Random thoughts: Would you agree that a well-designed and documented, rigorously tested product makes all of these points with relation to quality of support moot? When was the last time you had to call for support on your TV set, or your PC? Would you accept the same quality of service and support if you were using a heart-lung machine or the guidance/control system in an airliner that you were in at 35,00 feet and 450 MPH? Then why is it acceptable in software that supports an enterprise? Just random thoughts while waiting for an install to complete....
-----Original Message----- From: Action Request System discussion list(ARSList) [mailto:arslist@ARSLIST.ORG] On Behalf Of Joe Martin D'Souza Sent: Saturday, May 12, 2012 12:38 PM To: arslist@ARSLIST.ORG Subject: Re: Friday funny or not! When I meant you get what you pay for, I meant both the customer as well as BMC.. BMC has obviously cut corners to make support available at more affordable prices in the face of rising costs of skilled labor in this continent and continents like Europe and Australia.. The support model that spawns out of this endeavor, is the most generic support plan they offer when you buy their products.. However customer has other premium options or choices to choose from.... Do you want to take advantage of the generic low cost support plan, where you might get a: 1) fresh out of university type agent talking to you, while 2) referencing text books and KB's while on the call with you, 3) and has been trained on the AR and its supporting products for a brief period, who is assigned your ticket that gets routed to Asia??? OR Are you willing and more importantly can you afford to pay top dollar for a 24*7 assigned site engineer who would pick up a call even at 2:00 AM in case of emergency - who might be based somewhere in the US or Canada.. Or UK if you are from that region.. I have worked with such support packages and am yet to get assigned a site engineer who is out of Asia while I have been based in America. I have mostly got Californians.. Most of these engineers, have worked with the AR System and its applications in the past, and have a considerable amount of experience on many other applications which include underlying databases, the OS, web servers and what have you... Even if some of them are fairly new to the AR System and its apps, they do tend to understand you better as language problems is often the case of questioning the quality of support - not quite the quality of resolution.. In all fairness, having lived in different parts of the world, I personally do not see language as an issue.. Everyone in different parts of the world have their preferences when it comes to languages.. While we find it hard to understand them, believe it or not, as clearly as we may think we talk here, they find it hard to understand us too.. Given a choice, they too might have preferred their next ticket to be assigned from somewhere local so they could understand their customer better.. Anyway coming back to the point of quality of support, if that really has a high impact on your day to day business and again *more importantly*, if you can afford to pay more, sure you can buy those premium support packages where you have available local engineers assigned to you. There is even a package where you can have *a specific* engineer assigned to you and in that, which I think is the highest level of support, BMC sometimes even hires someone local specifically to support you... I've heard that happen on at least one occasion where a site paid like a zillion on support.. If affordability is an issue, it would just be like my case of - yeah I would love to own and drive a 100 thousand dollar top of the line fancy stick shift convertible with a V12 engine, but until I can afford that, I'm happy with my V6 Mustang.. I am not for or against BMC's way of choosing to do things - looking at it in their point if view, its perhaps the only way to keep the costs low enough to make support affordable to some of us who are on the bottom of the food chain and on a piggy bank budget, who can barely afford the products - leave alone support.. It’s the way many other vendors are doing business too.. Its not just BMC.. Look at most DB vendors - I wont take names.. Look at OS vendors.. Look at even some of our personal banking support.. Where does it all come from.. I'm sure if we wanted we could ask our banks to give us local support if we were willing to pay 100 bucks a month to maintain our accounts, and get no interest paid on our accounts - like Swiss bank accounts.. Just letting you know there are those options.. For more details you might need to talk to your sales engineer.. I used to work for a VAR way back in the days so I know these things.. Joe PS: Having said all this, I have come across a few support engineers, as inexperienced and young as they might be, who really really know what they are talking about and not just reading to you out of a previously written KB.. Use the surveys at the end - and hopefully BMC would evaluate those, which could help them educate some of their support in areas they are lacking.. If you feel it was a language issue - let them know.. Be specific in letting them know where they lacked.. There are language courses in India that I had heard of where many companies train their employees so they could learn our accents here.. Constructive criticism sometimes goes a long way in developing a model you have been trying to build.. -----Original Message----- From: pritch Sent: Saturday, May 12, 2012 10:33 AM Newsgroups: public.remedy.arsystem.general To: arslist@ARSLIST.ORG Subject: Re: Friday funny or not! I didn't realize there was an option in the BMC support contract (or maybe there should be) for the type of support you want to purchase - domestic / international. Or that the pricing went down when the support went "to heck in a hand basket". ----- Original Message ----- From: "Joe Martin D'Souza" <jdso...