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Frequently Asked Questions

TERiX has many requisitions in the market for various skill sets including experiences sales, management and technical support experts in many cities/locals. Our hiring advertisements are available on this site, various career sites, as well as in the portfolio of several recruiting firms with whom we regularly work. If you’re serious about getting an interview, follow the practices outlined in the site/recruiter where you respond to the job notice. These processes are set up to flow the best-fit talent to our hiring managers efficiently and start the process quickly. TERiX staff has been growing at 35% per year and this is because of our people, and their focus on customers and partners alike.

TERiX provides support for IBM, HP, HDS, STK, NetApp, EMC and Quantum tape and storage systems along with many other manufacturers. In many cases, TERiX developed and deploys its own intellectual property and tools for taking on the task, such as using proprietary appliances for monitoring or proprietary cloud-based tools to parse error logs hands-free. TERiX respects OEM intellectual property, developing independent technologies rather than piggybacking on OEM tools to ensure users (and TERiX) are always in the clear from a legal standpoint. TERiX maintenance is familiar and OEM-like, but adds additional customer focus, flexibility and attention where needed.

TERiX supports customers in the US and 48 countries within North America, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific region, including some of the largest brands in nearly every industry vertical. Chances are good that businesses in your industry sector and members of your board or executive team have worked at companies serviced by TERiX, because we’re among the largest, oldest and most widely available third party maintenance providers in the industry. The datacenter environments of our customers vary widely in specifics, but the common elements are fairly typical for the midsize and enterprise-level business. Usually we see a mix of lifecycles on the datacenter floor, and multi-vendor environments are common too, as are multiple datacenter locations. Some customers are using multiple locations, some have single large datacenters, and some are major cloud hosts with data jungles rather than data farms. The common thread among our customers is that they face challenges brought on by increasing computing needs and shrinking IT budgets. TERiX is just what the doctor orders – delivering value and trusted advisor solutions.

TERiX is a private company. The advantage is that we’re not morally obliged to care more about shareholders than customers like most OEMs are. But a disadvantage for you when comparing vendors is that we don’t publish our financial results.

I can tell you that TERiX is financially strong and that we have been increasing revenues each and every year since our founding in 1997, at an average of 35% revenue increase per year. The company has no debt, great cash on hand, cash flow and open lines of credit. In recent years, TERiX has purchased other smaller companies to increase our service offering, and paid cash for those transactions. TERiX has the financial strength to specifically focus on customers, when virtually every other company in the third party support space must either focus on shareholders, or on paying back investment capital, both of which can distract from the real needs of real customers. Ours is a business that does well in a weak economy because TERiX support reduces bottom line operating costs, but also does well in a strong economy because TERiX support delivers an elite grade of data center hardware support and related services. Beyond this, our service investments in India and APAC have resulted reliable revenue streams as these IT economies continue to become more sophisticated and mature.

TERiX provides “Interoperability” as a written support policy to our customers. It basically means that TERiX understands the nature of service events and their complexity, and that a support partner should not point fingers at other companies when it comes to data center support. TERiX commits to stay engaged and be a collaborative team member toward resolution, representing the things we are hired to support, even if it appears that resolution lies elsewhere with another provider. Interoperability helps avoid finger pointing and reduces resolution time by focusing on solutions rather than blame. We know there will be time to work out the forensics after everything is back up and running, and that the critical factor is your operation, not our convenience.

The latest TERiX maintenance advances are the dividends of several years of development focus on Maintenance Automation. The goal is a small-footprint, unobtrusive analysis/monitor system proactively managing alert conditions before full failure occurs, and preemptively opening tickets based on faults affecting server and storage platforms. Our ProServe offering meets that goal, and greatly streamlines maintenance for customers who don’t want to purchase software or are tired of managing several platforms to address the everyday maintenance needs they have in the data center. TERiX intellectual property and toolsets are a key differentiator not found outside of traditional OEM support offerings; smaller providers are not equipped to deliver a comprehensive maintenance automation solution that can parse storage error logs unattended and open tickets hands-free, or send auto-notifications based on alert conditions with filters chosen by the user. Our strong engineering foundation is an advantage to our end users seeking to spend less time on tedious maintenance management tasks.

