Releases

posted on 31 July 2008 12:36

NORTHAMPTON – 28th JULY 2008 – Smartways, a managed IT service provider has scooped the prestigious ‘Asigra Worldwide 2008 Best Practice Leveraging Web Portal award’ – at Asigra’s Partner Conference, 25-26th June 2008 Toronto for version two of their automated Advanced Partner Portal and Touchpoint a secure online backup service.

The TouchPoint Advanced Partner Portal (APP) version two is a secure, web based management system unique to Smartways. This system provides partners with complete control over their customer’s backups and data quotas, therefore allowing cost effective management of this service.

Mike Richards, Managing Director at Smartways commented, “We are dedicated to providing our resellers with the most up to the minute support. Our recent Asigra award confirms that the portal approach is a trend that is gaining increased momentum, we are pleased to be at the forefront of this support network. Version two of the portal now provides even more real time support even when we are not in the office. The Advanced Partner Portal will assist reseller in growing their business and ensures that they have the latest up to the minute support network at the touch of a button.”

The customer network can be visualised through graphs and other statistical information made available through the partner portal. This feature will aid in forecasting the growth of customers’ data and enable to plan effectively for the future. The APP allows easy identifications of customers nearing their quotas. This ensures that more storage space is purchased and that a license key is allocated to the customer, ensuring complete continuity of service.

The APP also provides useful online tools such as the bandwidth analyser and also enables to access SmartStore, a document library that houses the TouchPoint technical manuals, sales literature and other marketing information.

Benefits of the partner portal

* Intuitive and visualised secure management of the partners whole channel /customer base
* Easy provisioning of new customers online, under the partners control
* Simple management the customer backup quotas through a simple interface from a single place
* View storage trends & quickly identify customers with growing storage needs
* Provides useful and innovative sales tools & resources online

The portals revised version has some additional features which are:

· New system user interface

· A number of performance enhancements

· System generated alerts, through email. Notification of daily quota usage, completion and status of backups, to nominated representatives at both the partner and customer locations

· Additional reporting functionality, including,

· Highlights backup sets that have not backed up in 7 days

· Highlights backup sets that encountered errors during their last backup

· Detailed information on accounts, TouchPoint clients and backup sets, including access to connection information.

· Ability to add quotas company-wide, rather than at an individual licence key level

Smartways is a pro-active customer-focused business which is innovative and always looks to deliver sustainable value to clients. Smartways Advanced Partner Portal has allowed TouchPoint to deliver the provisioning and management of complex online backup services at a fraction of the cost compared to having trained systems engineers undertake these mundane administration tasks.

^{[Formatted by Wendy Matthews.]}