Section 5 - Ongoing support/maintenance
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Objective - 5.01 Given a scenario, understand organizational personas to best position F5 solutions
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**5.01 - Determine buying powers, influencers, and purchasing cycles**
https://partners.f5.com/
This blueprint topic is related to choosing the correct answer for a
scenario type of question. You will determine the stake holders in
purchasing decisions for F5 products. Review the battle cards for
products located on the Sales Play link on the partners site. These
battle cards contain information on how to identify your target customer
and stake holders for specific F5 products.
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https://partners.f5.com/solutions/f5-sales-plays
**Partners Sales Play Site**
A sales play is designed to help F5 Channel Partners position F5
solutions for a specific customer need. Each sales play includes a set
of materials designed for training that will prepare and help you
position F5 solutions that will drive an end-to-end sale. The content of
the sales play includes the sales playbook, customer facing deck and
other associated documentation such as whiteboards, demos and/or
collateral to help support the sales pitch.
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https://partners.f5.com/Portals/4/Partner%20Central%20Assets/Solutions/Sales%20Plays/Solutions_Sales%20Plays_DDoS%20Protection_Battlecard.pdf
**DDoS Battlecard**
Learn more about selling F5 Hybrid DDoS and share the value of F5 as the
only single-vendor who seamlessly integrates on-premises DDoS solutions
and cloud scrubbing services. F5 delivers complete DDoS coverage with
our BIG-IP appliances in the datacenter and Silverline DDoS Protection
managed services. This flexible, hybrid, solution combines granular
threat detection with always-on or on-demand high mitigation capacity in
the cloud. Companies also benefit from 24x7x365 expert monitoring and
support to augment resources when under a volumetric attack. Discover
and leverage the tools for selling F5 DDoS solutions and help your
customers stay ahead of the fight against DDoS.
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https://partners.f5.com/Portals/4/Partner%20Central%20Assets/Solutions/Sales%20Plays/Solutions_Sales%20Plays_WAF_battlecard.pdf
**Web Application Firewall Battlecard**
Learn more about showing prospects the value of F5 Web Application
Firewall capabilities. Share BIG-IP ASM the #1 most deployed and #1 most
effective WAF in class to solve critical app security needs on prem. and
across hybrid cloud. For tier 2 apps on prem. and cloud-based
applications, share Silverline Web Application Firewall designed on
BIG-IP ASM for complete app protection managed by a 24x7x365 SOC team
for prospects without IT resources. Share the combined F5 Hybrid WAF
solution offerings to cover all apps enabling no app left unprotected.
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**5.01 - Distinguish needs of buying powers and influencers**
https://business.linkedin.com/sales-solutions/blog/sales-trends/2018/08/what-are-influencers--and-how-do-they-affect-the-b2b-buyer-s-jou
You cannot expect that you are the only one that has influence on the
buyer in your prospective customer. There are many different
influencers. This article from LinkedIn has a great perspective of how
influencers can impact your sales opportunities.
**Influencer Impact at Each Stage of the Deal**
It’s important to understand how various influencers affect your deal at
different stages of the purchase process. While it is impossible to
distill this to a one-size-fits-all mapping, we can make some useful
generalizations.
An effective practice is to review the type of content buyers seek at
each stage of the purchase journey and map these content types to the
field of external influencers. After all, content is simply an
information vehicle, just as influencers are an information source.
In the early stage, buyers usually seek out thought leadership and
educational content. As such, they will consult external experts who can
inform their understanding of top issues and trends during cursory
research. These could include analysts, subject matter experts, and
thought leaders. As a result, top-of-funnel prospects might come to the
table with preconceived notions they gathered from one or more industry
influencers.
*Early-Stage Influence Takeaway:*
Become familiar with respected authorities in your niche and keep a bead
on their content or social media updates to better understand viewpoints
and perspectives that might be instilled in your prospects.
Prospects in the middle stage want to evaluate and narrow down their
options. At this point, they consume more product-specific content along
with case studies, comparisons, and evaluation guides. According to
research by Influitive, nearly 90% of buyers are influenced by customer
testimonials during the purchase decision.
When consulting internal influencers at this stage, prospects often call
upon those can help evaluate both business and technical details, such
as IT and engineering. For external perspectives, they might turn to
respected peers, partners, and customers of the vendor under
consideration.