Your organization should consider TERiX if you are not receiving the quality of deliverable and attention that you deserve. This would be true whether your current provider is a third party, and also if they are the original equipment manufacturer. Focus on you is key here, as is the technical prowess of certified engineers, best practices in process and tools we have developed for the a better service – better value deliverable, and the experience that comes with 14 years serving large/complex customers. Our culture, is focused to be flexible, fix systems, communicate and update, and deliver quality results inside of the SLA for customers.

TERiX has developed and will continue to develop our own tools and technologies where value can be added to the service delivery process, and in some cases, where it is necessary to protect the intellectual property of others. TERiX support is more like OEM support in this manner, in that the traditional measures of people, parts and process are augmented by specialized tools and technologies. TERiX tools assist in patch management, call-home, configuration snapshots, diagnostics and active monitoring in their use associated with various server and storage platforms. They are available options on some platform support agreements, while on others, they are in-built and included with basic coverage. TERiX solutions are about creating the right service support structure to meet an individual customer or partner need.

In late 2011, the TERiX management team and employees embarked on a company-wide program to deliver heightened benefits for our customers and partners. The program is embedded into all areas of the company, and resulted in a major upgrade of several internal systems including a new CRM and major improvements in the TERiX Ticketing System, as well as formalized training by outside experts in stages across groups. Creating an ecosystem of “TERiX Fans” in our supply chain, internal employee interactions, and most of all our partner and end user relationshios is a key part of our business DNA, and the TERiX Fans initiaitive has placed a renewed focus on our values and culture as a key differentiator in the technology sector.

Yes. At TERiX, products do not have an end to service life. Service Level Agreement support is fully available for new and legacy products. And despite what OEMs might suggest, these products tend to be easy and inexpensive to service because the aftermarket is flooded with parts at the same time that demand drops sharply when an EOSL is announced. In fact, the OEMs aer the ones selling off the certified parts to recoup whatever they can on their production costs.

Few things can are more agonizing for a customer to hear than the OEM telling them that support for their otherwise perfectly capable system is now only available on a time and materials or best effort basis, with the obvious undertone that the system is no longer really supported at all and wouldn’t it be better to drop some unbudgeted IT dollars on replacement machines? In most cases, no, it’s not better. TERiX has the experience, parts, people, market presence, and flexibility to continue to support OEM EOSL systems for as long as you have requirements, with the same SLA you expect for the rest of your data center and most critical production machines.

You will hear this type of comment from many OEMs and not just on storage platforms, but it is a false claim – in some cases VERY false as the OEM themselves may be relying on a third party to deliver the call-home feature. On the other hand, not every third-party maintenance provider understands the rules and plays by them, and violation of the OEM’s intellectual property is a potentially litigious and costly mistake. It is critically important to work with an independent support company that protects the intellectual property of any OEM from infringement, and where necessary, develops and deploys their own products for call-home and other support solutions. TERiX uses its own appliances, never the OEM appliances, and its own management applications – never the OEMs. We built these tools in order to provide storage services that operate with total autonomy from any OEM intellectual or physical property, and these tools deliver call-home, heatbeat monitoring, self-diagnosis and a host of other high end support benefits and features that are on a par with, but completely separate from, the OEM.

False. In fact, the OEMs created and still rely on third party support themselves. Large OEMs wanted to compete for multi-vendor business&em;requiring support for systems made and sold by their competition. Instead of creating their own divisions with engineering resource, parts/logistics, process and intellectual property for each of their conpetitors’ product lines, they wisely looked to outsource these roles to third parties as a cheaper and more effective way to provide a broad range of support options over a large geographic area.

