Service and Support for Non-Standard Computing Equipment Purchased with Research Project Funds
In order to fulfill support requests for non-standard equipment purchased using research funds, the following policy has been agreed by the Research ICT Committee.
The EUI ICT Service provides full service and support for "standard" computing equipment as described in the Standardization Policy for Computing at the EUI. Support for non-standard equipment (including in particular laptops but also all other types of IT equipment) is subject to certain conditions and limits.
Purchase of new IT equipment will incur an extra charge of 8% of the purchase value (for a desktop PC this is roughly equivalent to 5 hours of support provided by an external company), which will cover maintenance for a period of three years.
Additionally, the hardware warranty offered by the manufacturer will be extended to a period of at least three years (where possible).
The ICT Service will then be able to take care of integrating the PC to make it compatible with the EUI infrastructure. Integration refers to the operating system, corporate software and access to shared resources, but not to special applications like research software. The ICT Service will also receive support requests submitted by the end-user, forward them to the external support company and ensure that the maintenance activity is supervised (quality control).
It is the user's responsibility to bring the equipment to be serviced to the EUI.
Extraordinary interventions (e.g. change of operating system, major changes in the configuration of the PC equipment) will be charged on a case-by-case basis.
PC equipment more than three years old is considered to be out of maintenance, and servicing will be charged on a case-by-case basis.
The ICT Service may refuse to apply this policy (and the associated fees) to non-standard equipment that was considered a potential source of problems at the time the purchase request was made by the user; in other words, any equipment purchased by the user disregarding ICT Service recommendations.
Any EUI site-licenced software [1] can be made available to the user. In the event that the user opts to relinquish the standard desktop PC altogether, all single-user software licences [2] from the standard model can be transferred to non-standard PC use except where technical reasons prohibit this (e.g. software based on a "licence server"). However, in either case, installation of any research software packages will be the user's responsibility. Requests made to the user's local IT User Support office for assistance in installing research applications will be passed on to external technicians at the user's expense.
[1] Software for which the EUI holds a licence allowing installation on any and all Institute computers, regardless of number.
[2] Licences allowing installation on a specific number of computers as determined in the purchasing agreement.
Page last updated on 20 August 2017