*Middle-Stage Influence Takeaway:*
Customer testimonials and peer reviews are key as buyers begin to narrow
their options and gravitate toward a decision.
In the final stage of their journey, buyers need to validate their
purchase decision. They vet their choice through content such as demos,
total cost of ownership, and ROI calculators. It is common at this point
to again enlist the input of peers, partners, and existing customers.
Additionally, buyers will seek to generate consensus on the purchase
committee, and throughout the organization. So, lower-funnel prospects
might be influenced by operations colleagues, technology stakeholders,
user-level team members, and the finance group.
*Late-Stage Influence Takeaway:*
Expanding your own influence across the buying committee and in other
relevant areas of the organization can help solidify consensus.
*Position Yourself to Swing the Balance in Your Favor*
In addition to decision makers, hidden influencers can hold sway in the
ultimate purchase choice. They can impact whether a large deal is
awarded to you or a competitor — or whether the status quo prevails.
Failing to build strong ties to even one of these influencers could lead
to the collapse of important deals.
The more connections you establish within and beyond a prospect’s
company, and the more you interact with these people on social media,
the more fully you’ll understand how various decision makers and
influencers work together.
This approach empowers you to make the most of influence arriving from
any direction.
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**5.01 - Recommend training/enablement based on operational needs**
https://www.f5.com/services/training
**Training and Enablement**
Customers will normally need training and enablement on the F5 solutions
that they are utilizing in their environments. You should be aware of
the available training and how/where to access the different types.
*Instructor-led courses*
F5 courses are available in multiple training facilities across five
continents. Each one combines instructor presentations, classroom
discussions and interactive labs. The hands-on learning environment
helps provide a fast track to accomplishing your goals.
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*Subscription training*
F5 offers Subscription based training delivered as e-learning. Each
e-learning module contains:
- Conceptual video: a quick introduction to the feature, including
recommendations with tips and tricks
- Requirements, process overview, and detailed content
- A curated list of related resources
*Free online training*
You can use the self-paced Getting Started series of free, web-based
courses to learn how to deploy F5 solutions to address your most common
application delivery problems:
- Securing your web applications
- Scaling, securing and optimizing your DNS infrastructure
- Implementing a unified, context-aware, policy-based solution for
access to your corporate network resources
- Directly manipulating and managing your application traffic to align
with your business rules
Each course lasts about 45 minutes and provides a thorough introduction
to the solution and what it feels like to configure and operate it in
the real-world.
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Objective - 5.02 Given a scenario, determine when to engage appropriate F5 employees
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**5.02 - Utilize SMEs during technical activities**
There will be times where you will need to leverage the an F5 subject
matter expert (SME) who has a deep understanding of the F5 products.
When performing a Proof-of-Concept for a customer or if you are trying
to size an F5 product to fit the customers environment, you will need to
work with the F5 account team and local Systems Engineer. If you are a
partner trying to gain knowledge about how an F5 product or function
works you can engage the Channel SE in your region for more information
or enablement training.
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**5.02 - Determine when to advise a customer to engage F5 support**
A sales SE needs to determine the appropriate action plan or resource to
engage for F5 support. For example, if the customer has an issue during a Proof of Concept
(POC) or other presales activity, then the local F5 account manager and
F5 Field Systems Engineer (SE) should be engaged, but if a customer has an
implemented F5 solution and they are experiencing an issue, the sales
engineer will need to understand how to advise the customer to open a
support ticket with F5.
There are multiple ways to open a support case with F5. You can
review them here in this link: https://support.f5.com/csp/article/K2633
https://www.f5.com/pdf/customer-support/guidelines-and-policies-ds.pdf
*Scope of Support*
F5 offers several support options, so you can be confident your
organization has the level of care it needs, when it needs it.
*Maintenance agreements*
All F5 products come with a one-year manufacturer’s hardware warranty
and a 90-day software media warranty. Technical support is limited to F5
products with active support contracts.
*Contract support levels*
Annual support agreements are available for Standard hours, which
includes 10x5 support, or Premium hours, which includes 24x7 support.
Expedited RMA Services and Maintenance Add- On Packages are also
available.
