If you need server support to cover a single server or a complete data centre, our expertise can apply to any platform in your IT infrastructure. With over 30-years experience, as a business, in maintaining a range of systems and our own stock of parts there’s no need to rely on third party engineers or stockists.
Widely recognised as the cutting edge of security and reliability, from small cloud-enabled servers delivering continuous operations, to enterprise mainframes giving you the flexibility and performance you need for mission-critical workloads. IBM’s heritage in the server market is significant and a typical data centre will have IBM hardware spanning multiple generations.
IBM technology empowers clients to create an IT infrastructure for cognitive workloads with servers and storage, so your business can stay resilient in changing times. With this comes the challenge of how to adequately maintain the technology.
With over three decades of providing world-class IBM support, Blue Chip has a deep understanding of the hardware. Our history in maintaining IBM hardware goes back to the eras of AS/400, and RS/6000. We’ve worked on the iSeries, pSeries, xSeries and zSeries families and we continue to look after all these legacy machines, as well as handling the latest IBM Power Systems and Z mainframes.
Backed by manufacturer-trained engineers, we are uniquely positioned to support your IBM servers, whether they are factory fresh or legacy technology.
HPE has consistently raised the bar on server design, squeezing more into an ever-smaller box. Blue Chip has invested in its support capabilities across the HPE product range, including legacy models from the HP era.
Blue Chip has heavily invested heavily in training for multi-skilled data centre engineers and logistics staff on HPE technology. Whether you have a simple ProLiant server, a Cloudline system, a high performance Apollo computing system or a HPE Modular ProLiant server, we have the skills to support you.
If you are using legacy HPE or HP technology, now more than ever we can save you money and increase up-time with our range of qualified services.
For over a decade, Blue Chip has been supporting the complete range of Dell technology. This also includes hardware under the EMC brand, which is still used today on storage equipment.
Dell is renowned for the PowerEdge family of servers, most of which are founded on x86 architecture. Data storage and backup equipment typically comes under the PowerVault brand. Networking kit from Dell is usually branded as Dell Networking, although PowerConnect has been used for network switches in the past.
Blue Chip offers unrivalled maintenance options for Dell’s data centre hardware, covering current and legacy models.
In 2014, Lenovo took over IBM’s x86 server business, achieving a foothold in the enterprise market. Lenovo now offers a comprehensive range of servers with the ThinkSystem family, including rack, tower, edge and blade form factors.
The hardware from Lenovo is widely deployed in data centres for many industries such as financial services, manufacturing and retail. In these areas, there is a need for faster transaction processing, greater grid computing and better data analytics. More than 50% of our client base have an IT infrastructure where these demands are commonplace.
Since 2015, Blue Chip has supporting the full range of Lenovo servers across System x, BladeCenter, and other x86-based server lines. We have the trained engineers and logistical support to provide mission-critical services across the entire range of current and legacy Lenovo data centre servers.
Oracle’s modern-day servers have helped enable businesses to become cloud-ready and able to handle enterprise workloads. They’re acclaimed for their flexibility and immense speed.
Back in 2010, Oracle acquired Sun Microsystems, an IT company who manufactured hardware and components in addition to its core software business.
At Blue Chip, we’re able to support all kinds of data centre hardware from these brands, whether it’s new storage and servers from Oracle, down to legacy kit from the days of Sun.
Server support is critical to the stability of your IT infrastructure as they are an essential component of any enterprise. Today’s businesses rely on their on-premise servers, with any outages or disruptions causing a major decrease in customer satisfaction, employee productivity and of course, company profitability.
Blue Chip is uniquely positioned to support the wide range of servers available from all the major OEMs, with a history which spans over three decades of providing mission-critical support to corporate organisations in their data centres and machine rooms.
With a range of SLAs to suit all business requirements, Blue Chip employs highly-trained multi-vendor engineers, many with a background of working with an OEM. They have access to an unrivalled logistics operation, which ensures the right parts with the right levels of firmware are available around the clock.
In many service incidents, the likely cause of a failure may be due to one or several failing components. Unlike many service organisations, our field engineers have the autonomy to order the necessary parts to deal with a server failure. With a wholly-owned UK-based logistics function, with spare parts stored on site, our engineers will be able to access the necessary items to deal with service incidents.
Our UK-based 24-hour service desk has access to our expert technical team at the time our clients contact us. We are able to understand and diagnose the complexities of a server outage, recommending the necessary parts and ensuring they’re available to the engineering team when attending your site.
Whether your server is a single U-rack-mounted x86 or a complex set-up involving IBM Power Systems, HP ProLiant and others, we have the depth of knowledge and skilled expertise to resolve your equipment outage.
Server, storage and network equipment is covered by third-party IT hardware maintenance, typically managed in data centres or at an organisation’s premises. As ‘third party’ suggests, it is an alternative to the traditional Original Equipment Manufacturer’s (OEM) post-warranty support, which tends to be expensive.
In recent times, third-party maintenance has risen in popularity. It’s more than just the cost savings being made, the lifecycle of your equipment is a vital factor when evaluating your maintenance strategy.
Your hardware is performing without failure and it’s not causing any problems at the end of lifecycle, is it necessary to replace or upgrade?
The old saying ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ springs to mind here, but for customers, there is usually pressure from an OEM insisting that an upgrade or renewal is necessary when systems hit their end-of-life phase. Vendors will often encourage customers to buy new at the end of the lifecycle or if not, they will charge an expensive amount to continue maintaining their existing equipment, which is usually not favourable for the customer.
The main way OEMs influence customers to buy new, is to offer a brand-new system at a broadly similar price to extended maintenance. A customer will most likely invest in a new machine, for that ‘box fresh’ feeling. After all, who wouldn’t want the ‘latest and greatest’?
What makes third-party maintenance attractive, is that once a customer’s equipment reaches the end-of-life date yet is performing well without any issues, they can be provided with maintenance at a much lower cost than the OEM offers.
With Blue Chip, we can consolidate all your maintenance contracts into one simple contract. Many of our new clients had multiple end-of-service dates across various OEMs. This is where we introduced a ‘waterfall’ system. We take on the call management for all the OEM products that will be supported, placing calls with the relevant OEM as required.
At the end of each OEM contract, the supported items move automatically onto Blue Chip support. This process benefits our clients by giving them a single number to call and provides certainty for their support costs.
There is an impressive amount of reasons for businesses to consider this option:
We cover all the above benefits and more. Our multi-vendor expertise means we supply maintenance for multiple manufacturers, covering anything in the four walls of a data centre.
We can also tap into our network of partners to provide consistent maintenance across various European countries and North America. These reasons galvanise the reputation we have as a multivendor maintenance provider.
Blue Chip has been delivering unrivalled hardware maintenance services since 1987. We support many of the UK’s household names and their critical IT infrastructure, keeping these companies’ systems available, so they can keep delivering their products and services.
Over the last three decades, our maintenance division has grown organically and consistently as a result of delivering exceptional service. We’ve expanded our reach both geographically and in the types of hardware supported.Today we support organisations with multi-vendor environments across much of the globe.
We have invested time and energy to ensure our team of affiliates across the globe are as passionate about delivering exceptional break-fix services as we are at Blue Chip. We only build alliances with other third-party maintainers whose service ethos, work ethic and culture are similar to our own.These tried, tested and proven partnerships mean our customers only need to source and manage one single contract with Blue Chip across all their worldwide locations, confident in the knowledge they’re in safe hands.