To this day the OEMs rely on ‘behind the scenes’ third party service providers who wear their nametags on those calls, but work for an independent. This is unlikely to change because it lets the OEMs sidestep the need to train their own engineers on competitor products only to lose the people and the training investment to one of those competitors. TERiX doesn’t manufacture any hardware, and doesn’t compete head to head with OEMs; we support a huge variety of servers, operating systems, storage, and networking devices from 30 or more OEMs, and both end users and OEMs continue to rely on us to provide multivendor support. For obvious reasons of competitive fairness, neither the OEMs nor TERiX reveal the details of these arrangements, but the OEMs that tell you only they are qualified to provide support may already rely on TERiX to deliver it. Their main concern then is whether or not they get a piece of the pie, not the quality of the service TERiX can provide.

TERiX serves some of the largest brands in nearly every industry vertical. We serve over 20 large federal agencies of the US Government, 21 large finance and banking firms, 35 of the largest telecommunications companies, as well as many of the largest technology, aerospace, manufacturing, healthcare and education organizations. These businesses demand dependable, cost-effective solutions for maintenance, and expect over-the-top customer service, so TERiX has been focused on delivering a service experience second to none in the industry, whether compared to a third party maintainer or an OEM.

TERiX provides support in the market in 3 segments. First, as TERiX, under our own brand, directly to end-users. Secondly, as the support organization delivering maintenance services through over 160+ channel partners. And thirdly, as the support supplier to large systems integrators (SIs) and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) for their customers.

TERiX measures our performance to first call fix inside Service Level Agreement (SLA) statistics as collected by the Gartner Group, and to parts quality metrics and phone call-back times, onsite arrival times, parts availability and to escalation rate percentages. TERiX statistics exceed those of the OEM and large integrators, and are well ahead of Gartner benchmark averages. Better SLA achievement leads not only to more system uptime but better customer satisfaction as well. So rather than focusing on the contract terms or on a replacement part, we focus on the customer first. The TERiX position is that independent support should be better, not merely cheaper. Our latest metrics are given in the table below.
METRIC: TERiX Industry Average
Hold/Connect time (phone) 17 seconds (1) 55 seconds
SLA met or exceeded 98.62% 88.50%
Field engineer turnover rate 2.8% (2) 7%
Correct part available for same-day fix 98.8% 86.9%
1. All TERiX call centers are US-based and staffed with L1-L3 engineers rather than nontechnical dispatchers. Most problems are diagnosed in the first phone call.
2. TERiX field engineers rarely change, and customers benefit from a service team familiar with their operations and environment.
‘Industry Average’ statistics compiled from Gartner Group Market Focus Survey Reports 2006-2010. TERiX statistics from TERiX internal benchmark performance report 2010.

TERiX serves large OEM and Systems Integrators through our strategic sales division, so seeing TERIX engagement inside of a large vendor offering is not uncommon. Even better, that same TERiX deliverable is available in the US and 48 countries around the world. TERiX has hundreds of customers who are headquartered somewhere other than the U.S. who rely on us 24x7x365 for support. Many are industry vertical titans with a brand that is envied by peers. In short, count on TERiX for strong delivery internationally. Whether you are selecting TERiX through a large integrator, through a US or international channel partner, or directly through TERiX, you are streamlining your support infrastructure and leveraging this volume for added savings.

In a broad survey of end users, OEMs, service levels and independent providers, Gartner Group years ago suggested that third party support was usually 20% to 30% less expensive than OEM on average. But this is a complete generalization that may have nothing to do with the products you need covered or the service level you desire. TERiX can only provide you information on our price and our deliverables. We don’t speak for the OEMs or other companies. What we can tell you is that it is not uncommon for our customers to receive better support and still save significantly on their annual maintenance fees compared to OEM pricing. We view the savings as a secondary result, because our main focus is on service quality and SLA compliance.

Selling on price alone in the independent market quickly becomes a race to the bottom, and when the contract in question is specifically about support service coverage and reliabilty, price isn’t the only factor; if it was, then why pay for coverage at all? No provider will be cheaper than ‘free’, and we don’r We can therefore only give you our price for our services based on your specifications and/or RFP that you can then consider in light of your needs and your knowledge of your current OEM pricing.

