Support - IS3™ 24x7 Support

This program provides technical support, as well as general consulting, and programming support on a 24 hour by 7 day per week basis, 365 days per year (hereinafter 24x7).  IntelliSCADA Solutions provides customer representatives with 24x7 cell phone access to a team of IntelliSCADA Solutions engineers familiar with the subject SCADA system and the particular customer’s application of that system.  Our IS3™ 1-800 access number will locate the on-call support engineer via a single-call, regardless of the time of day.  In addition, a quick reference card also provides direct contact numbers for principal members of the IS3™ team.  In the event of a serious problem that cannot be resolved by telephone or remote system access, IntelliSCADA Solutions will dispatch a qualified engineer within eight (8) hours (nominal), after the emergency call has been received by IntelliSCADA Solutions.  This response time does not include delays due to situations beyond IntelliSCADA Solutions’ control, such as flight availability, adverse weather conditions, etc.  However, our experience is that the need for such emergency assistance onsite is minimal, and that most critical issues can be resolved by remote access to the system(s) and/or telephone support.

As a part of this service, IntelliSCADA Solutions will install and maintain monitoring agents on each server to provide information on system status and permit proactive preventative maintenance analysis.  These agents run at very low priority and utilize operating system utilities to perform the data gathering.  They do not ever communicate with any external system, but do save a data file on each server which is uploaded once per month by the IS3™ team to perform system checks.  This check ensures the system is functioning at an optimum level, and provides indicators of any gradual decline in system performance which could cause a serious problem if allowed to persist.  Any indicator of degraded performance since the previous check will be proactively investigated and resolution will be attempted.  However, some tasks may require additional effort which is beyond the scope of standard service, and in these cases the problem will be documented along with a recommended course of action and a corresponding cost estimate.   IntelliSCADA Solutions provides a monthly written report to management summarizing the results of the periodic system performance check, as well as any significant findings. 

The IS3™ team will also maintain periodic system backups on tape or other media as appropriate, and store them at IntelliSCADA Solutions’ facility in Friendswood, Texas unless there is already a well established process for offsite backup storage in place.  These backups provide a baseline supportable position for the system and allow for emergency recovery to this baseline in the event of a serious problem incapacitating the control system.  The frequency of these backups is determined with each customer, but should be performed whenever any significant maintenance or upgrade (including SCADA configuration and/or database updates) have been done.  Once defined, the backup process can be executed by either IntelliSCADA Solutions or customer’s internal personnel as required.

This support level provides eight (8) additional hours of on-call technical services per month, which are in addition to the system monitoring, proactive troubleshooting, and management reporting tasks described above, and can be used for any purpose deemed appropriate by customer personnel.  Hours used beyond the eight (8) standard hours are billed at a standard hourly rate.

IntelliSCADA Solutions’ experience and capabilities are extensive, and adequate in most cases, to identify and resolve system problems.  However, some issues may require access to Citect to resolve. The basic Gold Support for Citect should be in place to allow for communications with Citect and make new versions of CitectSCADA available to the customer upon their release.