Olympic Support Channel Partner FAQs

Q: How many technical staff is dedicated to hot line support engineers and how many are concentrated on field support?
A: We have over 40 technical team members, two of which concentrate solely on hot line support and 32 are dedicated field support engineers.

Q: Are your engineers trained and certified in relevant technologies?
A: Olympic Support pledge to our partners that all technicians are trained and pass all the Exams. See our professional skills matrix which will give you all the other areas that technicians have certification for such as:- HP, Fujitsu, Netapp, Cisco & plus many other vendor hardware and software applications.

Q: What support processes do you have in place in relation to training, checking and escalation?
A: Training and a dedicated training budget is a critical part of Olympic Support's business planning. Each engineer has an annual assessment of their skills base where any improvements and advanced levels of training are identified. Senior management also undergoes a similar assessment of their engineering expertise including knowledge of emerging technologies. Training programmes are then implemented throughout the next year to update skill and knowledge.

Q: Do field support engineers provide preventive inspections?
A: Olympic Support provides a free annual service. However if designated at point of sale, a higher audit frequency can be set.

Q: What is the source of your vendor spare parts and spares?
A: All our parts are sourced only from ISO certified suppliers in the EU and audited under our ISO procedure. Every Sun spare part is genuine OEM, identifiable by the part number and barcode.

Q: Do you have access to the current revision levels for spare parts?
A: Prior to each contract being taken on, a site audit is carried out, various scripts are run on each system during which the revision levels are checked and the correct spares, with the correct firmware levels are ordered, these are reviewed annually FCO, and more frequently where specified by the customer. You can view and download the audit Scripts by logging into Supportal.
It also pertinent to note that manufacturers will often not make a decision to carry out an FCO against the cost of the recall or change, Olympic Support have found parts with obvious faults, but because production of this item has stopped, they are unlikely to have enough spares to replace all systems in the field so only provide spares on a “critical need’ basis.

Q: How quickly can you deploy parts across a multi-site infrastructure?
A: Allow 30 days from the initial order.
Olympic Support hold spares in one of 14 strategic locations across the UK, Ireland and Europe from which field engineers bring all the correct spares to site. See spares policy.

Q: How long have you been supporting Sun Systems?
A: Olympic Support has been servicing Sun Systems since 1988.

Q: Are you authorised by Sun?
A: Sun have approached us on several occasions to become authorised, on each occasion a commercial decision has been taken not to go through the process. To do so would take away our status as independent. It would make us inflexible and denigrate service levels and remove our competitive differentiators.

Q: How many channel sellers do you partner and what is the number of multi-vendor service contracts do you have in place?
A: Olympic Support has over 30 channel partners and in excess of 1000 contracts in place.

Q: What is the profile of the length of the current contracts?
A: Of all the Olympic Support contracts, 80% are for Sun Microsystems with an average length of 36 months. Our renewal rate, in excess of 90% reflects our excellent service delivery to channel partners. SLA’s met are close to 99%.

Q: How does Olympic Support manage manufacturer warranties?
A: We will spare-up for every item. Manufacturer involvement is minimal and only deemed necessary if a partner needs to invoke the warranty on behalf of an end-user. Olympic Support still takes ownership on the call, but the field engineer that attends on-site maybe from a vendor or third party support team. See Managed Services Coverage.

Q: As software drivers are dependant on hardware revision levels, how do channel partners gain access to technical inter-operational data, field information notices and field change orders?
A: All this information is gained via our SelfSolve accounts. Olympic Support also have an excellent alternative source called “On Line Detective”, an independent software package proved by Softech Solutions dedicated to Sun Microsystems. It is the standard package used by STK (prior to Sun Merger) and Fujitsu in the USA. Olympic Support channel partners can also supply their end-users with the same software. See SelfSolve.

Q: If you are unable to determine if a problem is hardware or software related what happens?
A: We have two contracts in place with Industry champions, one of these companies used to run the software helpdesk for Sun, the other carries out this kind of work for Sun independently in the UK. The call will be escalated to the most relevant partner for further diagnosis. Olympic always retain ownership of each call, so the service will be seamless to the end-user.

Q: Can you offer remote monitoring?
A: Yes. See Olympic Alerts - Remote Monitoring

Q: What diagnostics do your technicians use?
A: SunVTS and Olympic Support Bespoke scripts