Support and hosting — an update
We have some important improvements and simplifications to our Support and Hosting services we want to share with customers, current and future. These changes are due to shifts in the product landscape, the needs of our clients, and our own development.
SysOps
This is our service management function. We do this via the AWS platform, but customers can choose their infrastructure provider; we can manage whichever suits. Ultimately, we manage and support Linux servers and other cloud services.
We’ll do this in two ways, one layered on the other:
- we charge a fixed fee for the basic management of Linux servers; and optionally
- we charge an hourly rate for all other supporting services (see Support below).
We’ll no longer centrally manage the software configuration of Linux servers where there is no supporting services contract, as it no longer sits with the model to hold that level of control over servers that do not belong to us and are not explicitly supported beyond security and backups, yet require direct intervention from Code Enigma engineers for simple configuration changes many customers can do themselves.
We will, of course, continue to manage all other aspects of operating your Linux servers: security, backups, disaster recovery and users on those systems.
Support
Historically ‘Support’ meant looking after Drupal websites, but we’re increasingly completing other duties under support contracts, such as managed DevOps, upgrading custom PHP applications, deployment assistance for other CMS, etc.
We’re also increasingly supporting cloud services, e.g. ‘service based’ products with cloud platforms like Azure and AWS. We cannot sensibly charge a monthly fee for this, so it will now be covered by Support contracts.
Support contracts themselves are simplified. Support will continue to be available on an hourly rate for those outside of contract, but otherwise will be sold in discounted blocks of 5 hours per calendar month, on a minimum annual basis. (You can purchase multiple blocks.) You may also purchase 24x7 support for an additional fee; available on an annual contract only.
We’ll continue to offer Drupal updates on a per month, per site charging basis; we have no plans to withdraw this product. As of Drupal 8, upgrading to future versions will be straightforward, because there will no longer be large breaking changes made to the Drupal core code with each major release. We hope to include complete version upgrades in this service as of Drupal 9.
The team
We’ve done some rejigging and hiring:
Jamie Wiseman, whom you probably know, is now Head of SysOps and responsible for the future direction of our server tech, delivery of service management and ops support. Jamie will still be supported by Emlyn Kinzett and our out of hours team, Miguel Jacq and Adrian Alves, but we’re also hiring a new engineer in Europe to bolster capacity during the UK and European working day.
Dan Smith is taking charge of the Support function, and will be responsible for all ticket triaging and general customer relations, including customers who deal predominantly with the SysOps team. He has been joined by Heather Smith, who dispatches tickets and handles communications with customers.
We deliberately rotate the developers ‘on support’ to aid with knowledge sharing and give people variety, so Andy Martel will not be a consistent face within the support team, but you’ll meet more of our development team and Andy will have a turn again.
