Lifesize Maintenance Service: Changes to Gold/AMS Policy now in Effect
VideoCentric’s Gold level of support & maintenance for Lifesize is a value-added service based upon the Lifesize Assured Maintenance Services (AMS) – a suite of services for your Lifesize Conferencing solutions that helps you protect your investment and ensure optimal performance throughout the life of your products.
When purchasing a Lifesize room system (as with any other mainstream Video Conferencing system), you are required to purchase a level of maintenance to cover you for faults, support, software upgrades/bugs or hardware replacement. Following years, the maintenance plan is optional, however customers are encouraged as always to ensure their systems are covered throughout their lifetime for continued protection.
What’s Changed?
Since the 1st August 2016, a Lifesize Video Conferencing room system, such as the Lifesize Icon or 220 series, must also have an active maintenance plan for it to be paired to the Lifesize Cloud. An Icon or 220 series system will loose connectivity to the Cloud if it does not have a valid support service maintained. This is to ensure that the conferencing room system stays up to date with software, which is necessary to ensure the Cloud service can also work as expected, alongside ensuring that your organisation is entitled to helpdesk support from VideoCentric and Lifesize.
As mentioned above, in year 1, a full maintenance service must be purchased with your system. However for subsequent years, you now also have the option to maintain your system under a basic software only plan (Silver, that includes support, software maintenance and cloud pairing, but removes the hardware replacement feature. It must be noted however, that once moving to the software only plan, the plan can not be upgraded again to cover the hardware in the future.
So although maintenance is optional for the years following the first year of purchase, it has now become mandatory if you wish to keep your systems connected to the Lifesize Cloud, due to changes within Lifesize’s AMS policy.
What if my support contract expires?
Should your maintenance contract expire, you will no longer be eligible to receive any support services and will no longer be able to access the Lifesize Cloud from your system. It is then at Lifesize’s discretion as to whether a customer can purchase a maintenance contract after the expiry date, and if so, the customer may have to pay a fee and demonstrate the system is in proper working order, at their own cost. So it is now more important than ever to renew your contract before the expiry date – have a chat with your account manager at VideoCentric for more information about your expiry and how to ensure you don’t let this contract lapse.
Hardware not covered – what happens if it breaks?
If your solution is covered by the basic software only plan, or if you have let your maintenance contract expire, it will not be possible to return your Video Conferencing systems through an RMA if it goes faulty. You then have two options:
- An out-of-warranty replacement programme
Enables you to trade in your existing Video Conferencing system and purchase a refurbished system (contact us for more details) - Purchase a new Video Conferencing system
For more information on the above, or to discuss your Cloud & hardware contracts, please contact your VideoCentric account manager today.
