Remote Services
In today's internet-enabled world, remote offsite services are a premier vehicle for delivering high-quality service when & where it's needed, without the expense and wasted time of travel and onsite visits. At Arrow Systems, we are enabled to deliver such services, and we recommend them for their great efficiency. We are experienced in large implementation and development projects and their management and will communicate in detail on every aspect of project status, helping to ensure common goals and results.
With offsite remote services, we are able to offer lower rates. Without the need for travel or temporary relocation, our employees can make better use of their time at a greater value to you, our client. And we pass these savings on to you. Also our developers are able to work in our environment optimized for development and testing, and to make use of the full resources of our development and quality assurance teams. It assures a higher quality project and offers improved efficiency as has been proven in many studies. This is a win/win solution for everyone!
Offsite services are for remote installations, implementation assistance, problem resolution services and for development services. While onsite work is often essential for projects implementations, for development work we prefer to do such work offsite whenever possible because offsite development is more productive and efficient.
For Unix/Linux systems, simple login access to one of your services can enable us to provide complete installation and support services where and when they are needed. Completely remote installations and setup are common, and the ability to quickly access your server when required allows us to help you solve problems when they occur, right on your own systems.
For Windows, we can use either Microsoft's Netmeeting software or, better yet, Symantec's PC-Anywhere system to access your system to not only install and configure your software, but also to provide complete remote instruction and as desired, training services, all for far less than the cost of bringing an associate to your own site. This enables quicker response and with less scheduling burden on your valuable resources. A training session, for example, can be scheduled for an hour a day over three days, with the rest of the day available to your staff to handle regular business, rather than trying to schedule an entire day to make best use of an onsite associate.
We can also use PC-Anywhere or Netmeeting for instruction/training services for Unix/Linux systems - using a Terminal program on your PC, this tool allows your staff to see exactly what our associate is doing, keystroke by keystroke. We offer either voice-over-IP (Netmeeting or MSN) or phone as an audio channel, so the process can be discussed and questions asked. PC-Anywhere/Netmeeting also allow your staff to easily share control of your PC, allowing them to work together with our support associates and facilitating rapid learning. This method of instruction is superior to even onsite instruction, and again allows scheduling to be far more flexible and efficient.
For followup service, remote is also ideal, as you can have an associate looking directly at your system within minutes of a support issue arising, with no delay for travel and of course at far lower expense.
We also offer access directly to our support staff via Instant Messenger, allowing you to chat directly with your support representative whenever required in real-time. This is often superior to phone support, as commands and URL's can be quickly shared accurately via chat, and voice-over-IP is available whenever that is more convenient.
Remote DBA Services
What are remote DBA services?
Remote DBA service is the practice of managing a database from, well, a remote location. Typically a remote DBA firm will have a service center or NOC (maybe more than one) from which all services are performed. It should go without saying that that technical people working in the NOC are composed of diverse professionals; experts in their field with broad niche knowledge to ensure their customers get answers when they need them.
Remote DBAs log in to your database and systems per your security requirements to perform selected duties – some reactively, some proactively, some as part of agreed-upon projects. Our remote DBA services has an issue tracking system that transparently records all work performed on your databases, and we have processes that ensure your issues and projects are handed off cleanly when they need to be worked at odd hours or weekends. We also provide a single point of contact for each account; when workers are not physically near each other, clear communication is more critical than ever.
Arrow Systems Inc proudly boasts outstanding monitoring and tools. Our DBA’s goals are smooth, uninterrupted system performance and reliable, predictive monitoring (with the ability to quickly respond)
Finally, we are highly flexible. If you had a full-time person or an on-site consultant, they would work on what you want, when you want, right? Just because you use a team of DBAs who aren’t local to your office doesn’t mean you should compromise on flexibility.
Why should you use remote DBA?
If you already have a DBA staff, wouldn’t they love to hand the on-call pager off to a trusted group of technical experts, available to them day or night? On holidays? When they want to go on vacation? Wouldn’t they love to focus on projects specific to your organization instead of dealing with generic issues like backups and monitoring? Wouldn’t they love to have a team of fellow DBAs available to them day or night to collaborate with, pass off a task when they’re overloaded, or ask a question about a specific feature?
If you don’t have a DBA staff, why would you spend precious budget on a full time resource you may not be able to keep busy, interested, or happy? Why wouldn’t you take advantage of an organization that provides access to experts in performance tuning, backup and recovery, replication, or a host of other database focus areas for a fraction of the cost of a full-time resource that you don’t really need?
Why Arrow Systems Remote DBA Services?
Because we really are different. We don’t cut corners in favor of short term profits. Our customers stay with us for years because we strive to make their systems work better and better for less and less.
Everything we do centers around a superior remote DBA experience. We constantly strive to improve by eliminating bottlenecks, roadblocks, and imperfections in our delivery and service model. How can we have your back if we’re not paying attention to what we’re doing?
People, Process and Tools
We hire senior, expert people. We don’t outsource DBA support to someone else. You will work with the same people all the time, including a product manager who will be responsible for your account; you’ll have one place to go when you have questions.
We focus on processes that make remote DBA work well. We handle issue tracking, project management, monitoring response, and constantly solicit customer feedback. From the moment we deploy your services, you will see the difference our process makes in delivering superior DBA service.
It’s all about the tools. We pour piles of development R&D into our monitoring. If we can detect potential issues before they become a problem, then our customers have smoother-running systems, and we don’t have to spend time working on preventable problems. We also focus heavily on our remote access methods and documentation; with hundreds of different customers, we need to be able to securely and efficiently access customer systems without asking our customers to alter their security practices.
We don’t tie you down to particular systems or databases. We don’t change our price because of the time of day or day of the week. We will work on what you want, when you want, and we’ll do it for the same price. The more you use us, the cheaper it gets. Simple.
