Table of Contents

Cisco NSA
Work with Industry Experts
NSA Entitlements
Audit Services Part Numbers

Network Supported Accounts (Enterprise)

The Cisco Network Supported Accounts (NSA) program provides access to the full set of the Cisco support and development resources during the life cycle of your network, from planning through operation.

This program was designed for companies:

• Anticipating fast network growth

• Struggling to close the expertise gap

• Requiring maximum uptime and performance

Customers choose NSA for a number of reasons:

• Burdensome communications due to decentralized internal support

• Costly network redesign and redeployment due to inflexible network designs

• Lack of control and awareness of the current state of the network due to size and extent of change in the network; typically these customers have lots of data but little information

• Increased demand to maximize return from their networking investment

• Inconsistencies in deployment of hardware and operating software due to incremental and decentralized growth

• Time sensitivity that requires intensified preventive care

Network Supported Accounts complements your SMARTnet, SMARTnet Onsite or SP Base support contract by providing your entire Information Technology (IT) team with access to the Cisco support network through a designated engineer serving as a single point of contact. This engineer uses weekly contacts, advanced monitoring technology and regular audits to ensure that he or she has the information needed to provide preventive consultative support. They bring the entire Cisco support network to the table to drive optimum network performance. From software version consulting and design reviews through performance engineering, NSA provides Cisco premium support to your network.

The value of any network can be reduced to three simple criteria: availability, performance, and return on investment (ROI). You are now not only responsible for keeping that network up and running but also for lowering cost of ownership and increasing ROI. NSA helps you meet that challenge, augmenting your staff`s ability to plan, design, implement, and operate your Cisco network by providing expert consultative support over the full range of issues you might encounter.

With NSA you will:

• Deploy advanced network technology faster and with less risk

• Manage and operate your networks at optimum uptime and performance

• Get more out of your network budget by avoiding unnecessary hardware upgrades and network redesigns

Cisco NSA

When networking technology advances faster than the speed of business, many companies worry they will be left behind. Cisco NSA delivers the personalized, proactive, and consultative support that companies need to stay competitive. NSA supplements the standard Cisco support offerings by providing designated network consulting engineers who work closely with companies` internal network design and operations groups.

NSA delivers LAN and WAN network consulting to companies that require rapid network deployment and problem resolution. This end-to-end, network-level Cisco support program increases the reliability of the network by providing access to Cisco networking experts, design reviews, network audits, and deployment services. Increasingly important among the support programs are network audits. Cisco Net Audits provide the capability to baseline and measure the overall stability of nodal resources and internal networks. And audits enable NSA to deliver maximum network performance. As a result, it maximizes the performance and availability of a variety of networking environments. The Cisco NSA program is Empowering the Internet Generation.

Work with Industry Experts

Cisco, the global leader in networking, designed NSA to enable companies to work directly with Cisco industry experts. Each account is assigned a designated engineer who provides a two-way conduit for information to and from Cisco technical support, consulting, and development engineers. The NSA team members are all development-level engineers who are either Cisco Certified Internetwork Experts (CCIEs), certified through the most highly respected networking certification program in the industry, or WAN networking or technology experts.

Through direct access to current network topology maps and configuration information provided by internal network operations teams, network stability data from audits, and daily network activity details through Network Analysis Toolkit (NATkit), the NSA team can function as a virtual extension of the engineering staff of a company. The NSA engineers stay current on the networking environment of each company, and they provide individual staff members proactive and consultative support.

NSA helps companies remain at the cutting edge of business by enabling them to deploy new technology as it becomes available. Also, because NSA engineers have intimate knowledge of companies` networks, many potential networking problems can be avoided. If critical, time sensitive issues do arise, the NSA engineers are able to use this information to assist the Cisco technical assistance center (TAC) in resolving issues quickly and completely.

With this level of expertise, companies are able to spend less time worrying about the network and more time making it — and their business — work for them.

NSA Entitlements

The NSA program includes:

Direct access to an NSA designated engineer

CCIEs, WAN experts, networking technology-specific experts

Direct knowledge of customer environment through customer knowledge database including architecture, design, topology, configuration, problem history, tools, procedures, projects, and staff

Flexible access by phone, e-mail, or pager

Steady engagement, including:

• Daily review of network activity and error conditions

• Weekly conference calls including technical support case reviews

• Quarterly onsite reviews

• Proactive interaction

• Consultative projects

• Change management support

• Network design services — design review and consultation, including network planning, deployment, and implementation

• Net audits (customers may select any two of the four available audits)

• Router Stability Audit Report

• WAN (BPX, IPX, IGX) Switch Stability Audit Report

• LAN (Catalyst) Switch Stability Audit Report

• ATM (LS1010) Switch Stability Audit Report

• Network Analysis Toolkit

• Proactively collects and reports pertinent network data

• Captures critical transient information from network instantly

• Performance engineering services — performance evaluation and monitoring strategies, system tuning and capacity recommendations, and protocol optimization

• Cisco IOS deployment services — selection and deployment of the appropriate releases of Cisco IOS software for customers` unique networking needs

• Migration plan review and deployment standby

• Facilitation of network problem resolution — working with the TAC, NSA helps expedite the process through increased awareness (our detailed customer knowledge database enables rapid, complete resolution) and oversight

Audit Services Part Numbers

Posted: Wed Sep 27 05:16:13 PDT 2000
Copyright 1989-2000©Cisco Systems Inc.