Cloud Computing Strategies for the CIO
Customers complained about it for years; some even switched to alternate providers because the support was so bad. But it looks like Amazon Web Services might have turned a corner this week by announcing support services
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that include real people answering your calls instead of, well, no one.
The cloud computing giant also slashed the price of its premium support fees by 50%, upping the ante for overall cloud pricing again. The new Amazon Web Services (AWS) support plans are as follows:
• Bronze - $49 a month for business day technical support, with response times ranging from twelve hours to one business day.
• Silver - $100 a month or 5% of the total monthly AWS usage (whichever is higher) for business day technical support, with response times of four business hours for higher severity issues.
• Gold - $400 a month or 5%-10% of monthly usage for around-the-clock support and response times of one hour for urgent issues.
• Platinum - $15,000 per month or 10% of the total monthly AWS usage gets you 15-minute response time for critical issues. This plan includes a named technical account manager (TAM) to your account and your tickets will receive "white-glove" routing, jumping ahead of queued tickets entered at the other levels. AWS says it will respond to critical tickets within 15 minutes and urgent tickets within an hour.
"Your TAM will work with you to conduct reviews of your AWS usage and performance on a regular basis, and they'll also help to ensure that you are ready for new launches. They'll even be available to participate in meetings as you request. You'll also get guidance on best practices and on the use of new AWS features," said the AWS blog. [Ed note: Eat your heart out, IBM Global Services.]
AWS competitor Rackspace, which prides itself on a promise of "fanatical support" to all its customers, as well as GoGrid, Joyent, Terremark, Savvis, and well, almost every other cloud provider out there, offer 24/7 email and phone support, with different levels of service for phone support.
In other words, AWS is at long last catching up on this crucial issue.
Jo Maitland is the Senior Executive Editor of SearchCloudComputing.com. Contact her at jmaitland@techtarget.com.
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