*iRules and iApps support*
Standard and Premium support include F5 iRules scripting language and F5
iApps template assistance. Standard iRules and iApps support provides
basic troubleshooting help for customers with active Standard support
maintenance contracts. In addition to Standard iRules and iApps support,
Premium support includes validation, troubleshooting, and functional
analysis of scripted iRules and iApps templates.
To receive assistance with short-turnaround script creation requests,
use the iRules OnDemandTM service, which can usually handle a request
within one business day. For assistance with iApps templates, use the
Consulting OnDemand service, which usually handles a request within one
to two business days.
You can find additional resources for iRules assistance and iApps
templates at the F5 DevCentral online community. DevCentral includes
tools and techniques to help you build solutions with iRules and the F5
iControl API, enabling applications to work in concert with the
underlying network. You can also find new supported iApps templates that
are flexible and easy to use for deploying and managing application
services.
*Installation*
For comprehensive installation assistance, you can purchase on-site
installation services through F5 Professional Services or your local
authorized F5 reseller. F5 Technical Support does not provide remote
installation services.
*Professional Services offerings*
For assistance with planning, design, deployments, upgrades, migrations,
optimization, and application verification, contact F5 Professional
Services. A consultant will provide a detailed quote that includes a
comprehensive Scope of Work (SOW) statement.
*Network Support Centers*
F5 Network Support Centers are strategically located for partners and
customers in the Asia- Pacific region, Japan, Europe, the Middle East,
Africa, and the Americas. Regionally located support centers enable F5
to provide support in a number of languages through native- speaking
support engineers who are available when you are, during your business
day. Globally dispersing Network Support Centers allows for cases to
truly “follow the sun,” which means Network Support Engineers are
available to provide help when you need it.
*Case Severity Definitions and Response Times*
All F5 Network Support Centers uphold the following case severity
definitions and target response times to ensure that the appropriate
resources are used to resolve all technical issues as efficiently as
possible.
F5 will endeavor to respond to Severity 1 issues within one hour.
Understanding that unforeseen events could delay attempts, F5 expects
that most Severity 1 issues will be responded to within this service
level.
Initial response is defined as the time from when the F5 case was
created to when a Network Support Engineer first attempts to contact you
for troubleshooting, then updates the case log to reflect this action.
+----------------------------+-----------------------------+----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| **Severity 1 (Urgent)** | **Site Down** | Software or hardware conditions on your F5 device are preventing the execution of critical business activities. The device will not power up or is not passing traffic. Security issue—Critical business impact due to an attack or vulnerability. |
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| Initial Response: 1 hr | | |
+----------------------------+-----------------------------+----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| **Severity 2 (High)** | **Site at Risk** | Software or hardware conditions on your F5 device are preventing or significantly impairing high-level commerce or business activities. The device is in degraded state that places your network or commerce at risk. Security issue—Severe business impact due to an attack, vulnerability, compliance, or data at risk. |
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| Initial Response: 2 hrs | | |
+----------------------------+-----------------------------+----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| **Severity 3 (Medium)** | **Performance Degraded** | Software or hardware conditions on your F5 device have degraded service or functionality for normal business or commerce activities. Network traffic through the device is causing some applications to be unreachable, or operate in a diminished capacity. Security issue—Potential or partial business impact related to mitigation, audit results, or vulnerability. |
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| Initial Response: 4 hrs | | |
+----------------------------+-----------------------------+----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| **Severity 4 (Low)** | **General Assistance** | Questions regarding configurations “how-to.” Troubleshooting non-critical issue or request for product functionality that is not currently part of the current product feature set. Security issue—General security-related questions and/or concerns which are not related to an immediate need. |
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| Initial Response: 24 hrs | | |
+----------------------------+-----------------------------+----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
When a case is logged as Severity 1, F5 Network Support Managers are
immediately notified to ensure the case is assigned within the
appropriate timeframe to an appropriately skilled Network Support
Engineer.
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**5.02 - Locate and determine appropriate resource for account/customer escalations**
https://www.f5.com/services/support/support-offerings/support-policies
If at any time you believe that a case is not being handled in
accordance with the service levels in your support contract, or if you
wish to comment on the way a particular case is being addressed by a
Network Support Engineer, please contact F5 Support and request to speak
with a Technical Support Manager.
F5 has identified four escalation situations each requiring a different
methodology to handle and escalate.
