Definitions

General Definitions

GEN : Global Enterprise Networks Limited, GENTelecom Limited or any other group company owned and operated by the GEN Partnership. 

HelpDesk : The online HelpDesk Portal available at https://support.gen.net.uk

Portal : The online Customer Portal available at https://portal.gen.net.uk

GENZone or GENX : The flagship Secure Email Platform available online at http://www.genzone.net

Acronyms

SAS : Secure Access Services - Bringing Enterprise Class Endpoint Protection to VPN access.

SIP : Session Initiation Protocol - Often used to refer to Voice-over-IP Telephony. 

IAX2 : An Asterisk Communication Protocol which is faster, better and more secure than SIP. 

Firewall : A device or service which places a physical or logical block between the Internet and the Intranet or Extranet. More advanced (Stateful) firewalls actually examine network traffic and use rulesets to block or allow based on content. Very advanced firewalls further enhance protection by using machine learning to identify and terminate sessions that whilst allowed appear to be unusual. 

VPN : A Virtual Private Network is a protocol that allows secure connections between Local Area Networks over the Internet. A VPN allows inter-site communications both voice and data to be achieved with security. 

Internet : If you don't know what this is then stop reading here. 

Intranet : The Local Network (LAN) at a business either a single network or a group of networks all managed locally. 

Extranet : A Wide area network separate from the Internet. Large companies use Extranet's to distribute data. 

VLAN : A Segment of a network that is logically isolated from other parts of the Local area network. VLAN's can be used to segment traffic between departments, or by types of data. 

Ticket : In the HelpDesk every request made to us is assigned a unique reference sometimes referred to as the "Ticket" and takes the form of PXXX-XXX, GXXX-XXX or TXXX-XXX where P = Provision, G = General and T = Termination and XXX is a number. Tickets are considered "Statements of Work" within our Framework Agreement which governs all service requests accepted and undertaken. Tickets can be accessed by the customer at any time and a history is maintained and can be exported. For customers with fixed case contracts they can easily see cases used and remaining along with a detailed history of work done. 

Framework Agreement : In our industry we receive many hundreds of requests for support daily and these are widely varying in scope and complexity. In the days when we required a signature for every job this meant there was a significant delay in providing support so about a decade ago we decided to have a Framework Agreement which is brought into force when customers subscribe to our services either via a Support or Outsourcing Agreement or Pay-as-You-Go via the Helpdesk and all work is regulated within this framework agreement meaning we can begin support immediately in the understanding that any out of coverage support will be charged at either our standard rate or a negotiated in advance rate either for fixed price or T&M. Our Framework Agreement is available in the Policy Section of our website. 

Service Level Agreement : See below

Outsourcing Agreement : Outsourcing is the process of taking your IT support directly from us either completely or partially, either fixed price, variable price or pay-as-you-go and with coverage terms from 12 to 60 months. Outsourcing not only saves cost but provides a far superior level of service because your receiving the collective benefit of our experts to solve any problem encountered instead of localised support personnel with more limited experience. Outsourcing can work for small business, SME, Corporates and Enterprise Customers with specific strategies for each. For more information visit the Outsourcing section of our website. 

Clusters

You will often hear our technicians refer to clusters by their name, such as your site is hosted on XXXX and for completeness we're listing the main clusters (a collection of physical or virtualised machines working as one). 

DAUNTLESS : Linux based Application Services Cluster

DAEDALUS : Windows Based Hosting Cluster

FARPOINT : Linux based Application Services Cluster

RELIANCE : Linux based Email Security Services Cluster

DAKOTA : Linux based Hosting Services Cluster

EXCELSIOR : High Performance Big Data Cluster

VALIANT : Linux based Services Cluster

VOYAGER : Windows (.net) based Application Hosting Cluster

ENTERPRISE : Linux based Storage Services Cluster

ARCHIVE : Linux based Storage Services Cluster

DEFIANT : Linux based Security Services Cluster

RELATIVITY : Secure Messaging and Services Cluster

Services

First Line Support

This is basic support and troubleshooting on Windows, Linux or Mac and includes activities such as adding/removing printers, setting up applications, fixing issues with email clients, fixing issues with browsers, installing antivirus software, solving issues with file shares, drive mapping and so on. 

Second Line Support

Taking over from Basic support, Second line includes solving more complex yet common issues with security, antivirus, registry as well as remote support to resolve issues with Applications, compatibility, peripherals, Drivers, as well as some diagnostics of hardware and software. 

Third Line Support

When an expert is required to resolve issues that have been uncorrected by either First or Second line support. This includes software coding, debugging, advanced registry issues, startup problems, Application hosting problems, Virtualisation issues, snapshot restores, clones, etc as well as data migration and recovery. Some third line support will need to be carried out on site or hardware will need to be shipped back to our regional service centre to be worked on depending on urgency. Third line is the most advanced and covers everything not covered by first and second line. Whereas in first and second line technicians have a broad spectrum of skillsets, third line tends to be more specialised with technicians being highly skilled on just one system, language or platform providing the best possible route to fix. 

SLA - Service Level Agreements

Whilst no one wants to wait for service, the urgency of response as well as the time to fix can be engineered to a particular customer's requirements through the use of Service Level. For example, our base Service Level (SLA1) is 48 hours response and fix which for non-urgent issues is fine and for out of contract customers is the default SLA, whereas SLA12+ is a 1 hour response, and a 4 hour fix 24/7 which is required by customers who's businesses depend on systems and services running 24/7. We do actually have a higher service level SLA14 which includes 10 minute response and 1 hour fix but this is seriously expensive and only taken up by two of our enterprise customers and requires shifted staff to be on-site 24/7. 

Your Account Manager will discus the various Service Level Agreements available and will assign the correct one for your business needs to any Service or Outsourcing Agreement.

E&OE

Whilst we do our very best to ensure all the content on our website is accurate and up to date, this is a fast changing industry and people are fallible meaning that we can't guarantee everything is absolutely correct. E&OE actually stands for Errors and Omissions Excepted or more plainly, if we messed up we're sorry but don't hang us for it.