Support for IT Investment

The HP System Support Service provides high-quality support that enables organizations to increase equipment uptime. This in turn reduces any drops or gaps in productivity. It promotes the flexibility to choose response times and coverage periods that meet specific service needs.

Hardware Support

HP provides both onsite and remote hardware support. An assigned customer engineer or contract administrator is always available to meet support needs. They're available to provide environmental surveys. Additionally, they can install add-on Itanium products and provide preventative hardware maintenance.

Each of these items serves to increase system uptime. It also gives clients the highest quality support for locations worldwide. By providing an escalation management system and meeting support needs cost effectively, it increases the return on the initial IT investment in Itanium-based architecture.

Software Support

Hewlett-Packard offers comprehensive software support for HP-UX, Linux, and Microsoft Windows environments. Technical experts at HP's Response Centers are available to provide first-line support and software assistance. Clients normally obtain this service by telephone help-line or by online question submission.

Similarly, HP makes software updates available for HP-UX, Linux, and Microsoft operating environments. Updates can be shipped out on CD-ROM directly to a client. Of course, the vast majority of these updates are available in self-installing packages online at the appropriate online site. (See Appendix B for a list of Web-related links.)

Mission-Critical Support Services

Mission-Critical Support Services ensure high availability through a comprehensive mission-critical support solution of preventative and rapid reactive services. HP Critical Systems Support (CSS) is the optimal level of support when business is dependent on critical applications and is severely affected by unplanned downtime. CSS provides technical expertise through an integrated combination of proactive services and fast problem resolution to meet the demands of any computing environment.

Education

Education provided by HP can serve to bridge the gap between what you know now and what you need to know to help understand and optimize Itanium technology. The courses help programmers and IT administrators become familiar with Itanium architecture and with the operation of Itanium-based environments for HP-UX, Windows, and Linux. The curriculum is designed to be complementary with the other Itanium-based services offered by HP to help clients make the right choices for their IT needs.