Case Study · CovrEDGE Maintenance
Growing Insurance Compan Enlists Edgeium to Handle Their Support Contracts.
A leading insurance company was growing -- both organically and through acquisitions -- and profits were increasing. With growth came a challenge the IT team couldn't solve alone: it had become next to impossible to get a comprehensive view of maintenance coverage across all their Cisco assets. They called on Edgeium to sort things out.
Scattered throughout the company's many locations were dozens of contracts, each with different termination dates. While many worksites were facing the need for network expansion, other sites had been downsized or divested -- putting the company in a position of paying for coverage it no longer owned and was no longer using.
The company's previous approach had been to engage the OEM and renew coverage based on the most recent renewal. However, in the wake of acquisitions and managerial turnover, this approach was causing maintenance costs to soar. Cisco's End-of-Sale and End-of-Support announcements compounded the problem, further squeezing CapEx and OpEx budgets.
"It had become cumbersome and time-consuming to not only figure out what items were renewing on what date but whether or not we still owned the asset. If so, where did it reside within the network? Each year my team would look at between 30-40 Cisco contracts consisting of hundreds of items."
"It was a never-ending problem that just seemed to compound itself year over year," the network manager said.
Edgeium quickly identified the key issues:
- Managing multiple contracts was eating away at the company's time and resources
- Paying for coverage on gear that was no longer in the network or owned by the company was a direct drain on profits
- OEM-forced upgrades, due to coverage no longer offered, had wrested control of the purchasing decision from the company
- There was an immediate need to clarify built-in network redundancies and appropriate SLAs for each site
It's not uncommon for companies to have multiple SLA requirements for hardware in different parts of their network. Remote and branch offices often require markedly different SLAs than corporate data centers or global headquarters. When a company has a 24-hour call center -- as this one did -- there is yet another dimension to the challenge, requiring an even more robust service agreement to ensure the center is able to provide excellent customer service at all times.
With deep industry knowledge and a cutting-edge approach to understanding and documenting the current estate, Edgeium was able to identify major savings. During the process, complexity was reduced, opportunities for improved coverage were identified, unneeded coverage was eliminated, and excessive charges were cut.
Knowing the company would be able to capture instant savings, Edgeium deployed certified used hardware -- averaging 75% off list -- alongside CovrEDGE Maintenance, its proprietary warranty and service program. Working alongside the company's technical team, Edgeium executed a four-step process:
Site inventory and documentation
A detailed inventory of each site was performed, documenting current SLA coverages, types of hardware, and employee headcounts. This revealed coverage assigned to hardware that no longer existed at multiple locations.
Critical Nature Rating
Each site was assigned a Critical Nature Rating on a scale of 1 to 5 (most critical to least critical). The 24-hour call center was rated differently than downsized regional offices, ensuring SLA tiers matched actual operational requirements.
Network mapping
A network map was built for each site, noting the number of employees, port counts needed, current hardware installed, and protocols. Analysis revealed network redundancy that had been built in but never accounted for when choosing SLA tiers.
CovrEDGE deployment
Edgeium sorted the capabilities of the existing hardware, identified equipment needed for full network redundancy, then sourced and provided hardware as needed. A customized multi-year contract was structured with site-specific SLA tiers.
How Much Can I Save with Third-Party Maintenance (TPM)?
The 57% figure here is a blended reduction across the company's entire maintenance estate -- not just the access layer. Core infrastructure hardware remained on OEM SmartNet where it genuinely warranted it. The savings came from moving access-layer switches to CovrEDGE TPM, eliminating coverage on hardware the company no longer owned, and right-sizing SLA tiers to actual site criticality.
That blended number is important context. CovrEDGE typically delivers 85-90% savings on access-layer switches specifically -- $792 per year in SmartNet costs versus approximately $114 per year with CovrEDGE. When those savings are averaged across a mixed estate that includes some core hardware still on OEM support, the overall reduction lands lower. For this company it was 57%. For organizations with a higher proportion of access-layer hardware, the blended number is higher.
The honest answer to "how much can I save" is: it depends on your mix. That is exactly why Edgeium starts every CovrEDGE engagement with a site-by-site inventory -- to give you a real number based on your actual estate, not a marketing estimate.
The customized multi-year contract enabled the company to escape OEM-mandated maintenance cycles entirely. The IT team regained control of the purchasing decision, and the network manager was no longer spending weeks each year reconciling hundreds of line items across dozens of contracts.
For many network managers, tracking and managing support contracts can be unwieldy, especially in growing, far-flung operations. The pattern is consistent across industries: healthcare networks, restaurant chains, manufacturing operations, energy companies, legal firms with multiple offices -- any organization that has grown through acquisition or expansion without a systematic approach to maintenance contract management.
The indicators that you may have the same problem:
- Your team spends more than a few days per year reconciling maintenance contract renewals
- You are not certain which hardware at which sites is covered under active contracts
- You have locations that have been downsized, sold, or consolidated in the last three years
- Your current contracts were set up by someone who is no longer with the organization
- You are renewing based on last year's renewal rather than a current asset inventory
About CovrEDGE
CovrEDGE is Edgeium's proprietary third-party maintenance product for Cisco, Meraki, Aruba, Juniper, Arista, and Brocade network infrastructure -- founded by the team that first brought Cisco third-party maintenance to market.