Support

We offer a 2-Tier solution to meet the monitoring and management requirements of our customers. 

Our maintenance services provide for the following elements:

• Up to 24*7 monitoring of Switch and Wireless Devices
• VPN connection to customer site(s)*
• Incident and Problem Management
• Capacity reporting on Switches
• Capacity reporting on key LAN segments and WAN uplinks
• Coordination of WAN uplink provider
• KBR Secure Customer Portal
• Up to 5 Secure Customer Portal user accounts
• Remote IMACS (Installations, Moves, Adds and Changes) on switch equipment.

Initially 4 Major/12 Minor per annum

• Backup of Switch  IOS configurations
• Availability reporting

Hardware Replacement
In the event of a component under contract failing, our services will provide, on site, a trained field service engineer and a suitable replacement component within the contracted service levels. Our Field Service Engineer will replace the faulty component with the replacement component and ensure full working operation of the replacement to each customer’s satisfaction before leaving site.

Fault Management
Network faults are reported to our Services Fault Management Centre where each call is logged and given a unique reference number. Our Services Team will then allocate an engineer responsible for resolving the component fault within the contracted service levels. Progress will be monitored throughout the fault rectification process, communicating with, and updating the contacts on a regular basis until it is resolved to the customer’s satisfaction.

The fault management process shall be used in conjunction with an agreed escalation procedure between each customer and KBR.

Technical Telephone Assistance
Our integrated technical assistance facility and fault management system provides customers with only one number to call and a single point of contact for all your service enquiries.
The technical assistance desk is manned by the specialist support engineers who employ advanced information systems and diagnostic tools to quickly resolve issues on a wide variety of networking hardware and software. They are in regular contact with the leading product suppliers and service providers to ensure customers are kept fully aware of any major developments and are provided with the best possible support.

Remote Monitoring and Management
Monitoring and management services are an integral part of a service contract, enabling a proactive approach to support, maximising availability and increasing performance against service level agreements (SLA).

Our managed services centres are resourced 24 hours, 365 days a year.The service teams include incident and problem management staff and are supported by dedicated product specialists and escalation managers.

Security and Integrity
The control centre staff and systems are vetted to meet a range of industry and business requirements. These include authorisations and clearances to operate MOD, HMG, Emergency Services and Financial accreditations and an assigned security officer whose primary function is to manage these specific requirements.

Resilience
The Dual Control centres provide technical support to the customer community. In the event of issues with access to a given site all systems can be fully supported from the secondary site. The infrastructure has been constructed using a secure MPLS infrastructure between sites to allow for resilient connectivity and system access.

Connectivity
We utilises a range of connectivity options to provide remote monitoring and management solutions. The solution is dependant on the specific scope of services or customer security requirements.
The preferred method of connection is via a standard point to point GRE tunnel over IPSEC VPN connection, using 3Des encryption, terminating on existing customer equipment. This tunnel will be utilised to collect device and system based performance statistics and incident based information.
We also utilise point to point leased lines, frame-relay links or more regularly are connected directly to the customer’s core MPLS infrastructure.

24*7 Monitoring and Notification
Monitoring of an Infrastructure is conducted from our Control Centres. The deployed management systems proactively collect performance, status and availability information.

This monitoring of the status of the infrastructure, and progressing of any events that may occur, is based principally on polling of devices and automatic alarm generation if there is an occurrence of an event. Following the alarm generation, the event is then progressed, initially by identifying the nature of the occurrence and then organising the fault recovery process.

Secure Portal
We provides users access to a secure management Portal. This portal utilises unique user sign-on to establish an SSL encrypted connection to the session.

The Portal service enables all authorised users to access critical, accurate information when it is required, thus helping the overall Service Management approach within the scope of service.

Availability Reporting
The Secure Portal provides availability reporting to highlight potential areas of concern. These reports are based on the availability of a device, polled from the management suite and are calculated as a percentage of up-time over the given period. The period of information displayed is daily and monthly.

Performance Reporting
The Performance reporting service provides additional management information from carrier grade service level management and reporting tools as well as real time views of performance via the Secure Portal.  Systems are used to gather detailed historical and real time information to enable a more pro-active approach to be taken for most types of system related faults. This service is fundamental to maintaining network integrity, particularly in dynamic environments where additions and changes to systems are commonplace.

Device and link statistics can be correlated and presented in a real time environment.  These can be used to validate the performance of the network and provide comparisons with historical data and show any degradation of service.

Switches
The Switch reports provide global switch performance information with average availability and utilisation statistics. Summaries are also provided on backplane errors and memory utilisation. These switch summaries provide the top level overview to enable further investigation of any issues or trends that will be contained in the Key LAN Segment reports.

WAN Link Reports
This report is similar to the Key LAN Segment report, but focuses on the critical WAN links.  At the top-level summary this report shows the availability of key WAN links and the utilisation and errors on the links.  This report is useful for confirming that service providers are meeting their SLAs and also helps in troubleshooting on the WAN.

Configuration Backup (Cisco)
This service provides the optimisation and regular collection of device configurations. These configurations are held securely and can be uploaded on demand. All backup configurations can be viewed via the Secure Portal. Configuration management screens include:

• Group Management: Ability for Customer to group devices for simplifying of display
• Compare Configuration: Comparison of 2 different configuration files, highlighting differences
• View Configuration: View a specific Configuration
• Configuration Audit: List of when device configurations were last changed
• Key LAN Segments

Change Control and Remote IMACs
Changes are a necessity in any Service Management Solution. No matter the size, reliability or the design of an Infrastructure, there will always be the requirement to revise and adjust the configuration to meet business requirements.

We provide change management procedures and tools to Customers as part of the monitoring and  management services.

Examples of changes would be:

• Configuration Changes
• Software updates – Single device or rollouts
• Scheduled Restarts
• Port reconfiguration
• Vulnerability Patching
• Rule base changes

The Secure Portal provides customers with access to log, update and manage change requests and the associated change management process.

These tasks would be managed via an agreed change control process and undertaken remotely by certified professionals during the hours of the contract cover. It is essential to understand these are planned changes to the infrastructure.

Incident and Problem Management
Incident and Problem management are key components to the delivery of the management solution. This enables us to investigate and resolve issues as they occur, whether automatically detected of notified by the customer.

A response would then be initiated in line with the Service Level Agreement that has been defined and agreed for each customer.