Networks that connect businesses with their customers need to be in good health around the clock. The effects of downtime can be costly. With networks getting increasingly complex with the addition of new business processes, systems and services, the costs of downtime increase dramatically. This can delay the resolving of issues and seriously affect the business operations.

Then, keeping the IT staff up-to-date on the latest technological advances and security issues can prove to be expensive for the businesses. Companies like Cisco (News - Alert) offers IT maintenance and support services that are meant to keep IT operation costs at the minimum. For some businesses, Cisco’s SMARTnet service is too expensive to afford and these organizations are often on the lookout for third-party vendors providing quality maintenance support for their Cisco equipment. XS International, a certified provider of Cisco, HP, IBM, Dell (News - Alert), Sun, SGi and other IT equipment, offers an IT maintenance service that can make an inexpensive alternative to Cisco SMARTnet.

Worldwide Supply is another provider of secondary networking and services and recently announced its NetGuard maintenance program has tripled its sales projections in the last 12 months. Alternative maintenance services such as NetGuard and services from XS International can save clients 30 to 50 percent on total network maintenance.

XS International’s maintenance contract includes many flexible features, including contract flexibilities, simple contract management, payment flexibilities, cost reductions over Cisco’s deepest discounts, customer tailored reporting and coverage for all Cisco data, voice and unified communications, security and SAN hardware and software products.  Under a single contract, support services are delivered for the multiple OEMs, multiple SLAs and global support.

XSi operates a U.S.-based Tier 1 to Tier 3 Technical Assistance Center (TAC). There is also a Tier 4 technical assistance center for delivering support to the OEMs in the emergency escalation situations.

The technical assistance centers are staffed with more than 325 network engineers who provide 24/7 global multilingual phone support. The company manages worldwide depots for advanced OEM part replacement and also operates a network product depot repair centers.

XSi has recently been awarded another five-year extension on its U.S. General Services Administration (GSA (News - Alert)) IT Schedule 70 GS-35F-0751M, entering its 11th year as a GSA contract holder, with its new contract period ending Sept. 2, 2017.

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