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1999-04-13
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Cray/Media:Mardi Larson, 612/683-3538
CRAY INTRODUCES NEW SERVICE AND SUPPORT
OFFERINGS
New Offerings Provide Tailored Solutions to Meet
Needs of Cray's Diverse, Growing Customer Base
EAGAN, Minn., January 31, 1996 -- Cray Research, Inc. today
announced the Cray Advantage Service (CAS) Program, a
comprehensive set of service and support offerings for Cray
systems. CAS was created to meet the requirements of Cray's
increasingly broad and diverse base of customers who rely on
Cray(R) systems for a wide range of mission critical
applications.
CAS includes three customer service packages to support the
range of Cray systems that run either Cray's UNICOS operating
system, based on Unix System V, or Sun's Solaris operating
environment. Each of these service packages -- CAS Basic,
CAS Premium and CAS Classic -- address a distinct set of
customer needs. Additional service offerings, such as CAS
SoftCare+ for support of unbundled Cray software, can be
combined with these service plans to offer complete hardware
and software support.
"Cray Advantage Service is aligned with our new, more
commercially focused product lines," said Mick Dungworth,
vice president of Cray's Service Division. "Today, we have a
new breed of Cray users, particularly in the business server
area and midrange technical markets. The requirements of
these customers, their in-house capabilities and cost
structures are different than our traditional users. CAS is a
scalable service program that addresses the full range of our
new and growing customer base."
CAS Basic
CAS Basic offers industry standard hardware and software
services. Support under CAS Basic is coordinated by Cray
Research Call Centers. The package includes remote problem
diagnosis and next-day parts availability. CAS Basic delivers
the fundamental set of services required by many customers.
CAS Premium
This plan continues the Call Center focus and includes the
features of CAS Basic. It also adds an important operating
system support feature: the remote or onsite installation of
operating system updates and upgrades by Cray Research
personnel. This allows customers to reduce their investment
in operating system expertise by having Cray's experts perform
this important task. Four-hour parts availability is also
included with CAS Premium.
CAS Classic
CAS Classic is based on Cray's traditional full-featured
approach to service and support. An onsite Cray Research
software analyst coordinates all service requests for the
system, bringing in appropriate hardware experts as needed.
Through the onsite analyst, all operating system and unbundled
software product updates and upgrades are installed for the
customer. The CAS analyst can perform a number of customer-
directed tasks between service events, providing important
added value to the customer. The CAS Classic package also
includes two-hour parts availability.
All plans include a periodic service review, the Cray Research
Service Bulletin (CRSB) and Cray Inform (CRInform), Cray's
interactive online information and service-request entry
system.
Optional Package Enhancements
Within any CAS package, a number of enhancements are
available that provide longer coverage hours (up to 7-day, 24-
hour support), faster parts response, and onsite field engineers
and analysts. An onsite, after-hours critical support feature
is also available as an enhancement to each of the CAS packages.
Cray said that any CAS offering can be selected for any Cray
supercomputer or business server, but that CAS Classic is
more apt to be coupled with a high-end Cray system and the
less full-featured options with the lower-end Cray systems.
Applications optimization and support from Cray's industry and
computer experts out of the company's Applications Division is
also provided to Cray customers as a part of Cray's
competitive support offering. This applications support,
combined with the new CAS program and Cray's expanded
product line help differentiate Cray in the marketplace today.
Effective today, Cray Advantage Service plans are available for
CRAY T3E, CRAY T90, CRAY J90, CS6400, and all CRAY EL90
Series systems.
Cray Research provides the leading high-performance
computing tools and services to help solve the customer's most
challenging problems.