The first is a situation where an NSE intuitively knows that the issue
could become troublesome. This could be caused by a number of things; a
bug is detected, an NSE feels the situation may be beyond his/her
technical depth, or it could be a matter of a customer communicating an
unusual amount of agitation. We call these common sense or situational
escalations. We encourage escalation to a manager or other technical
resource in this scenario and depend heavily on our NSE’s common sense
to determine the proper timing of the escalation.
The second is a time-based escalation. We preset alerts and reports in
our call management system to use as a safety valve. This allows us to
monitor proper response time, ongoing communication between all the
parties and the eventual resolution of the issue.
The third is a technical escalation where due to the urgent nature of
the issue events are time triggered. When a Severity 1 or 2 case is
initially generated the F5 Support Manager is immediately notified via a
preset alert. It is the Support Managers responsibility to escalation
per the steps outlined below.
+-----------------+------------------------------+---------------------------------------------------------------+
| **Time** | **Technical Team** | **Action Taken** |
+-----------------+------------------------------+---------------------------------------------------------------+
| **Immediate** | NSE | Support Manager ensures resources are assigned |
+-----------------+------------------------------+---------------------------------------------------------------+
| **Hourly** | NSE to Support Manager | Status provided |
+-----------------+------------------------------+---------------------------------------------------------------+
| **4 Hours** | NSE to ENE | NSE/Manager develop technical action plan - Escalate to ENE |
+-----------------+------------------------------+---------------------------------------------------------------+
| **8 Hours** | ENE to Product Development | Escalate to Product Development |
+-----------------+------------------------------+---------------------------------------------------------------+
The fourth is a management escalation where it is in the best interest
of the customer and the F5 team to communicate concerns to senior
management.
+-----------------+--------------------------------------------------+-----------------------------------------------+
| **Time** | **Management Team** | **Action Taken** |
+-----------------+--------------------------------------------------+-----------------------------------------------+
| **4 Hours** | Network Support Manager | Works with Technical to develop action plan |
+-----------------+--------------------------------------------------+-----------------------------------------------+
| **4.5 Hours** | Support Manager to NS Director and ENE Manager | Notification and review of plan |
+-----------------+--------------------------------------------------+-----------------------------------------------+
| **8 Hours** | NS Director to VP Global Services | Escalate to Product Development |
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| | ENE Manager to CTO | |
+-----------------+--------------------------------------------------+-----------------------------------------------+
The Support Manager will manage events and action plans throughout the
duration of the case. The Support Manager may assign additional F5
resources as required and will determine communications to F5 resources
and senior management.
*Severity Levels*
Outlined below are the Severity classifications and definitions that the
F5 NSC refers to when logging a new case or changing severity
status of an existing case:
+---------------------+----------------------------+-----------------------------+------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| **Case Severity** | **Condition** | **Support Response Time** | **Description** |
+---------------------+----------------------------+-----------------------------+------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| **Severity 1** | **Site Down** | **1 Hour** | All network traffic has ceased, causing a critical impact to your business. |
+---------------------+----------------------------+-----------------------------+------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| **Severity 2** | **Site at Risk** | **4 Business Hours** | Primary unit has failed resulting; Site is at risk of going down. |
+---------------------+----------------------------+-----------------------------+------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| **Severity 3** | **Performance Impaired** | **8 Business Hours** | Network traffic is extremely slow; significant impact to your business. |
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| | **---------** | | Network traffic is partially functional; some applications to be un-reachable. |
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| | **Performance Degraded** | | |
+---------------------+----------------------------+-----------------------------+------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| **Severity 4** | **General Assistance** | **Next Business Day** | Questions regarding configurations "how to". Troubleshooting non-critical issue. |
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| | | | Request for functionality that is not part the current product feature set. |
+---------------------+----------------------------+-----------------------------+------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
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Objective - 5.03 Identify F5 enablement resources and tools
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**5.03 - Define evaluation hardware and software tools and processes**
The presales SE can leverage the following tools.
**Strongbox Demo Appliance and License Site**
The F5 StrongBox program provides F5 UNITY Partners with an easy,
cost-effective way to allow their customers to test drive F5 technology.
StrongBox units are individually customized for each customer
evaluation. Once the evaluation is complete, the box is reset and
re-customized for the next evaluation assignment.
