PCA Maintenance and Support Services
We recognize that your day-to-day business relies on your custom database system, so at PCA we take Client support very seriously.
PCA Maintenance and Support Services are provided to all Clients — to ensure that your custom database solution continues to meet your day-to-day business needs
with the fewest potential disruptions, and to ensure that your custom database solution remains current with ongoing technology updates for the shelf-life of your investment.
Support Services Overview
Following project completion and final Client-acceptance, and production deployment of the new system, PCA requires a separate,
12-month Support Services Agreement to accommodate minor refinements of and potential bug-fixes to existing application functions and capabilitiesthat
result from production use of the new system during the first year. PCA Support service fees are typically calculated at 20% of the total project cost.
Support services following the initial 12-month “bake in” period of production use are optional.
Our standard Support Services Agreement outlines all engineering and consulting services included and not included within our standard
support services, and includes a Service Level Agreement (SLA) that defines support protocols, response times, and escalation procedures.
PCA ProjectCentral Support System
Every PCA Client has access to “PCA ProjectCentral” — which serves as the single system-of-record for managing support requests to PCA.
Your team will use Project Central to enter and track requests for support, bug fixes, enhancements, etc. The PCA staff will not see any of these
request until your Project Manager approves the request and assigns the appropriate priority and status.
Everyone on your team can enter new tickets into Project Central; only your designated PM can assign new items to PCA.
Access to the ProjectCentral Support System is included within every PCA Smart Client solution — this is an integral component
of our
Smart Client Foundation System —
—
and ties your system directly into PCA's engineering development, testing and project management environment.
Maintenance Services Overview
Annual application maintenance services are required for the entire production life your system, and are calculated at 5% of the total project cost.
Maintenance services are necessary to keep your system components up-to-date, compatible and serviceable with ongoing commercial releases, patches,
bug fixes and minor updates to Microsoft SQL Server Database, the Microsoft .NET framework, any 3rd-party components and controls used in the system,
and the PCA Smart Client libraries. PCA is not able to service or support custom systems that are not on an active Maintenance Agreement.
Standard PCA Maintenance Services include nightly source-code builds, regression testing and associated component updates and
remedial engineering necessary to keep your application running properly. To preempt potential issues with your system, PCA may release
“maintenance updates” of your system from time to time.v>
We often try to include maintenance updates in combination with any new enhancements
you may request, as this is a more efficient and cost-effective approach.
Maintenance services may appear less visible to you than support services — we perform this work proactively, and without your request — to insure that
your investment is maintained as a current, up-to-date technology asset, and to make any enhancements to the system more cost-effective to implement.