onto an existing contract renewal for reduced admin work and continuity of support.
Upgrading or downgrading your maintenance when support needs change

Common Questions Regarding Renewals

Why is it important to renew before my maintenance expires?
A renewal prior to expiration ensures continuous maintenance services and avoids additional fees when lapsed on support.

What happens if I don’t want to renew my maintenance?
If your maintenance lapses, you will not have access to technical support or the use of upgrades, patches and a self-service knowledge base of HPE products. The downloads are inclusive of past, current and future versions of the product as well as bug fixes/patches.

Why do I have to pay back maintenance fees if I lapse on support?
During any period of maintenance lapse, HPE continues to invest in product R&D to provide upgrades/newer versions. When you reinstate your maintenance, you receive the benefit of the developments that took place during the lapsed period.

What is the return to service fee?
This is a late fee for contracts that were not renewed prior to their expiration date.

Why is it important to stay current on support? Can’t I just pay as needed for technical support?
You can never predict when you will need support. A current maintenance contract ensures that support services are available if and when you do actually need them. Remember that a current support contract not only provides you with technical support, but you also continue to receive all the patches/fixes, updates and new versions of your software product.

Can I renew just the maintenance and not support?
Your maintenance and support are combined under your contract.

Can I do a partial maintenance renewal for my licensed product?
You must purchase maintenance for all copies of each licensed product or none at all for that product. You may not cancel maintenance on a subset of licenses to reduce maintenance fees.

As the dedicated Support Specialist for Zunesis, I’d be happy to work with you to review your existing environment, and to develop a plan to ensure that you have the confidence your equipment has the protection necessary to survive in today’s demanding IT world.

When You Renew

Remember, when you renew, you can:

Download the latest software version and major releases for your product
Secure your system with bug fixes and patches
Manage your account and service requests
Get expert technical support — online, by phone, email and chat
Manage your licensing and assets as well as request license key assistance

HPE Renewal Cycles

Stay on top of your HPE renewal cycles and engage early with Zunesis to discuss your HPE support needs before you need them. I can assist you with the following:

Extend expiring HPE Support Solutions with Post Warranty Support Services or convert to contract. Check your warranty status here.
Renew HPE Contractual Services
Consider co-termination to consolidate expiring stand-alone support services onto an existing contract renewal for reduced admin work and continuity of support.
Upgrading or downgrading your maintenance when support needs change

Common Questions Regarding Renewals

Why is it important to renew before my maintenance expires?
A renewal prior to expiration ensures continuous maintenance services and avoids additional fees when lapsed on support.

What happens if I don’t want to renew my maintenance?
If your maintenance lapses, you will not have access to technical support or the use of upgrades, patches and a self-service knowledge base of HPE products. The downloads are inclusive of past, current and future versions of the product as well as bug fixes/patches.

Why do I have to pay back maintenance fees if I lapse on support?
During any period of maintenance lapse, HPE continues to invest in product R&D to provide upgrades/newer versions. When you reinstate your maintenance, you receive the benefit of the developments that took place during the lapsed period.

What is the return to service fee?
This is a late fee for contracts that were not renewed prior to their expiration date.

Why is it important to stay current on support? Can’t I just pay as needed for technical support?
You can never predict when you will need support. A current maintenance contract ensures that support services are available if and when you do actually need them. Remember that a current support contract not only provides you with technical support, but you also continue to receive all the patches/fixes, updates and new versions of your software product.

Can I renew just the maintenance and not support?
Your maintenance and support are combined under your contract.

Can I do a partial maintenance renewal for my licensed product?
You must purchase maintenance for all copies of each licensed product or none at all for that product. You may not cancel maintenance on a subset of licenses to reduce maintenance fees.

Most organizations choose basic, enhanced, or premium support for the first three years of a hardware purchase. It is standard operating procedure for many IT organizations to purchase the warranty coverage alongside new hardware. However, these services can be added at any time via custom support contracts with your vendor.

Hardware Warranty vs. Business Support

Whilst the hardware warranty may sound attractive, does it meet the needs of your business? A warranty only provides hardware support if a product or component is found to be faulty, within a certain period. There are no guaranteed response times, time-to-repair commitments, or software support.

While the warranty guarantees replacement of the faulty product or component, what will be the impact on your business when a hardware malfunction occurs? For example, if your storage is configured for high availability with RAID, will you be able to wait for a replacement disk to be shipped to you? If your business depends on the technology or you are experiencing downtime—can your business afford to wait?

In addition, when a warranty replacement part does arrive, there may be no technical expertise provided, no installation and configuration assistance, and no commitment to return the system to the level of functionality and performance your business requires.

Is that what you’re looking for? Or does your business demand something better? Business support is available to help maintain your IT infrastructure along with your hardware warranty.

HPE Pointnext services are designed to allow you to concentrate on delivering business outcomes, relieving you from having to focus on maintaining your IT infrastructure. We offer various options that allow you to choose the support that’s right for your IT, your budget, and your business.

If you’re currently relying only on hardware warranties, why not take a look at the following operational services, and see how they can make a difference to your business.

HPE Foundation Care is designed to keep your devices up and running, with HPE experts available to assist when there is a problem. Foundation Care reduces the amount of time your IT team needs to troubleshoot, monitor, and remediate your HPE servers, storage, networking products, and commercial operating systems and hypervisors, while maintaining required levels of availability within budget and resource limitations.
HPE Proactive Care allows you to focus on your business by providing proactive, higher-value support that helps improve the overall availability and stability of your IT systems. Your entire infrastructure stack is supported with services designed to reduce the number of issues you experience and rapidly resolve problems should they occur.
HPE Proactive Care Advanced (PCA) offers even more value with the addition of an assigned local Account Support Manager (ASM), providing access to specialist technical resources who can offer tailored advice and share best practices to help optimize your IT operations. Should you experience a complex incident or downtime, HPE will assign a Critical Event Manager (CEM) to manage, monitor, and coordinate the end-to-end process—providing prompt and effective engagement of additional expertise if required—to ensure the fastest possible problem resolution. With systems running smoothly, your staff can focus on new projects and strategic business initiatives.

Your devices are connected to HPE for 24×7 monitoring, providing you with a view of your IT from anywhere and on any device. Data received is scrutinized and a meaningful, tailored analysis provides proactive recommendations for firmware and patch updates. Plus when devices are connected, pre-failure alerts are sent to help you avoid outages. Calls can be automatically logged and parts dispatched to replace defective components—often before you’re even aware of the problem!

Benefits of Support Contracts

Renewing support allows your IT organization to effectively plan and budget, while ensuring your support coverage does not lapse, and helps to avoid late renewal charges. It also allows you to keep your systems up to date with current upgrades.

Another benefit is the consolidation of renewal dates. As your IT environment continues to grow, Zunesis can help make the renewal process simpler and easier by consolidating renewal contracts and expiration dates, reducing the number of contracts and administrative costs.

If you are a current Zunesis customer, once your initial support contract is due to expire, Zunesis will notify you within 30-90 days of support expiration, and, assist in helping you select a renewal contract to meet your current support requirements.