The StrongBox program is available for BIG-IP evaluation hardware and
Virtual Edition products. The hardware evaluation units are priced at
F5's hardware cost, making them very affordable, and there is no limit
to the number of StrongBox units you can deploy. Since the StrongBox
unit is reusable, it offers a fantastic return on investment. In
addition, F5 Sales Representatives use partner StrongBox units as their
principal means of fulfilling customer evaluation requirements, so your
StrongBox could open doors to new, pre-qualified opportunities. Presales
engineers can also generate Strongbox 30-45-day Virtual Edition (VE)
licenses to use for customer evaluations.
Strong box evaluation site https://strongbox.f5.com/strongbox/eval.jsp
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https://downloads.f5.com (requires login credentials)
**F5 Partner vLabs**
Presales engineers have access to Partner vLabs that provide them with
manuals to build F5 product demo labs. Engineers can run these labs on
their computers or lab servers. The link to F5 Partner vLabs can be
found at the bottom of the download product line page. **Note: the
engineer’s login account must be associated to a partner account to view
the download**
.. image:: /_static/202/p8.png
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https://devcentral.f5.com/d/irule-editor
**iRule Editor**
You can now develop iRules with full syntax highlighting, colorization,
textual auto-complete, integrated help, etc.
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**5.03 - Identify technical enablement content**
The presales SE has access to various recourses F5 technical enablement
content to support their on-going education on F5 Network’s product
offerings.
`Learn F5 `__ (requires login credentials)
**Learn F5 Website**
The Presales engineer can leverage Learn F5 for online learning
courses on F5 products.
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**F5 Sales Accreditations**
The F5 Sales Accreditation helps sales and technical roles identify F5
sales opportunities. Both sales and technical roles take the same
course. Then, complete either the assessment for sales roles or the
assessment for technical roles. Presales engineers will need to take
this course to meet partner requirements and enhance their F5 sales
technical knowledge.
.. image:: /_static/202/p9.png
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https://partners.f5.com (requires login credentials)
**F5 Partner Central Site**
F5 Partner Central site provides Presales engineer with knowledge and
resources on F5 sales plays, technical reference architectures,
marketing and sales related materials.
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`*https://devcentral.f5.com/* `__
**DevCentral**
Learn F5 Technologies, Get Answers & Share Community
Solutions. DevCentral is a source for tools, techniques, and
collaboration to help you build solutions with iControl, iCall, iApps
and iRules that enable applications to work in concert.
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https://downloads.f5.com (requires login credentials)
**F5 Partner vLabs**
Presales engineers have access to Partner vLabs that provide them with
manuals to build F5 product demo labs. Engineers can run these labs on
their computers or lab servers. The link to F5 Partner vLabs can be
found at the bottom of the download product line page. *Note: the
engineer’s login account must be associated to a partner account to view
the download*
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https://f5.com/education
**F5 Education Training Courses**
F5 courses are available in multiple training facilities across five
continents. Each one combines instructor presentations, classroom
discussions and interactive labs. The hands-on learning environment
helps provide a fast track to accomplishing your goals. Presales
partners can attend free courses are F5 facilities across the country.
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**5.03 - Describe the sales operations tools and processes**
**Understand the F5 sales cycle**
- Prospecting and Pipeline
- Lead Qualification
- Partner Deal Registration
- Customer Engagement
- Solution Recommendation
- Production Evaluation
- Quoting
- Competitive Positioning
- Technical and Business Value Proposals
- Connecting with Buying Influencers
- Forecasting
- Closing
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https://partners.f5.com (requires login credentials)
**F5 Partner Central Site**
F5 Partner Central site provides Presales engineer with knowledge and
resources on F5 sales plays, technical reference architectures,
marketing and sales related materials.
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Conclusion
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This document is intended as a study guide for the F5 202 - Pre-Sales
Fundamentals exam. This study guide is **NOT** an all-inclusive
document that will guarantee a passing grade on the exam. It is intended
to be a living doc and any feedback or material that you feel should be
included, to help exam takers better prepare, can be sent to
F5CertGuides@f5.com.
Thank you for using this study guide to prepare the F5 202 - Pre-Sales
Fundamentals exam and good luck with your certification goals.
Thanks,
**Eric Mitchell**
Sr. Systems Engineer - Global SI