BT starts filtering global services for SMEs

BT's Networked IT Assurance managed support and maintenance service goes live

BT launched its Networked IT Assurance managed support and maintenance service this week following an extensive pilot. The carrier hopes to convince smaller enterprises that it can be trusted to keep their local (LAN) and wide (WAN) area networks in good health alongside their private branch exchanges (PBXs).

Aimed at small to medium enterprises (SMEs), the ‘one stop shop’ service provides access to the same pool of 1900 BT engineers used by BT Global Services to cater for corporate and multi-national customers, delivering telephone support, remote diagnostics and on-site repair.

Adam Walker, Networked IT Assurance marketing manager, knows that some firms will always prefer to keep LAN management in-house, whilst others will be happy with basic support provided by equipment resellers. But other firms either cannot or will not take on the responsibility themselves, whilst the channel does not have access to the same resources.

“A lot of SME customers don’t want to do it themselves; they want to concentrate on running their business and have somebody else focus on the technical side,” he said.

“BT has 1900 accredited engineers for Cisco and Nortel equipment, as well as instant access to spare parts, service level agreements (SLAs) and 365 days a year, 24 hour support if that’s what the customer wants.”

Contract costs vary from 33p a day for basic LAN maintenance to £40 a day for larger networks containing routers and either analogue or IP PBXs. It provides three different levels of care according to how quickly a customer needs a fault fixing.