TeamKCI Extending the Life of Legacy Citrix Equipment
What do you do when the manufacturer of high technology networking products stops supporting the products it manufactured?
The manufacturer’s answer is simple: Replace your current equipment. While this is the simple answer, it is also the expensive answer. Dealing with End-of- Life and/or End-of-Support issues are time consuming. It requires studying the market for replacement alternatives and retraining staff. Plus, there are always operational issues with a hardware change that result in the migration to a different operating system. Not to mention the added expense of purchasing replacement hardware.
That’s where TeamKCI comes in. TeamKCI provides premier quality support, that extends the life of technology, so its clients can continue to use the legacy technology equipment they have invested in for as long as they choose to use it. Allowing each customer to decide the useful life of their equipment on their own time-table, rather than the manufacturer’s.
Established in 1982, TeamKCI has evolved as a leading third-party maintenance provider of legacy hardware platforms. The company that initially earned its reputation by supporting early era channel switches has grown into a global leader that supports networks, connectivity, storage and servers; delivering award- winning support at dramatically reduced prices.
TeamKCI delivers high quality support services utilizing the diagnostic tools built into each NetScaler Application Delivery Controller (ADC), Load Balancer and Gateway to keep customers’ legacy networking gear working efficiently. Providing the quality that customers expect from a Citrix NetScaler product at a significantly lower cost.
For almost thirty-nine years TeamKCI has been a strategic maintenance partner to some of the largest financial institutions, Telco’s, manufacturing concerns, and government agencies in the US and around the world.
A Citrix NetScaler success Story
Not long ago a major manufacturing company was using 139 routers, ADCs, and load balancers manufactured by Citrix NetScaler. Citrix had already announced that all of the products the customer was using were either end of life or end of support. Prices were high, even with discounts. That’s when they called TeamKCI.
Through a well-executed migration plan TeamKCI maintained the customer’s NetScaler inventory until all the legacy NetScaler equipment was retired and saved the customer $2,300,000 in maintenance charges over a three-year period.
Networking Not Just Citrix
In addition to maintaining Citrix NetScaler equipment TeamKCI’s network support portfolio includes Brocade®, Cisco®, F5®, Juniper® Palo Alto®, Fortinet®, Riverbed®, Arista®, Blue Coat® and Extreme® networking products, and storage manufactured by NetApp®, EMC®, Hitachi®, IBM® Netezza®, SolidFire® and Synology®. And, far too many server types to list.
As their brochures and website tout TeamKCI offers top quality support for aging network infrastructure at prices that are up to 70-90% below the manufacturer’s list price.
Whether you are around the corner or around the world, TeamKCI support is always nearby. According to Founder and CEO Jeff Klein, “We’ve built a world-wide support ecosystem in the US, the UK, the European Union and the Pacific Rim by constructing an intertwined network of field support offices, test labs and remote stocking locations that support over 7000 machines in over 400 locations.” And, Klein adds, “we continue to grow by staying focused on our core business and our customers’ needs.”
The Secret of Our Success
The secret of our success is simple: “Every service call is important. We stay with every call until the repair is complete. When everything is done, we follow-up, listen to our customers, and we always treat them with courtesy and respect”, says Wayne Duglin, TeamKCI Executive Vice President and Chief Technical Officer.
Where applicable, TeamKCI uses the dial-in and call home features built into Citrix equipment including Citrix NetScaler ADC 11515 product page to diagnose and triage problems in minutes rather than hours. Many times, notifying customers before they even know they have a problem.
Parts are tested twice before they are shipped to a customer location. And, all parts are stored locally.
TeamKCI engineers do more than just change parts, they have operational knowledge of the firmware that drives a machine. While TeamKCI does not provide firmware updates – only the manufacturer can do that – TeamKCI assists customers with advice on operational software issues when necessary.
TeamKCI takes pride in its institutional technical knowledge and its approach to maintenance.
A Customer Success Story
Back in 2012 when Hurricane Sandy hit the east coast of the United States a major customer coincidentally had a critical switch burn out. Roads were flooded, trees were down and there were gasoline shortages everywhere. Knowing that the switch had no power even though it had two power supplies TeamKCI deployed a customer service engineer with a spare machine. When he arrived at the customer location, the parking lot was flooded and cars were not allowed to enter. Our customer service engineer then took off his shoes and socks lifted an 18 lb switch above his head and wadded through the flooded parking lot to the building entrance. The name of the engineer who walked through the flooded lot, switch held high over his head, is Frank Krause, now TeamKCI’s Director of Field Services. When it comes to field services, Frank has set the standard for years.
Other Articles to Read: TeamKCI Extending the Legacy Citrix Netscaler Equiptment
It is not surprising that over 50 of the top 200 companies in the country depend on TeamKCI’s field support for maintenance, networking issues, installations, consolidations, configuration management as well as for hardware upgrades and standard maintenance support.
Conclusion
“We have cultivated our reputation one service call at a time over the course of many years with a simple set of goals – do it right, do it efficiently and make sure the price is right.”, says Jennifer Campbell, TeamKCI’s Vice President of Marketing. The company was even awarded a “Supplier Recognition Award” by Verizon for Outstanding Performance in IT Services. https://www.teamkci.com/kci-awarded-verizon-2011-supplier-recognition-award/
In a time of shrinking budgets, when corporate management demands ever more services at a lower price, TeamKCI is the cost-effective, comprehensive support choice for today’s modern data centre. As Klein likes to say, “TeamKCI is today’s company for yesterday’s equipment.”
| TeamKCI is the premier award-winning third party maintenance provider. |