IBM Maintenance with CloudCover

Third-Party Maintenance (TPM) is IT maintenance offered from an independent service provider in lieu of the original manufacturer of the hardware device. Enterprises utilize TPM for a multitude of reasons including savings of more than 40%, the OEM has discontinued support, and when greater flexibility is needed as an organization makes strategic IT initiatives including migrating to the cloud. The service and experience is nearly identical to OEM support except for certain software requirements, which promotes hybrid support – the combination of OEM and TPM to best serve your organization. CloudCover is your trusted advisor to identify the best path giving you an “easy button” experience.

CloudCover offers SLA’s and response times identical to the OEM which promotes a seamless transfer from OEM to TPM. Additionally we provide smart source allowing multiple SLA and Service Delivery options on a single contract. This helps large complex projects to be operated more efficiently while allowing your team a simplified manner to manage the solution. Specifics can be found here: CloudCover SLAs

TPM has been used effectively since the 1960s and offers equal-to or better-than support vs. the OEM. TPM needs to be used along with OEM support in a blend to give you the optimal mix of coverage and financial benefit.

CloudCover utilizes this highest levels of data center security to ensure that you have the confidence to leverage the Maintenance Management Platform. We take security extremely seriously as is evidenced by the detailed Security section located here.

It's not unusual for enterprise customers to have a vast array of complicated or outdated data on their infrastructure inventory. If you haven't tackled this yourself, CloudCover is happy to assist; we can scan your environment, validate the data, and embellish it with company-specific custom fields. After this initial data-gathering project, we can load the data.

Loading data is extremely easy and very fast. Typically new customers prove us a data listing which we examine for completeness. Once complete we load the data into our uploading template and it's available immediately. Long-term customers who use the system extensively typically move to an automated upload model. In the case CloudCover will link directly to the customer's data repository of record and pull data on a regular basis. all data is updated, added and deleted as necessary such that the platform always has the most current data available.

Third Party Maintenance has been successfully utilized by the enterprise for well over 3 decades. Only in the last 5 years has the adoption been enormous. Gartner now writes about strategies for TPM on a regular basis and customers are enjoying the quality, flexibility and financial savings offered by TPM.

TPM not only matches OEM-provided support, it typically exceeds it. TPM is extremely flexible, modifiable, comprehensive and extremely cost-effective. We find that the majority of our customers prefer TPM to OEM where it makes sense. TPM offers the same or more creative SLA's at a much more attractive financial model.

In many cases, TPM support can include software, but it does depend on specific circumstances. Please consult with CloudCover to understand exactly what your situation requires and can be accommodated.

While having multiple delivery partners is great for cost savings, don't make your engineers scramble to figure out who to call. Every enterprise should have multiple service partners based off geography, skillset, and lifecycle of the IT asset. Our software unifies all of that data and is a single resource to help guide your engineers through service delivery with the goal of solving the ticket without extra time and resources being drained from your organization.