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Maintenance Contracts?
- Thread starter tsnww
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We were using a company called UAC. Once our contract with UAC expired, we did an RFP and had UAC and Avaya bid it. I think Avaya was trying to squeeze UAC out of the picture, and they came back extremely competitive.
We are back with UAC, but I think the next time, we will let them bid again and we will see what happens.
We are back with UAC, but I think the next time, we will let them bid again and we will see what happens.
Tsnww,
I was a long time AT&T/Lucent/Avaya customer, then an Avaya Employee and now I work for an Avaya Business Partner.
As a customer I was responsible for a bunch of Definitys of all different sizes in multiple states, and all but 4 of my switches had Lucent/Avaya maintenance, the other 4 were through a 3rd party. One of the switches never had an issue, the other three had many more problems than any of the ones under maintenance. Although most of the issues were quite minor and required little more than a busyout and release type fix, many times they caused outages for trunks and stations. If these switches had had “real” maintenance and reported alarms to Denver, I most likely would never have known there was an issue, and service would not have been disrupted.
As an Avaya Employee, I worked with a number of customers that had terminated there maintenance with Avaya and gone to a 3rd party. Beyond the same type of issues that I experienced as a customer, the biggest problem that they reported was that the 3rd party maintenance contractors could not handle anything much beyond replacing boards, and when there was a serious system issue (as rare as they are) Avaya would have to be called on to fix the problem. Although the cost of Avaya’s involvement was covered by the 3rd party, Avaya’s response time and dedication to fixing these problems was real bad. I believe that this is related to two issues; the first being the fact that the Techs know that the 3rd parties are taking away there jobs, and the second being Avaya is losing money to these maintenance contractors, and therefore place there issues at the bottom of the priority list.
In my personal opinion, if you just want to save money, go with the one of the lowest level of Maintenance from Avaya like “Parts plus remote support” or just “remote support.” With either of these you will get the main benefit of Maintenance which is the remote diagnostics and repair. These options are most likely more expensive than the 3rd party offers, but less than traditional maintenance, and I believe that it is well worth it.
Just my two cents worth!
I hope this helps!
IPSI
I was a long time AT&T/Lucent/Avaya customer, then an Avaya Employee and now I work for an Avaya Business Partner.
As a customer I was responsible for a bunch of Definitys of all different sizes in multiple states, and all but 4 of my switches had Lucent/Avaya maintenance, the other 4 were through a 3rd party. One of the switches never had an issue, the other three had many more problems than any of the ones under maintenance. Although most of the issues were quite minor and required little more than a busyout and release type fix, many times they caused outages for trunks and stations. If these switches had had “real” maintenance and reported alarms to Denver, I most likely would never have known there was an issue, and service would not have been disrupted.
As an Avaya Employee, I worked with a number of customers that had terminated there maintenance with Avaya and gone to a 3rd party. Beyond the same type of issues that I experienced as a customer, the biggest problem that they reported was that the 3rd party maintenance contractors could not handle anything much beyond replacing boards, and when there was a serious system issue (as rare as they are) Avaya would have to be called on to fix the problem. Although the cost of Avaya’s involvement was covered by the 3rd party, Avaya’s response time and dedication to fixing these problems was real bad. I believe that this is related to two issues; the first being the fact that the Techs know that the 3rd parties are taking away there jobs, and the second being Avaya is losing money to these maintenance contractors, and therefore place there issues at the bottom of the priority list.
In my personal opinion, if you just want to save money, go with the one of the lowest level of Maintenance from Avaya like “Parts plus remote support” or just “remote support.” With either of these you will get the main benefit of Maintenance which is the remote diagnostics and repair. These options are most likely more expensive than the 3rd party offers, but less than traditional maintenance, and I believe that it is well worth it.
Just my two cents worth!
I hope this helps!
IPSI
Many of the other providers of maintenance actually still use Avaya techs to go out. Even if they have their own techs they sometimes still send out a Avaya tech if they can't fix as mentioned above. It is Avayas policy to service customers without a maint contract after everything is finished for their customers with maintenan Denver will give u a committ of "next day by five pm, or 8 hours after 5pm if u want to pay the thousands of $ to have a tech out after hours without maintenance. This is contrast to if u have Avaya maintenance they guarantee a tech out in 2 to 4 hours as long as u aren't in a remote place. Now just because they say a tech will be out doesn't mean that it will be fixed. That depends on if the dispatching tech sends out the right parts and if the parts are available.
As far as the remote maintenance monitoring, Avaya is not the only company that does it, but they are the most experienced. Trunk boards rarely go bad, usually the problem with trunks in the vendor, and Avaya does not monitor vendor problems unless u pay extra for it.
I am advising to go with either party, only wanted to make clearer the complications of the decision.
As far as the remote maintenance monitoring, Avaya is not the only company that does it, but they are the most experienced. Trunk boards rarely go bad, usually the problem with trunks in the vendor, and Avaya does not monitor vendor problems unless u pay extra for it.
I am advising to go with either party, only wanted to make clearer the complications of the decision.
You might want to try one of Avaya's business partners for your next contract. You can still have all the benefits of an Avaya contract, but the cost should be lower. Also consider if you want phone replacement coverage or not. We went from Avaya to Expanets, then Avaya bought out Expanets, so by default we're right back with Avaya for now. We still have a four year contract with lower rates and got rid of our phone replacement coverage.
I work for a Business Partner and we have over 25 definity's being monitored along with almost as many intuity's. We have software that is monitoring these systems 24/7/365. Our software is smart enought to dial back into theses systems when they send me an alarm, and diagnose 99% of the problems. This is exactly what Denver does with their maintenance customers. I have these alarms page,email,text message my tech's for immediate response, when the software cannot fix the problem. Now I know that we are much cheaper than many other maintenance providers, doing the exact same thing. I have worked for Avaya for over 5 years before moving into a Business Partner status, and offer the same service.
Shop around and see who can service you and what there SLA are?
Shop around and see who can service you and what there SLA are?
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