Maintenance & Support

Yes, ongoing support is essential for AI systems for several reasons:

• Security maintenance: The threat landscape constantly evolves, requiring regular updates to protect your system and data.
• Performance optimization: AI systems need regular tuning as usage patterns and data volumes change.
• Model accuracy: AI models can experience "drift" over time as the real-world data they encounter changes, requiring periodic retraining.
• System updates: AI frameworks, dependencies, and components receive important updates that add features and fix bugs.
• Technical debt prevention: Regular maintenance prevents small issues from compounding into larger, more costly problems.

Without proper maintenance, AI systems can become less accurate, less secure, and less efficient over time, significantly reducing their business value and potentially creating risks.

The optimal retraining frequency depends on several factors:

• Rate of data change: Industries with rapidly changing data patterns (like consumer trends or market conditions) typically require more frequent retraining than stable domains.
• Volume of new data: If your organization rapidly generates new data, more frequent retraining can incorporate these valuable new examples.
• Performance monitoring: We implement monitoring that tracks model accuracy and alerts when performance begins to degrade, triggering retraining when needed rather than on a fixed schedule.
• Business criticality: Models supporting critical decision-making often warrant more frequent retraining than auxiliary systems.

For most business applications, quarterly retraining provides a good balance, but our Premium and Enterprise plans include continuous performance monitoring to determine the optimal retraining schedule for your specific models.

Our comprehensive security updates include:

• Operating system patches: Regular updates to the underlying OS to address known vulnerabilities.
• Framework and library updates: Security patches for AI frameworks, libraries, and dependencies.
• Vulnerability remediation: Fixes for any identified vulnerabilities in your specific system configuration.
• Authentication system updates: Improvements to access control mechanisms to maintain security best practices.
• Encryption upgrades: Updates to encryption protocols and implementations as standards evolve.
• Security configuration optimization: Ongoing hardening of system configurations based on evolving best practices.

All security updates are carefully tested in a staging environment before being applied to your production system to ensure compatibility and avoid disruption.

Response times for critical issues vary by support plan:

• Essential Plan: Next business day response for all issues, with acknowledgment within 4 business hours for critical issues.
• Premium Plan: 4-hour response guarantee for all issues, with 1-hour response for critical issues affecting core functionality, available 24/7.
• Enterprise Plan: Custom SLAs based on your specific requirements, with options for as fast as 15-30 minute response times for critical systems.

Critical issues are defined as problems that prevent your AI system from functioning or pose a security risk. Our response includes initial assessment, immediate mitigation steps, and transparent communication about resolution timelines.

For clients with Premium or Enterprise plans, we also offer proactive monitoring that can often identify and resolve potential issues before they impact your operations.

Yes, we've designed our support plans to be flexible and scalable as your business and AI usage evolves:

• Upgrading: You can upgrade your support plan at any time, with the new service level taking effect immediately upon processing.
• Downgrading: Plan downgrades can be made with 30 days' notice, typically taking effect at the next billing cycle.
• Customization: All plans can be customized with additional services or adjusted SLAs based on your changing requirements.
• Seasonal adjustments: For businesses with seasonal variations in AI usage, we offer temporary plan upgrades during peak periods.

We recommend reviewing your support needs quarterly to ensure your plan aligns with your current business requirements and AI system usage patterns. Our account management team can help assess whether your current plan remains optimal for your needs.