An Enterprise Architecture is not only about robust engineering and servers. Fundamentally it is about serving people and their business endeavours.  In this last instalment, we take a look at what Enterprise support really is, and what you should demand from a managed WordPress hosting company.

Enterprise WordPress Support

In order for support to be considered Enterprise-grade, it needs to adhere to certain standards. Below is a list of the absolutely essential ones that you need to keep in mind when researching solutions.

Dedicated support team

Enterprise support means having a dedicated expert team just for your account and not having your tickets randomly assigned to support agents currently on rotation. A dedicated team knows your infrastructure in detail, provides superior follow-through and communication.

Quick incident response

Response times that are over 15 minutes for critical issues are absolutely unacceptable.

24×7

It goes without saying, a support service that advertises itself as Enterprise and is not 24×7,  is neither an Enterprise one nor does it provide the adequate support. Outages and problems, unfortunately, don’t observe business hours. In fact, their favourite times are Friday afternoon, Christmas Eve, and your kid’s birthday.

n-Tier support

The central characteristic of all Enterprise architectures, as we’ve previously discussed, is the division of the infrastructure into multiple tiers. Naturally, Enterprise-level support should cover all of them, from the web-server, to your database, and not just your WordPress site.

Security threats and prevention

Outages and software problems, unfortunately, are not the only issues that may threaten the stability of your infrastructure. Security incidents should be detected early, responded to swiftly, and dealt with efficiently. You should be kept updated with all the latest developments. You should demand full transparency to what has happened, what is happening, and what the engineers are doing right now in order to address the issue. After the issue is over, the engineers responsible for your account should present you with a full post-mortem analysis.

Backups and Disaster Recovery

Enterprise support means being there for you even in the worst of times. It means being able to manage even the highest of risks. Backups should also be kept in offsite locations, in cases of extreme weather phenomena whacking out local power grids,  sharks biting off transatlantic cables, and yes, even  (small) asteroid impacts.

Our developments

In Enterprise architectures,  application integration and update management are crucial areas. Companies that offer DevOps support enable you to deploy faster and without mistakes. No one should be left “high and dry” while experiencing bottlenecks, performance issues, and general integration mishaps. Enterprise accounts cost money and they should deliver their worth.   The engineers working on your account should be able to know your infrastructure inside-out, provide a thorough technical analysis of the problem and a list of possible ways to address it.

How we do work at Force WP

All our support is provided through a 24×7 ticketing system (accessible via the Force WP Portal or by sending a mail to support). We also provide live-chat or phone support. You will be talking to the same engineers that built the Platform. There is zero escalation.  We take pride in achieving under 30 minutes of average response time in non-critical issues and under 5 for critical ones.

We also go beyond “mere” system administration-level support, providing unique technical insights to your software problems, since we are developers ourselves. We do query analysis, we pinpoint bottlenecks, we resolve performance issues, we fix integration hiccups, the works.

Transparency and communication

We covered a lot of ground in the previous weeks,  and definitely there are a lot to consider when researching potential Enterprise solutions. Aside from the technicalities, we feel that the most important things that one needs to consider are transparency and communication.

Transparency means being able to get detailed and honest answers for every possible question you may have. Communication means getting those answers when you need them, and feeling that you have communicated with an actual human being that listens, and not with a robot. Transparency and communication are the bedrock of Enterprise support.  Without those, there can be no true liability.  And without liability, there can be no trust, and ultimately, no enterprise.