If youโre wondering whether you should invest in HPE Foundation Care, our cost-effective, simplified IT infrastructure support service, check out these tips and short video.
by Darren Rogers, HPE Pointnext Worldwide Category Manager for Foundation Care and Proactive Care
Those are a couple of questions that often come up when Iโm talking with IT leaders. To take that second one first, my answer is โ no, theyโre very different things. Now, as far as HPE warranty coverage is concerned, you wonโt be surprised if I say that itโs as good as, or better than, anything else in the industry. But any warranty, from any vendor, is bound to be limited because it addresses hardware failure โ a particular device or system. It doesnโt protect your business. Thatโs just the nature of the beast.
In fact, thatโs a good way to think about the difference between warranty and support. Warranty protects a product; support protects your business. A good support package can give you the kind of across-the-board confidence and peace of mind that you just canโt get with the more limited warranty. When I talk 
Weโve put together a short video to answer those questions (scroll down to see it). In this blog Iโll unpack the main points โ five questions to help you choose between warranty and HPE Foundation Care:
1. How fast do you need to resolve issues? Warranties can be hard to track, and companies donโt always know what exactly they cover or what the limitations are. So, for example, you may be able to log a call only during working hours. If something goes wrong at six o'clock on a Saturday morning, youโre stuck. Itโs true that not every company needs to ensure availability every minute of every day; but for most organizations, minimizing unplanned downtime is an important goal. And for many, a long interruption could jeopardize the business.
How long could you be afford to be without your system? HPE Foundation Care gives you the ability to log a call and receive remote technical assistance on a 24x7x365 basis. In addition, we can offer a 6-hour call-to-repair time. That six-hour hardware restoration commitment starts as soon your call has been received and completed. Which may be very different from our competition, who will only commit to that kind of CTR after they've made the diagnosis (which could take โฆ who knows how long?)
2. Do you want to handle repairs yourself? Small and midsize businesses may not have the time or skills to handle tasks like replacing components and checking firmware versions. The same is true of remote and branch offices of larger organizations โ in fact, they may not have any dedicated IT staff at all. But even bigger companies may be reluctant to pull people off important revenue-generating projects to handle break/fix issues.
Warranty-only customers may have to pay extra for on-site service, on a time-and-materials basis (depending on whether the component is designated as customer self-repair). With an HPE Foundation Care contract, youโre entitled to on-site service from a certified engineer at no additional cost.
3. Are the components covered by the same warranty? Last year, I put in a shiny new fitted kitchen at my home; it works, it's great, and I filled in all the forms, and registered all the warranties. But each of the appliances has a different type of coverage. The warranty durations are different. There may or may not be a charge for repairs. Wouldn't it be great if they all came from the same place and were fitted by the same person? Somebody who knows me and will remember me three years down the road if I call in with a problem?
In IT too, warranties vary with respect to level and duration of coverage. Your server may be covered for three years; however, options may have a different warranty. One of the big advantages of HPE Foundation Care is that it removes the burden of tracking and aligning everything. It makes your life easier with a single, consistent support experience.
4. What about software? With warranty-only coverage, once the warranty has expired on the software part of your solution, youโre pretty much on your own. Youโre back to a time-and-materials basis if you need assistance. But with HPE Foundation Care, software coverage runs for the same period as the hardware coverage. There's no mismatch that you have to track and work around. It all falls under the same unified support experience. If you need help, you can just pick up your telephone and your call goes straight through to the right software desk.
And the conversation doesnโt have to be focused on a break/fix issue; it can be about general guidance and assistance: โHow do I do this update?โ or โI need to find a patch, where do I go?โ It can save you a lot of time that you would have spent searching through reams of information online.
Collaborative support is another big benefit of HPE Foundation Care. If you need help with non-HPE software, we can start the ball rolling by putting you in touch with the right third-party support folks, saving you time.
5. Why wait? Of course, you can buy support services at any time. But thereโs a strong argument for investing in HPE Foundation Care sooner rather than later. If an issue does come up and youโre limited to warranty coverage, your ability to respond may depend on a string of external and internal processes: diagnostics, cost estimates, quotes, purchase orders.
That's a rather long and tedious process. And in the meantime, your users may be getting backed up and stressed out because they canโt get their work done, and your customers are unhappy because theyโre not getting the level of service that theyโre used to.
In the end, the warranty vs support question all comes down to how much risk youโre willing to live with, and how much operational complexity you want to take on. You may decide that HPE warranties give your business all the support it needs. But if youโre looking for a unified foundational support experience, the choice shouldnโt be difficult.
Check out the video below for a quick overview of HPE Foundation Care from HPE Pointnext Services.
And hereโs a great example of a company that selected HPE Foundation Care as a central component of its digital transformation: French IT services provider XEFI chose a solution that also included HPE Synergy and HPE 3PAR to support its ambitious growth plans and increase competitiveness:
Read more about how HPE Foundation Care Services helps you meet your IT infrastructure and business needs.
Learn more about HPE Pointnext Services: https://www.hpe.com/services
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