Deals to cover third party maintenance in data centres and getting shorter as customers look for more flexibility in difficult times. Curvature, a major global provider of third-party maintenance, multi-vendor networks and data centre IT lifecycle services, has been seeing changes in workload, it tells IT Europa. This involves delays in new project roll outs in some cases, mainly because of desire to keep things running as they are with minimal disruption to the business.
“Without doubt across Europe, Covid is having an impact on the data centre,” says Christo Conidaris (pictured), VP Sales EMEA. “Others push on to use digital innovation in an even greater degree to give competitive edge in remote times. Because of these factors, shorter term contracts are the order of the day with data centre customers looking for more flexibility from TPM providers to allow them to meet their short and long-term objectives, both in, and post, pandemic.”
Curvature has just been made an Intel Premier Support Partner for all Intel servers globally and this can be offered through EMEA partners. As one of just a handful of global vendors selected, being a recognised Intel Data Centre Solutions Premier Support Partner means that Curvature can now offer direct support from its over 100 service centres globally using Curvature trained (and Intel accredited) engineers.
“With regards to Intel, Curvature will have the ability to look after the server technology within the data centre and we are looking at aggressively expanding our portfolio with Intel. Today, Curvature provides services across the estate, including storage, networking and even mainframes.”
“For Curvature, what we are seeing specially in Europe is that customers continue to virtualize their server platforms and are looking seriously at extended the life of the data centre technology beyond the traditional three year life cycle with particular emphases on looking at ways to reduce OPEX in these extraordinary budget-stretched times,” adds Christo Conidaris.
The Intel relationship is focused around these areas, he says:-
• First Line Maintenance– Curvature will provide basic field service and work closely with Intel support desk to provide field engineers onsite to help diagnose and support equipment in the field
• Depot/Advanced Exchange - Warehousing / FSL (Forward Stocking Location) Services, provision of replacement equipment upon failure for certain devices
“And the programme has been designed to specifically work with distribution, our initial action plan was and continues to be, to aggressively target speaking with distribution to help them provide global support for their Intel Servers,” he says.
“To achieve this partnership with Intel Corporation, Curvature consistently demonstrated ongoing maintenance expertise on Intel server products, reaching the highest service levels across a 12 month initial contract across Australia. After the pilot finished, we secured Intel’s backing for server maintenance globally - in part due to the heavy involvement of our own research and development labs, layering skills and processes learned from Intel’s own support team to provide a robust, comprehensive and integrated support model for Intel branded servers.”
And what do channels need to know to offer a service round this?
“Fundamentally what is required is a firm understanding of the Intel server platform as well as having the ability to do root cause analysis to determine the issues. This analysis allows the correct spares to be selected from a comprehensive inventory and to have an Intel standard qualified engineer onsite in a timely manner ensuring that the part or service required is done within the given time frame.”
