IT Support and Maintenance Services
IT Support Services cover a range of services providing assistance with computer hardware, software, network or other. IT Support services attempt to help the user solve specific problems with a product or a service, whereas IT Maintenance Services help your company prevent problems with your hardware, software, network and security.
Outsourced IT support can be flexible, which means that your company might never have to worry about supporting full time salaries or about finding the IT staff you need when you experience growth.
Unlike your internal staff, outsourced IT staff can be available 24/7, where vendor's technicians will respond to you and your employees requests within a pre-defined response rate, which can be as quick as a few minutes. This means that your company would not have to wait for one particular person to become available before the problem can be solved.
Lots of vendors today can provide remote monitoring services, so that through a remote connection to your network, they can be working on a solution instantly. In that way, they can resolve problems quickly, and they can even reduce the number of problems your company experiences through their preventive monitoring and maintenance activities.
Types of IT Support
IT Support can be delivered through various media, including e-mail, live chat, telephones, applications and technicians, although the most common one is that of the telephone.
However, some things that are not supported in lower levels of support can be supported with higher service levels: for instance, only direct questions can be addressed through e-mail or fax; basic software problems can be addressed over the telephone; while hardware or network problems often need to be dealt with in person.
Based on company's requirements there are different types of support:
 Online Self-Help Support - FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions), Knowledge Base, product/service specific mailing lists, product/service support centres, newsgroups, chats, help database Subscription-Based Support - Subscriptions include the monthly delivery of certain support Assisted Incident Support - E-mail support, Phone support, Advisory services Contract-Based Support - Direct access to technical experts any time, account management, support assistance, problem resolution support, information services
Types of IT Maintenance Support Solutions
Based on categories, there are different types of IT maintenance services:
Hardware maintenance - testing and cleaning of the hardware Information system maintenance - updating of master files, such as adding and deleting employees or customers and similar Software maintenance - updating of application programs in order to meet changing information requirements, such as adding new functions. It also includes fixing bugs and adapting the software to new hardware devices. Network maintenance - taking care of the overall health of the network (anticipating, preventing and solving the problems, troubleshooting, cable testing Security maintenance - ensuring that the systems remain secure all the time. Security maintenance service may include backups, checking permissions and ownerships in critical files and directories, checking the assignment of rights, monitoring system logs etc Telephony maintenance - the telephony maintenance service is similar to the data networking processes of fault isolation and correction. On the other hand, IP telephony maintenance is much easier than with the traditional phone set up and can be done remotely in most cases.
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