How Cisco SMARTnet Beats Warranties Every time – Part 1

This is the reason why Cisco’s SMARTnet is a much more beneficial choice for your enterprises and small to medium sized businesses, rather than simple product warranties which will only safeguard you against manufacturing faults. With the deployment of Cisco SMARTnet, enterprises and businesses can guarantee defense from a diverse variety of problems and gain the peace of mind that they are covered long after warranty periods have expired. For the intelligent business owner, getting Cisco SMARTnet is the best decision he will make after buying Cisco products.

Cisco SMARTnet is not just simply smart for the end user, but are also “smart” in themselves as well. Automated software-empowered abilities gather network and device analytical information, examine it, and relate it to Cisco’s profound knowledge base to provide actionable understanding and perception of the network. This can be anything from evaluating the condition of the corporate network and connected devices, enhancing corporate network performance, enhancing working productivity, and streamlining and automating continuing processes.

Cisco SMARTnet Allows You to Always Be Prepared

The regular product warranties for Cisco products normally will expire after a limited time period of 60-90 days and provide you with coverage for manufacturing defects and hardware failures. While these warranties are sufficient for this type of protection, they are present to promise the user that the Cisco product which a person or business has purchased will work as advertised. After that, it’s completely up to the end user to sort out all of his/her requirements from upkeep and repairs to assimilation with current systems infrastructure.

This can be very tough for enterprises that utilize information technology to assist in their business, but are not really technology gurus themselves. There is a reason why most of the trouble calls to the Cisco technical assistance center (TAC) are related to people issues. It is hard fact of life that in any situation of this sort, people will always be prone to make errors and will not have the requisite know how to fix them. Via the use of Cisco SMARTnet, you can resolve these problems whenever and wherever they happen, but also take solid steps to preempt them from happening in the first place. This is where Cisco SMARTnet will be an awesome value addition for your enterprise.

 To speak to our Cisco SMARTnet Specialists, please click here.

Four Valued Business Outcomes of Using Cisco SMARTnet

Having such a great return on your investment, there are clearly a number of important areas that will enable end users to get the most value out of their Cisco hardware and products investment. Given here are a few of the top advantages of Cisco SMARTnet services:

1. Minimizing downtime. There is possibly no greater value driver for companies than Cisco SMARTnet’s capability to reduce or even eradicate possible downtimes. Corporate network outages cost enterprises at least 1 percent of their yearly revenue—money lost that can be avoided with the use of SMARtnet services.

With access to Cisco-qualified engineers and the latest in software developments, Cisco SMARTnet services are targeted at assisting companies resolve corporate network issues when they happen or by proactively circumventing them. For example, the upgrades and updates to Cisco’s operating system (OS) that Cisco SMARTnet services provide will make sure that whenever a new piece of hardware is incorporated into the corporate assets system, your legacy technology will be aligned to work with it.

For the typical Fortune 500 enterprise, one hour of outages is equivalent to more than $200,000 going down the drain in lost annual revenues. Even if your company isn’t a member of our great nation’s elite, dodging an hour of downtime annually is more than enough to cover the cost of a Cisco SMARTnet contract.

2. Staff Productivity. Your staff are your most valuable resource, and any efforts to eradicate added tasks from their amount of work will be an enormous money and time saver.

Resolving technology issues, particularly for those not precisely trained with those technologies, can be a time-wasting process. With Cisco SMARTnet, your IT staff can be concentrated on projects vital to you and leave resolving errors and reacting to network downtimes to Cisco-qualified engineers who will be available to you on call 24 hours a day.

3. Safeguarding against human error. Nearly 80% of the calls made to the Cisco Technical Assistance Center (TAC) have nothing to do with Cisco hardware issues. They are issues initiated by the people working with the equipment, either by configuration mistakes, incorrect deployments, or other human-associated errors.

Enterprises with Cisco SMARTnet Services contracts can get assistance with these errors round the clock; whereas companies having only product warranties will not get this advantage. If the enterprise does not have access to Cisco SMARTnet Services, it would be charged for calling the Technical Assistance Center (Cisco TAC) to get assistance in resolving their issue.

4. Cisco SMARTnet Smart Call Home Feature. A wide range of Cisco products include Smart Call Home, a feature which is available with Cisco SMARTnet Services. Smart Call Home-empowered hardware performs proactive diagnostics on internal components to supply IT teams with real-time warnings and remedial advice whenever a fault is detected.

The value addition of Cisco SMARTnet service is self-explanatory for your enterprise. With products which proactively search for errors, the risk of the product not working or your corporate network going down is vastly decreased. As already deliberated upon above, corporate network downtime is a big cost center for enterprises, so anything that can be done to maintain and keep your corporate network running in optimal shape will be invaluable for your company in the long run.

To speak to our Cisco SMARTnet Specialists, please click here.