TERiX offers a large array of managed services that can add value to the CIO or IT Director who is tasked with more than just hardware and operating system support. The services range from install, move, add and change services (IMAC), to onsite support engineers (ASE), to data center merges, moves, transition and conversion services – as well as disk retention and destruction support. TERiX delivers a world of experience with these programs – at all levels – from management tasks in PMO through execution of deliverables inside of the work action plans.

You can be confident that the same service and deliverables you would receive from TERiX direct are also what you receive when engaged by one of our many channel partners. TERiX partners offer key values because many of them also sell hardware and/or software, or offer additional services that meet your specific needs. TERiX works closely with hundreds of resellers and system integrators who bring significant value-add to the table. For reasons of logistics and other factors, the price points TERiX can offer direct are not automatically lower than those an authorized reseller can offer. We do on occasion find we are in competition with ourselves, and that’s natural and OK because it ensures that we all put our best foot forward and focus on your needs rather than our policies.

Yes it can, and at no additional charge. One of the reports any current customer can run on the TERiX online ticketing system will map their systems by style, serial number, location and coverage level. Though not a replacement for a feature rich asset management tool, it can quickly generate an ad hoc snapshot with value that goes beyond hardware maintenance alone. We can also have the report carry item information for decommissioned or inactive systems, and differentiate between what’s under warranty and what’s soon to come onto your TERiX contract. Your problem sounds like one we hear often and we have multiple solutions based on nearly 14 years in the maintenance business; you can’t support what you can’t find. TERiX customers have tools and capability to avoid some of things you mention, and we’re continually examining ways to make datacenter infrastructure visible to customers. If you’re interested in what solutions may be a best fit for you, drop us a line in the form at the bottom of the page.

Fix First means that for a contracted customer, we will accept calls and tickets on un-entitled or under-entitled systems that customers own but don’t currently have on their TERiX contract, and treat them as if they were covered. Only after the ticket is closed do we seek to address the time and materials charge if needed, and to add that system to the TERiX contract at a desired coverage level. The largest benefit is for companies such as large hosting or other data-intensive, high-hardware-turnover environments, for whom it is often difficult to have inventory identified and rolled on to coverage, especially when changeouts are not predictable in advance.

But more than this, ‘Fix First’ guides our technicians and ensures we put our money where our mouth is; lots of companies say the customer is #1, but we’re the only one that will provide full SLA support to supported customers on unsupported equipment, and postpone the billing until the repair is complete and satisfactory. OEMs can’t do it – they can only directly support their own equipment in the first place, so coverage is an inflexible all-or-nothing proposition in general for most of their clients. Other third party companies won’t do it because of the risk that the repair will be expensive and/or time consuming, and possibly from a fondness for PR sparkle over true committment to customers. Only TERiX has the scope, logistics, engineering teams and financial solidity to safely float that kind of risk across its user base, and while it may increase our costs in individual events, it’s worth it for the goodwill and positive word-of-mouth generated when an errant system is rescued even though it’s off-contract.

TERiX operates in 3 divisions globally, Direct where we are seen as TERiX with our own direct sales force and resource, Channel, where we support companies that reseller hardware systems and can in-build TERiX maintenance with these transactions, and Strategic, where we support large OEM and Systems Integrators (SI). In each division, the deliverable is the same, and a TERiX standard, the difference is the additional values that a customer can received from the added value services in some partner indirect situations as they deem appropriate. TERiX support is used by many OEM and SI for delivery to their customers. If you have needs as an end-user, TERiX can help you, but we can also assist you if you are in the business of providing services to end-users yourself, and require a quality worldwide deliverable on multi-vendor platforms in the data center.

