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Smartrack Support from ASG

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Smartrack Support from ASG

ASG Service Contracts Team

Advanced Systems Group (ASG) has an established team dedicated to and specializing in contract-maintenance support services. This team provides the end-user a single point of contact for managing multi-vendor hardware and software support contracts. All discounts and services granted by vendors are applied when purchasing support through ASG plus the advantage of ASG's exclusive secure web-portal application for managing all your support contracts at no-charge.

This team facilitates the process between you (the end user) and our vendor partners. ASG has a strong relationship with its partners, and communicates daily with our vendors to resolve end user issues.

More Information

SMARTRACK Secure Web Portal

Are you tired of tracking your maintenance and support contract information through a maze of vendor web sites and a multitude of spreadsheets?

The ASG exclusive secure online SMARTRACK database allows you to track all the complex data for ALL of your hardware and software support contracts in one place. With SMARTRACK, tracking and maintaining your contracts has never been more simple.

The SMARTRACK database contains detailed information, such as:

  • Contract numbers and contract reports
  • End-user company information
  • Support contract begin and end dates
  • Equipment details
  • Serial numbers
  • Notes detailing any special information
  • Learn more in the SMARTRACK User's Guide

SMARTRACK Advantages

SMARTRACK provides:

  • Easy access to all of your support contract information
  • Excellent support for the complexity of multi-vendor contract models
  • The ability to store customer defined dynamic attributes about your company
  • The ability to store information on all of your hardware and software, not only ASG-sourced equipment
  • Learn more in the SMARTRACK User's Guide

SMARTRACK Security

SMARTRACK is a secure web-based application accessed over the Internet. It employs a layered security model to assure your confidential information remains secure.

Security Layer 1

The first layer, ASG's Checkpoint UTM-1 provides Firewall and Network Address Translation (NAT) services to secure resources exposed to the Internet.

Security Layer 2

The second layer, ASG's F5 BigIP, provides secure SSL transport and load balancing to ASG's SMARTRACK web farm.

Security Layer 3

The third layer, ASG's web and application server farm, provides authentication and access control to the SMARTRACK application.

Security Layer 4

The fourth layer, ASG's SQL database, provides authentication and access control to the SMARTRACK database.

LDAP Authentication

SMARTRACK utilizes an LDAP authentication system whereby users log in via a username and a password to the SMARTRACK application.

Access Logged

Access to SMARTRACK is logged at the web server and application levels providing detailed and comprehensive records of all user access.

By teaming with our vendor partners, Advanced Systems Group delivers expertise and additional services to offer our customers maximum level of support and customer care. One of the areas where ASG has successfully augmented vendor services is the administration of support contracts. ASG has a long track record of helping our customers identify opportunities for saving money, improving performance and increasing operational efficiency through ongoing management of such contracts. ASG's dedicated team of service experts can alleviate the time spent on managing multiple contracts and different service levels in a complex multi-vendor IT environment.

Activity and Errors Logged

As SMARTRACK is used, all activity is logged. This enables us to determine who made what changes for troubleshooting and tracking changes. So if you have more than one person who uses SMARTRACK, you can call us if something is changed or missing from your contract and we can review the activity log and determine what happened. End users will not have any access to this, only ASG DBA's and Support will have access the activity list.

As you use SMARTRACK, any error you encounter will be put into an error log. The reason for this is that in some error situations, for security purposes, we may not display the true error to the user, but deliver a message to you that a problem occurred and to contact support for help.

The main reason for error logging is to allow us to review all errors encountered with detailed information so we can address it and fix it properly. We will keep an eye on the error log and, when we see an error, we will take actions to correct them, making the overall product more stable. The end users will never see or have access to our error logs because they could contain sensitive information.

Activity and error logging benefits you because we will be able to find errors and fix them faster and be able to determine who changes something if there is a question about the data.

The ASG Advantage
Everything to gain, nothing to lose!

By choosing ASG as your service contract administrator, you not only keep all the benefits of working directly with your vendors, you also add a valuable set of services offered by ASG. Some of the most common benefits offered by ASG and our vendor partners are:

Discounts - All discounts granted by vendors are applied when purchasing services through ASG. Any negotiations for future discounts will take place with a team including representatives from the vendor companies. ASG will bring the knowledge of all possible and applicable discount opportunities.

Easy Billing - ASG offers easy billing options, including P.O. netting. With P.O. netting, refund credits are applied to new purchases.

Problem Resolution - All problems are reported directly to the vendor's customer support organization. ASG acts as the contract administrator. However, ASG has a pool of expert engineers on staff whose knowledge can be tapped into to resolve technical issues when needed. You also have the additional resources of your dedicated team of support specialists.

Account Management - When the vendor support level includes account manager services, such services are kept intact when the contract is placed through ASG. All aspects of the direct relationship between our customers and the vendors remain the same, ASG only augments these services.

When partnering with ASG, you gain the resources of a dedicated and knowledgeable team of service support staff. Some of the services offered at no cost by ASG's Service Contracts Team include:

Multi-Vendor Support - ASG has the ability to resell maintenance support for most major IT products creating a single source for all the support requirements and information. This reduces the complexity of managing your environment and frees up IT staff from the tedious job of staying up to date with product support changes. ASG will inform you of all support changes and, in addition, present the facts and relevant information when comparing support for different products and technologies.

Our reselling of maintenance support includes the following vendors and many more:

  • Sun Microsystems
  • Hitachi Data Systems
  • IBM
  • NetApp
  • Brocade
  • F5
  • CheckPoint
  • Cisco
  • Quantum
  • Symantec
  • VMware

Service Level Evaluation - When equipment moves between different applications and projects, the support level required for the new applications is likely to change. If not noted, the change could either result in overpayment for services you do not need, or too low a support level, resulting in a delay in services for a critical application. With SMARTRACK, ASG can track asset locations and usage as equipment moves. We confirm that the service level is consistent with the criticality of the applications hosted.

Budgeting - Smartrack provides reporting to easily track current support expenditures. ASG has the resources to help you prepare for the new budget cycle by preparing renewal quotes for the equipment you already own and service quotes for any new equipment you plan on purchasing. We will also advise on different options you might have based on your hardware and service requirements. We can help make the budget planning more effective and less stressful!

Reporting - Smartrack provides an easy way to generate either custom data views or pre-defined reports, giving you the information you need to track and manage your support and maintenance data effectively. In addition, Smartrack data is exportable to a variety of formats, including  html, Excel, Acrobat, text, and rich text.

Other benefits:

  • ASG has a local team to assist you with your current/future initiatives
  • ASG has been in business since 1980, with demonstrated company stability and customer dedication
  • ASG has audit certification authority from Sun Microsystems
  • ASG general offices are located near the Sun service center
  • ASG personnel sit on the Sun Executive VAR Committee and other committees, including those to handle maintenance programs