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How Does Mauve's Licensing Model Work?
All Mauve software applications are provided under an Application Service Provider (ASP) model, whereby Mauve provides all of the hardware, software, security, archiving, support and training necessary to allow a customer to implement Mauve applications as turnkey solutions. The only software needed on a PC accessing the system is a standard web browser. Licensing applications using the ASP model allows us to provide customers with the reassurance of our 100% availability guarantee, full details of which are outlined in our service agreement. Charges are made on a monthly basis and cover the following three areas:
Software Licensing
The software licensing charge provides you with full access to all of the functionality of the core application, as well as all standard functionality upgrades that are incorporated into the application over the licensing period. Where a customer requests that additional functionality be incorporated which is outside the scope of the standard application, we will provide a quotation for the inclusion of the functionality, which will cover the development, testing and training on the use of the newly incorporated functionality.
Hardware Licensing, Monitoring and Data Archiving
One of the keys to ensuring that Mauve software applications are available all day every day is to ensure that all of the hardware and network infrastructure used to host the applications meets our strict requirements for security, reliability and availability. In order to ensure maximum security, each customer's license is hosted on its own dedicated hardware, which includes separate web and database servers. Each server is shadowed by a mirrored server and all data is automatically backed up every 30 seconds. All backups are mirrored to a secondary network operations centre, allowing us to restore availability of service in the unlikely event of network failure. In addition to automated backups, all data is archived off-site on a daily basis.
Our network infrastructure is also based around ensuring availability all day every day, hence our choice of two separate, independent Tier 1 network service providers. All hardware (including servers, firewalls, routers and network switches) are owned by Mauve and reside within our dedicated data centres in central London and Fareham, protected by multiple firewalls to prevent any unauthorised access. To allow us to provide our 100% availability guarantee, all of our servers are monitored 24 hours a day from four separate locations across the UK and US, with instant alerts being raised via SMS and e-mail to our customer service team, to ensure that we can take the necessary action to resolve any problems as quickly as possible.
Support and Helpdesk Services
An integral part of ensuring that our customers can extract maximum value from the application is to ensure that our Customer Support Team are on hand to provide full assistance either by telephone or e-mail or (by separate arrangement) on-site support. Our support and helpdesk service covers every aspect of using Mauve applications, using all functionality made available within the application. Examples of areas commonly addressed by our support team include:
- Setting up users with access to the system
- Placing and processing orders on behalf of individual customers or stores and providing assistance to individual customers or stores to allow them to place orders
- Adding details of individual promotions and distributions
- Importing and exporting data from the contact centre or the catalogue and setting up profiles
- Setting up the stock management area of the catalog to allow or restrict access to specific groups of stock items
The support and helpdesk charge also incorporates an allowance for up to three additional training sessions within a calendar year, over and above that which is provided as part of the initial set-up.
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