sparc
It is perhaps best to begin by describing what the SP active response centre or sparc as it is referred to technically isn't, it isn't a helpdesk or support service. To describe it as such would be a grave disservice to the concept and service that it provides.

The sparc concept was born of frustration, frustration at the poor standard of service, which was offered by support desks in the security market. Our engineers who were completing on average three separate installations a week were often complaining about the level of support that they received from our suppliers when diagnosing unusual faults or software flaws. They were frustrated that they would spend a large amount of time explaining a problem to a first line engineer who would be unable to assist them offering only to have someone 'call them back'.

Often the communication would stop there and no call would arrive, but if it did there seemed to have been no prior knowledge transfer and our engineer would have to explain the same scenario, in the same detail to another engineer. Only after this second call could any meaningful fault fixing work begin.

The time elapsed between these first and second calls seemed to be the only factor supported by a service level agreement, convenient when in 80% of scenarios our engineers had fixed the problem themselves between the two calls. This level of support begged the question "why did we pay up to 30% of the product costs for support that only solved our problem in 20% of occasions?"