Safeguarding Your Business via Cisco SMARTnet Service Contracts

These are perplexing financial times for small and some medium sized businesses. You require the newest technology to expand your business. But you also require complete peace of mind being aware that you’ll obtain the most ROIs from your corporate technology investments.

You perhaps are under the impression that a simple product warranty will give that defense in case anything goes wrong with your network hardware, maybe a switch or a router. Not necessarily!

A product warranty is not the same as or equivalent to technical support. Most warranties only promise against a faulty product and will give you very limited support.

If you would like to better safeguard your enterprise against losses caused by network outages and to enhance your business efficiency and raise staff output, you must consider purchasing a Cisco SMARTnet service contract. A service plan gives you three important benefits as compared to a regular product warranty—advanced hardware replacement, software updates, and Cisco technical support via Cisco’s TAC (Techincal Assistance Center).

Certain service plans, like Cisco Small Business Support Service, provide you with next-business-day hardware replacement. This makes sure that your company stays up and running with a minimum possible amount of corporate network downtime. In contrast, warranties normally necessitate you to first return the defective pieces of hardware to the manufacturer prior to you receiving any replacement products.

With a Cisco service contract, you get ongoing major/minor release upgrades, making sure that your device is always having the latest Cisco software. This assist you to safeguard the functional health of your corporate network.

A service plan also gives you more widespread support. Most warranties don’t give you support and some will only give you very limited support for a very limited period of time. A service plan on the other hand will give you support for an extended period of time and comprises a support level which goes way beyond basic installation, analysis, and troubleshooting. The Cisco Small Business Support Service gives you 3 years of support and access to technical experts highly trained by Cisco on resolving small and medium size business network problems and device-level issues.

An extra advantage to buying a SMARTnet service contract is the human element. Via Small Business Support Service, you get access to a local Cisco reseller who is sponsored by Cisco employed on your behalf as a reliable consultant. This provides you a single point of contact (POC) for execution and problem resolution.

If you believe that a Cisco SMARTnet service contract is not appropriate for your small business budget, please consider this: A squandered client call or buying activity could cost you nearly as much—or even more—than a Cisco SMARTnet service plan. Also keep in mind that every hour of network outages and downtime will surely cost your business much needed additional profits and revenue and hurt your company’s reputation.

A Cisco SMARTnet service contract can safeguard both your company and your technology investment. Now that is what I call complete peace of mind!

To speak to our Cisco SMARTnet Specialists, please click here.

How to Get the Most out of Your SMARTnet Plan

A Cisco SMARTnet service plan is much more than a regular product warranty. Your Cisco SMARTnet service contract goes above and beyond a regular product warranty by giving you much needed access to a wide range of skilled Cisco technical assistance resources and online self-help tools to assist you in quickly resolving network issues. Cisco Certified engineers can give you advanced installation and deployment support over the telephone or web chat—or both—to get your corporate network up and running in the minimum possible timeframe. Cisco SMARTnet contracts also give you access to ongoing software updates so that you always possess the newest and most dependable software versions available.

Here are some tips to get the most out of your Cisco SMARTnet service contract:

1. Register your Cisco SMARTnet service contract immediately. Before you are able to begin use of your service contract, you must register it. Make sure to have any registration code numbers or passwords that you have been given before you initialize the registration procedure. Once your SMARTnet service contract has been registered, you will be able to get technical support whenever you require it.

2. Join Cisco’s online support community. Go to the Cisco’s online support communities on a regular basis to keep yourself abreast and on top of the latest industry trends and expert advice. You will often be able to fix basic troubleshooting and installation problems by asking the Cisco experts directly.For example, the Cisco Small Business Support Community encourages collaboration and sharing best practices between Cisco experts, partners, and clients who are in the know regarding small business networking issues. Simply post your query on the forum; most of the support problems are fixed the same day.  Also, you can open a new ticket request—and check the status of current service requests—by using the service request tool online.

3. Reach out to Cisco’s live technical assistance. In case you require live technical assistance from Cisco, highly trained Cisco engineers are ready to help you get up and running in the shortest possible time. They can assist you in resolving networking, troubleshooting, and installation problems. Please make sure that you have your service contract information ready before contacting Cisco.

4. Ask for remote control. In case an issue or installation is taking too much time to resolve, you can request a Cisco support engineer to take over by allowing them remote control of your device. With your consent—and while you are watching—the Cisco engineer usually will quickly remediate the issue by checking the device settings and configuration. You can also request the Cisco engineer to explain to you what he’s doing as he goes along so you can understand for future reference.

 To speak to our Cisco SMARTnet Specialists, please click here.

Cisco SMARTnet: The Technical Assistance Center – CISCO TAC

Features of CISCO TAC

Expert assistance: To supplement your in-house tech resources, the Cisco TAC gives you access to a team of highly trained CISCO engineers who offer you years of networking knowledge, with many customer support engineers having networking and CCIE® certifications as well as CISCO R&D (Research and Development) engineers. Cisco TAC engineers possess in excess of 800 U.S.-issued patents and have published a large volume of industry white papers and reference books.

