For most applications projects cooperation does not end after the implementation. Since Capsys systems are among the financial institutes’ most important ones and have a lifespan of at least 5 years, their continuous development, improvement and ensuring their smooth running while getting rid of bugs, is of primary importance. Moreover, the existence of proper support agreements is a prime topic at the IT security audits of financial institutes.

IT Operation Support’s task is to handle problems requiring a developer’s skills or some in-depth knowledge of businesses and application technology, except for actual development jobs.

This service is offered to assist the applications developed by Capsys and, being special IBM partners and widely recognized experts at operating databases, also to support the Informix Database System, and some third party applications (especially in cases in which a full preliminary overview and taking over the development of the application is possible).

The reports arriving in Capsys’ own ticketing system (Support Center) are dealt with by experts and developers with in-depth knowledge of UNIX, Informix SQL, Java, the applications, etc. There is an annual limit on the effective service hours included in each support contract, and the support personnel is an stand-by as agreed in the service level agreement. Since the introduction of Capsys Support Center’s ticketing system in 2002, there has been over 8000 reports  by clients with support agreements.

The Support service is generally provided through remote access (VPN) from Capsys’ offices (a separate operators’ room) or, when necessary, on-site, at the client’s premises.

The default language of the service is Hungarian, yet it may be English or another language specified by the service agreement.

Availability varies by contract, it can be anything between 8/5 and even 24/7.

Within that, there is daytime operations period (normally at 08:00 – 17:00 hours on workdays) and standby period (availability except the daytime operations period), when only serious incidents are dealt with.

Operative advantages:

• Single-point communication
• Uniform operation and reporting
• Consistency and business continuity
• Risk sharing
• Vertical integration
• Separated Level One, Level Two, and Level Three support
• Controlled environment in line with the bank’s security requirements (access control, visibility, etc.)
• Focus on core activity

 Financial advantages:

• Increasing economy of scale
• Increasing efficiency
• IT allocated to cost centers
• Decreasing overhead and infrastructure requirement

Quality advantages:

• Distribution of peak burden and bottleneck risk
• Availability guaranteed in Service Level Agreements
• Transparency, clear responsibility
• Uniform quality assurance

The following tasks are performed within support framework:

• Event handling (immediate revelation of phenomena rendering the operation impossible, elimination of problem)
• Operative support (detecting effects of operational errors, correction)
• User and operator support (answering questions from key users or Level 2 operators arriving in the ticketing system or over telephone)