TERiX of course does not sell hardware, new or used, and we are independent from OEM in support of products in the data center, but Oracle statements appear clear that they will not license operating systems or transfer the non-transferable operating system licenses on used systems for customers outside of a rigid OEM controlled process. This may mean that in the case of Oracle, end users can’t achieve the savings they seek by opting for lower cost used systems hardware. You should stick to licensed product, but you may recoup the expense by relying on a third party for hardware support. You could also consider changing hardware vendors for some or all of your server and storage needs, if your software usage gives you the flexibility to so so. In almost all cases, TERiX can provide significant savings for datacenters using Sun hardware or a mix of Sun and other hardware vendors, because we can directly support up to 30 different OEMs at a lower cost, and offer price discounts based on total supported volume, not volumes of single OEM products.

TERiX has many large federal, state and local government customers, as well as many not-for-profit, medical and educational customers who have cooperative purchasing agreements with their local public sector partners. TERiX is registered in OCRA and CCR systems, is in compliance with FARs, has completed Open Ratings Past Performance Reports, agrees to non-appropriation clauses and terms, and understands the special needs and security associated with government customers. Contact us to learn more about who we serve and how we might be able to help you do more with less this fiscal year or biennium.

Yes, in fact TERiX has in country office, personnel, regional stocking locations/depots, and over 40 customers in India currently. Sorry if that information is less visible than other information on our site, but with the work we do in the US, Canada, Australia, Europe and Asia, it is sometimes difficult to determine which bells to ring. Thank you for ringing the bell for India! China and the Asia-Pacific area in general are also very high growth areas for us, as you would expect. The population and technical growth these countries have been experiencing over the past several years is astounding, and we’re thankful we put our roots down in these areas years ago to reap the continuing rewards of a global presence today.

TERiX offers a wide range of flexible service levels that vary by product line to better mirror OEM offerings that are already familiar, and to permit apples-to-apples proporsal review against OEM support. In general they fall into the following categories:
  • Critical Plus (CP2, CP4): These are 7x24x365 with either 2 hr or 4 hr onsite response.
  • Critical (CR4): This support is 7×24 weekdays M-F with 4 hr onsite response.
  • Elite (EL4): M-F 8a-5p local time with 4 hr onsite response
  • Standard (STD, NBD): which provided next business day response
  • Shared (SH): Next day parts and remote helpdesk, lower-cost option for customers that already have certified techs on their own staff and so require less technical assistance

TERiX also has optional service uplifts that offer Call-To-Repair (CTR) services, which guarantee a repair/fix time, as well as onsite resident field engineering and parts options. These combinations can be mixed or matched by customer system type, function or location, all within the same annual support contract. TERiX earns the business of some of the largest brands in dozens of industry verticals because this independence and flexibility can be as important for the large datacenter customer as our service levels and response times that exceed industry benchmarks.

TERiX offers a full complement of network support services at varying service response levels from onsite 7x24x365 to next business day. TERiX support can be procured for routers, bridges, switches, directors and other components from makers like Cisco, McData, IBM, HP and many other manufacturers. TERiX support includes hardware support, and for the advanced needs of some customers, we have options for NOC Monitoring and alerts, as well as remote network reconfiguration with “golden image” stored configs to devices once repaired. These types of services provide just the right focus where production system network uptime communication is core to the customer mission, and extend the limited maintenance options of most network OEMs into a full-service offering.

TERiX provides ticketing system credentials to all of our customers for their use in opening, reviewing, monitoring and reporting on service event tickets. Our sales teams may also provide access for the purposes of demonstration and evaluation to prospective customers or partners. The TERiX Ticketing System is available 7x24x365 and allows for a real-time service interaction on an event basis for system administration and IT teams, as well as a monitoring basis for customer management teams. Of course, we offer toll-free support via phone in the US and many countries, but the ticketing system is the master database for all events and provides the greatest degree of interaction and self-service options to authorized users.

Login credentials are issued in our “Welcome” process along with user manuals and a meet-and-greet process during transition from former providers to TERiX support You can issue as many “sub-logins” under your main account credential as is needed for other staff in your firm.