Enterprise Support Subscription

What is an rSmart Support Subscription?

The rSmart Support Subscription is a contract between rSmart and the client that defines service level agreements, warranties and obligations under which rSmart performs its software support and maintenance services. To ensure a consistent, efficient and reliable support experience to our clients, rSmart regularly provides supported distributions of Sakai software to you so you don't have to maintain your own distribution of Sakai. All this is done for an annual support subscription fee. Click here for pricing.

We offer two support subscription packages: Premium and Standard. The distinctions between these support packages are outlined in the table below.

What is included in Standard and Premium Support?

 

Premium

Standard

An rSmart -certified open source Sakai software distribution (rSmart Sakai CLE)

This includes the packaging, documentation, configuration tools, enhanced UI, and testing required for a professional software release

X

X

Bi-monthly service pack updates

X

X

Regular maintenance releases

X

X

Unlimited multi-tier software support and trouble-shooting assistance

X

X

Unlimited functional support and assistance

X

X

Ongoing Sakai development

Our fixes, changes and enhancements made to the rSmart Sakai CLE flow back into the community release of the software as part of our support processes

X

X

Intellectual property assurances

We stand by the IP contained in our Sakai distribution. We ensure continuitity in the remote case of any usage disruption due to IP issues. 

X

X

Access to technical and functional experts

X

X

Access to use the rSmart Support Network (RSN)

RSN is our web-based personalized support portal that includes a self-help knowledgebase with over 1000 articles, hundreds of pages of professional documentation, product tutorials, templates, tools, and other useful resources

X

X
24/7 Support for Severity 1 issues X Hosted Clients Only
24/7 Support for all issues X  
Live, "high touch" support response*
Includes:
  • Phone call acknowledgement and confirmation of support tickets
  • Verbal updates throughout the ticket resolution process (in addition to the online updating that normally occurs through RSN)
  • Contact your support rep through phone or chat for live ticket status updates
*Only available during business hours		 X  

Maintenance of three Sakai environments

Production, Development and QA environments are set up and maintained as part of our Premium support. This includes periodic data refreshes on development and QA instances.

X

 

Beta Tool Limited Support Program

Sakai has many tools that are on the leading edge of development and innovation. Often, before these tools are ready for full-scale production usage, they can be deployed in limited "beta" use. rSmart supports these tools for beta use in a limited way. Read more about the tools covered under this program and the SLA here. With each release rSmart updates the list of beta tools it covers under this program.

X

 

Why "Supported" Open Source Software?

With the traditional model of vended software, upgrades are costly and finding help is difficult. Vendors have little incentive to improve the software between major releases, and support is often an afterthought. The problem is that the vendor controls the investment, so the vendor determines how fast to improve the software and where you can turn for support. Open source changes who is in control. As a result, rSmart is focused on providing great software support - because this is what we sell.

rSmart’s support gives you peace of mind because we are accountable for the ongoing performance, stability, and reliability of Sakai. rSmart already provides this “insurance policy” to diverse educational institutions around the world. We understand the demands of education IT as well as the benefits of open source in education.

What are the benefits?

More Details about our Sakai Support

rSmart provides Tier 2 and Tier 3 support based on a three tier model as described below. Tier-1 support is described for reference only.

Client Provides rSmart Provides
Tier-1 Support:

Tier-1, or 'front line' help desk, provides 24/7 end-user point of contact support. rSmart does not provide this service directly. Our clients either offer this service through internal staff or by engaging a firm that specializes in Tier-1 help desk support. rSmart has partnered with Embanet to provide Tier 1 support to our clients, though we can work with any Tier-1 support provider you choose.

 Tier-2 Support:

Tier-2 support is staffed with business analysts, subject matter experts, and consultants. The Tier-2 support team deals with technical and functional issues. The team diagnoses, troubleshoots, resolves issues, and escalates issues to Tier-3- maintaining direct management of all cases

Tier-3 Support:

Tier-3 support is staffed with engineers, DBAs, and architects. The Tier-3 support team resolves exceptionally difficult issues, assists the Tier-2 team with defect resolution, and provides backup to the Tier-2 team as necessary to achieve desired service levels.

 

Scope of Coverage:

We Support:

  • Installation
  • Functional usage
  • Configuration
  • Troubleshooting
  • IP assurance
  • Bug fixes
  • Multi-server and load balanced configurations
  • Authentication system integration
  • Information system integration

Do Not Support:

  • Code development
  • System and network design
  • Implementation and development of security rules and policies
  • Backup and recovery
  • Community developed tools not included in our release (though talk to us about our tool "beta" programs)

*Add on services are available for the above exceptions: Please contact an rSmart sales or service representative for more information