Quicker Resolution: The Cisco TAC access included in SMARTnet ensures CISCO is constantly monitoring your satisfaction and ensuring time-to- resolution tracking. This includes an automatic escalation system starting one hour after submittal of severity 1 and severity 2 issues, and ultimately resulting in CEO intervention by John Chambers after 48 hours for any severity 1 problem.

24/7 Visibility of your issue status: CISCO TAC access ensures you are kept up-to- date on all the latest developments in your case via email notifications and tailored handoffs between you and Cisco engineers in the event your case merits a move to a new specialization because of the nature of the problem, or a change occurs in the assigned work shift.

Networking knowhow: The Cisco TAC team gives you 24/7 access to a depth and breadth of knowledge and understanding of Cisco hardware and OS software, along with information at your fingertips regarding a wide variety of networking environments and equipment. All Cisco TAC engineers possess a minimum of 5 years of industry experience, and Cisco ensures continuous training to ensure the TAC engineers stay current with the latest technological advancements.

24/7/365 Support in multiple languages: Via the phone, web, or email, the Cisco TAC will always be there whenever you need it!

• Verified and established resolution techniques: Cisco uses a dominant virtual lab as an irreplaceable engineering resource and knowledge base for analysis of network issues and recommended fixes.

For more information on how Cisco SMARTnet can benefit you please speak to our SMARTnet specialists for expert advice.

Cisco SMARTnet – Online Self-help support and Tools

Cisco’s SMARTnet includes a TAC service request tool, MyCisco tailored online assistance, and wide-ranging troubleshooting tools.

SMARTnet Online Support Resources

  • Software downloads –You get all the latest updates, new patches, and new releases of Cisco software.
  • Software Advisor – Choose suitable software for your network equipment by matching software features to the Cisco OS software releases, comparing Cisco OS software releases, or finding software releases that are supported by your hardware.
  • Bug Toolkit – Find software bug fixes quickly based on the version and associated feature sets.
  • TAC case collection – Interactively identify common issues involving hardware, configuration, and performance issues with resolutions supplied by CISCO TAC engineers.
  • Error message decoder – Find descriptions of console error messages listed in the Cisco Software System Messages guide.
  • Command Lookup Tool – Find detailed descriptions of your particular Cisco OS software, Cisco Catalyst, or ASA commands
  • Output Interpreter – Get prompt troubleshooting analysis and plan your course of action for your router or switch using the collected show command output.
  • Technical documents – You get access to 90,000+ technical documentation, e.g. product and technology integration documents of Cisco and third-party equipment along with troubleshooting guides and release notes.
  • TAC Service Request Tool – Via Cisco’s TAC Service Request Tool, you will be able to minimize the time spent in filing and tracking your service requests.
  • Peer-to-peer online forum – A peer-to-peer online forum will give you the access to share queries, recommendations, and info with other networking professionals.
  • MyCisco – A tailored web portal, “MyCisco,” will help you find the info you need in one place, tailored to your network, like new software releases, latest bug reports and repairs, and troubleshooting tools.
  • Cisco Technical Services Newsletter – You will get this newsletter which will alert you to new technical tools, resources, and SMARTnet subscriber exclusive networking tips on a monthly basis.

Please click here to speak to our dedicated SMARTnet specialists today.

 

Cisco Technical Assistance Center (TAC)

Case Statuses

CE-Pend— The Cisco TAC engineer allocated to your case is presently looking into the issue. No solution has been found at this time.

Close-Pend— The Cisco TAC engineer has given you a solution that will resolve your problem. You can still contact the allocated engineer if you believe the issue has not been fixed to your satisfaction.

Cust-Pend—The Cisco TAC engineer allocated to your issue has asked for further information from you and is awaiting your feedback. No solution has been found at this time.

DE-Pend— The Cisco TAC engineer has filed a request to Cisco Development Engineering for investigation.

Case Priorities

Priority 1 (P1)— A present network is “down” or there is a serious effect on your business processes. You and Cisco will pledge all essential resources around the clock to fix the issue.

Priority 2 (P2)— The functioning of a present network is highly degraded, or substantial facets of your business processes are negatively affected by poor performance of Cisco equipment. You and Cisco will pledge full-time resources during usual business hours to fix the issue.

Priority 3 (P3)— Operative performance of the network is diminished while most business processes remain efficient. You and Cisco are willing to pledge resources during usual business hours to reinstate service to acceptable levels.

Priority 4 (P4)— You require info or support with Cisco product abilities, setting up, or configuration. There is little to no effect on your business processes.

To find out more about CISCO SMARTnet and TAC, pls speak to our SMARTnet professionals today!