Introducing Corso Care
The Corso Systems team has worked with many clients across more industries than most people can name! And while every project is different, the one common need is support. Most businesses need tech support for hardware and software, backups and disaster recovery management, architecture and design guidance, as well as custom training for teaching their operators how to use required tools most successfully. In fact, Corso Systems can even support how your internal controls and maintenance staff take long term ownership of your systems.
Corso Systems has developed many custom tools for our clients and our team over the years. Moving forward, we are building support into our proposals. Now you will have the peace of mind that you will have access to industry-leading technology when working with Corso Systems.
Corso Care’s five tiers tailor the level of support to exactly what our customers need. Since we want all of our customers operating on a foundation of best practices, the most important and mission critical pieces are included by default in every tier of Corso Care.
Corso Care Copper
Our base level support package includes some of the most important pieces of the support puzzle. We want you to know when there is an issue before you need to track it down. Corso Care’s Copper tier provides access to a general status page for your system, and access to regular backups of your system for disaster recovery.
Software and Hardware Discounts
Corso Care customers at all levels receive software and hardware discounts on anything purchased through us, where we can pass along discounted pricing from our vendors.
SCADA, PLC, Database, OPC Server, Networking, and Other Status Notifications
Without monitoring tools, the way we usually hear about problems with an automated process is a phone call informing us that “the system is down”. This leads to—at the very least—a few minutes of diagnostics to understand what that means. Is the Ignition SCADA server down? Is a PLC offline or faulted? Did someone push an E-Stop and there isn’t an easy way to figure out where that happened?
With Corso Care’s system status monitoring tool, we can now skip directly to solving the issue. We monitor your Ignition gateway, every PLC and device connection, database connections, OPC Servers, network hardware (when possible), and any other item with a status signal. If something goes offline, we will generate an alert for you and your team so you know when and what is amiss.
Corso Care Copper will include our system monitoring tools for notifications on your devices and your network.
Corso Care Silver
System Status Dashboard and Reports
Similar to any modern cloud-based SaaS system where you can see the status of various services at any given time, we’ve created a system status dashboard using the inputs and notifications from our monitoring tools. On this dashboard, you can see everything in your system at a glance and dig into any events that may have occurred.
This information is also available as a report that can be sent out to your team or viewed at any time.
System Backups and Disaster Recovery Documentation
Periodic system backups will be configured for ongoing disaster recovery management. For even greater peace of mind, these backups can be easily stored on servers other than the ones running your SCADA implementation.
We can also set up database backups ensuring you will not lose data in the event of an outage.
In addition to backups, we will also provide a set of disaster recovery plan documents. They will guide you through the exact steps to get the system back into running order no matter what happens—even if you have to start with new server hardware.
We will also take daily development backups on any work we are doing along with point in time backups before we make any changes to a live system, including PLCs.
Quarterly PLC and Other Hardware Backups and Disaster Recovery Documentation
In addition to the backups included in Corso Care’s Copper tier, with Corso Care Silver we will backup your PLCs and any other hardware on a quarterly basis. We will also manage your disaster recovery documentation so you get the peace of mind and know that your disaster recovery plan will always be as up to date as possible. These backups will be in addition to our standard automated SCADA backups and point-in-time backups during any development we are doing for you.
Corso Care Gold
For projects that need more than the standard offering, get even more peace of mind with Corso Care Gold.
Dedicated Mobile App
You’ll have access to our Corso Care Mobile App to monitor your system at a glance. You can also choose to receive push notifications for any relevant items in your system.
Notify Your Corso Systems Support Staff
In addition to the notifications provided by Corso Care Copper, we can integrate your notification engine into our communication channels. We will get real-time notifications for any issues—and start addressing them as they happen.
At Corso Systems, we use Slack for all of our internal communications and have secure hooks into our system. We’ve been monitoring some of our clients’ systems this way for years. Many times we are able to resolve issues and inform a customer of an outage and resolution before they have even recognized any issues.
We also utilize the Corso Care Mobile App to receive real-time push notifications on our mobile devices.
System Analytics Dashboards and Reports
On larger systems, it isn’t enough to just know that everything is connected—you also want to know about performance. Is your Ignition Gateway hitting critical memory levels? Are your PLC communications overloaded? Do you need to consider beefing up your servers? Now you’ll know before there’s a major problem.
Our system analytics dashboards and reports take our status dashboards even further giving you real-time analytics into your system’s health.
Software and Firmware Updates
We’ll provide information and guidance for software and firmware updates for all your systems—with relevant vendor agreements in place of course! We will advise you when you need to upgrade now, or when it makes sense to wait until a more convenient time to upgrade.
Monthly PLC and Other Hardware Backups
In addition to the backups and disaster recovery documentation included in Corso Care’s Silver tier, with Corso Care Gold we will backup your PLCs and any other hardware on a monthly basis in addition to our standard automated SCADA backups and point-in-time backups during any development we are doing for you.
Corso Care Platinum
In addition to everything in Corso Care Copper, Corso Care Silver, and Corso Care Gold you will receive:
Dedicated Support Staff
With Corso Care Platinum, you will have direct access to your dedicated Corso Care Support Specialist. You will be able to talk to the same person every time. They will have detailed knowledge of your system—including any previous support issues. They will help get you back up and running as quickly as possible by pulling in the right resources for the problem at hand.
Weekly Automated PLC Backups
We will automate your PLC backups on a weekly basis in addition to any point-in-time development backups. Get the ultimate peace of mind for disaster recovery.
White Glove Software Updates
In addition to our update analysis from Corso Care Gold, we will test any new updates in our development environment to determine potential impacts to your system and report on any anomalies. Once we have verified that the updates work properly, we will work with you to schedule a time to handle the updates for you. Once complete, we will send out an all clear with a status report on your system.
Advanced Analytics and Analysis Tools For Your Network and Process Health
We will use our advanced analytics and machine learning tools to regularly analyze your network, process, and equipment health. These tools help us expose issues like security vulnerabilities, preventative maintenance you need to be doing, and estimated time to failure for equipment. You will gain a better understanding of your entire system—and where it might break before it shuts you down.
Corso Care Vibranium
If you want more support, we are happy to offer Corso Care’s Vibranium tier. We will develop custom support solutions to meet your needs, no matter how complex. These solutions can include (but not limited to) items we’ve provided in the past:
SLA Agreements for System Uptime
On-Site Support for Production Operations
Custom Training Solutions for Operators, Maintenance Staff, and even Controls Technicians and Developers
Digital Twin Implementation with 3d Graphics and Map-based SCADA solutions
Overall System Optimization for existing systems
Process Engineering Support to help you understand and streamline operations
Advanced Software and Hardware tools for process and quality monitoring
Corso Care Vibranium will encompass anything you can dream up! Corso Systems is here to save the day!
Wrapping Up
As process control systems get more complex, proper support is more important than ever. When you are trusting your business to technology, it helps to have a trusted partner to make sure the technology is doing its job properly.
Corso Care leverages everything we have learned about supporting the world of manufacturing and wraps it up into a convenient package.
You don’t even have to use us for the project itself. We can apply Corso Care to an existing system so you can immediately take advantage of our system status dashboards and notifications. Of course we’d love to work with you on the projects as well.
If you have any questions about Corso Care and how we can implement it at your facility please let us know!
