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In an era of ever-increasing competition, a device manufacturer’s service organization
can be the key differentiator that drives customer loyalty and profits. The challenge, of
course, is to deliver high-value, margin-rich services to an increasing percentage of
your customer base while keeping tight control of service operations costs.
Simply adding headcount—more technicians, service representatives, and field engineers—
has proven to be an expensive and unwieldy method for scaling a service
organization. Time zones, language barriers, and a shortage of trained local service
personnel only add to the challenge if a manufacturer has expanded into global
markets. At the same time, end customers are expecting higher levels of support as
devices become increasingly sophisticated—and prolific.
Questra TotalAccess™ helps solve these problems by providing secure remote access
over the Internet to devices deployed at customer sites. Ideally suited to environments
demanding rapid response and problem resolution, Questra TotalAccess enables
remote service personnel to view, troubleshoot, diagnose, and solve problems on a
device as if they were on location at the customer’s site. This secure “anytime,
anywhere” access features remote desktop control, file transfer, and application
tunneling capabilities that let you run existing diagnostic tools remotely. The result is
fewer on-site service visits, shorter problem resolution times, and reduced overall
service costs.
Questra TotalAccess can be deployed as a standalone solution or in conjunction with
Questra SmartMonitor™ and Questra SoftwareDirector™. Questra TotalAccess can
also connect to your enterprise applications, creating an end-to-end solution that
maximizes the potential of existing software investments.
Questra IDM Application Suite™
Complete remote access capabilities. Questra TotalAccess
features three remote access capabilities to enhance your
services offering and drive down costs.
- Remote desktop enables service personnel to view and
modify device settings from any location with Internet
access. Remote desktop can also streamline telephone
support processes by reducing your dependence on
customers to identify and explain symptoms. Problem
resolution times and costs can be dramatically reduced
by initiating remote “site visits” that either eliminate onsite
visits altogether or reduce their length by ensuring a
technician arrives with a correct diagnosis and replacement
parts.
- File transfer permits service personnel to upload or
download files for troubleshooting, thus eliminating your
dependence on customers to send log files or other
diagnostic information to your support center.
- Application tunneling (via serial port, IP, and telnet
emulation) gives the ultimate in flexibility. Field service
technicians don’t need to be on site to run their diagnostic
applications. Rather, they can deploy proprietary
diagnostics tools over a secure Internet connection,
thus maintaining compliance with existing support
processes and leveraging your organization’s investment
in existing tools.
Customer control over remote desktop permissions.
Questra TotalAccess supports features that allow end
customers control over access by remote service personnel.
- Customer must explicitly initiate, allow, or deny access,
and can terminate a connection at any time
- An audit trail of network access attempts is visible
to customers
Security that meets industry standards. Questra
TotalAccess sets up a SecureLink™ connection between
devices on a customer’s network and the IDM server on your
network using strong, industry-standard Internet security
technology. It requires no modification of network security
policies and causes no security breach on your customer’s
network.
- Communication initiated from behind customer firewall
- Connections made to manufacturer IP address only
- Communication encrypted using SSL with bi-directional
certificate authentication
- VPNs and dial-up connections not required
Rich Internet Application (RIA) user interface. Questra
TotalAccess leverages RIA technologies to offer a user interface
that combines the ease-of-use of a desktop application
with the manageability and deployment convenience of a
web-based application. RIA ensures smooth navigation
between support tasks—from responding to alerts to remote
troubleshooting—for greater service operations productivity.
Scalable, high-performance architecture. Questra’s IDM
solution architecture is designed for scalability, reliability,
and ease of deployment to support large device populations.
Optimized, high-performance features ensure best use of
hardware and network resources.
- Support for server clustering eliminates single points of
failure and increases reliability
- Support for hardware-based load balancing enhances
performance
- Status tracking for servers and connections ensures
connections remain up
Integration with Questra IDM Application Suite. Questra
TotalAccess is integrated with the Questra IDM Application
Suite, and thus leverages all relevant features available to the
entire suite.
OPERATING SYSTEM
Questra TotalAccess Server: Windows and Unix
Questra Service Agent: Windows and Unix
WEB SERVER: Microsoft IIS, Sun ONE Web Server, Apache
DATABASE: Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server
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Intelligent Device
Management (IDM) is the
proactive management of
remote devices in real time
over the Internet. With IDM,
device manufacturers can
transform their service
operations from reactive to
proactive, reducing costs
and delivering high-value
remote services that drive
customer loyalty, increase
profitability, and change
customer relationships. |
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