@shyle.net> To: arslist@ARSLIST.ORG Sent: Friday, May 11, 2012 5:14:13 PM Subject: Re: Friday funny or not! ** You get what you pay for – that’s the bottom-line anywhere... You budget to build a train and you can’t expect to change plans and build a space ship.. There is talent out there – just that to get the best of it, it costs almost as much as it does here. And the whole reason they outsource is to that there is availability of inexperienced talent in vast numbers as well, that is easily available and that can be paid less.. If they want to hire top notch professionals supporting their apps out there, they will not save as much as they project to, by moving support from this more expensive region to there.. The cost of moving support there itself might have been higher than the difference in savings.. Look at it this way.. If someone is self aware of his worth to an organization and is aware he could potentially make 120K upwards a year somewhere in the world, how likely is he or she to take a 20 or 30K a year job, even if he or she were living in a 3rd world country out of personal choice – and I use the words personal choice, because when you are worth that much, its only your willingness to relocate that can stop or from doing so... There's not much otherwise that can really stop you.. So what you are really getting, is what you pay for with maybe a 5 to 10% bargain over the asking market rate just because it is a 3rd world country that costs slightly lesser to live in – not that much less but a little lesser than here.. Joe From: Pat Zandi Sent: Friday, May 11, 2012 4:47 PM Newsgroups: public.remedy.arsystem.general To: arslist@ARSLIST.ORG Subject: Re: Friday funny or not! ** Yeah: gotta love the q&a and the support.... I miss American support! Sorry. But I do! No offense 3rd world support. Sent from my iPhone On May 11, 2012, at 16:02, "Goodall, Andrew C" < ago...@jcp.com > wrote: ** <NULL> push field data in Workflow – not all just some, a mix over base, overlays and customs would show <NULL> for push field actions despite the same workflow displaying ok in 7.5 dev studio, and the workflow working as designed. So we knew it was a display issue in Dev Studio 7.6.04 Clearing the dev studio workspace cache cleared the problem. <image005.jpg> <image006.jpg> Regards, Andrew C. Goodall Software Engineer Development Services ago...@jcpenney.com jcpenney 6501 Legacy Drive Plano, TX 75024 jcp.com From: Action Request System discussion list(ARSList) [mailto:arslist@ARSLIST.ORG] On Behalf Of Joe Martin D'Souza Sent: Friday, May 11, 2012 2:54 PM To: arslist@ARSLIST.ORG Subject: Re: Friday funny or not! ** I’ve never had this happen to me.. so out of curiosity, what are the symptoms of this corruption? Joe From: Goodall, Andrew C Sent: Friday, May 11, 2012 3:42 PM Newsgroups: public.remedy.arsystem.general To: arslist@ARSLIST.ORG Subject: Friday funny or not! ** Just got off the phone with BMC support who were trying to explain possible reasons why the Dev studio workspace cache could corrupt for an issue I was facing. The workaround was to clear the workspace cache. I asked them to pursue a root cause and permanent resolution to the cache corruption. Support stated “This is why it is our recommendation to continually change workspaces to avoid corruption”. I just about choked and spat out my coffee :) I tried to explain why this was not good software development. Regards, Andrew C. Goodall Software Engineer Development Services jcpenney 6501 Legacy Drive Plano, TX 75024 jcp.com The information transmitted is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain confidential and/or privileged material. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that your access is unauthorized, and any review, dissemination, distribution or copying of this message including any attachments is strictly prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender and delete the material from any computer. _______________________________________________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE or access ARSlist Archives at www.arslist.org attend wwrug12 www.wwrug12.com ARSList: "Where the Answers Are" Portions of this message may be confidential under an exemption to Ohio's public records law or under a legal privilege. If you have received this message in error or due to an unauthorized transmission or interception, please delete all copies from your system without disclosing, copying, or transmitting this message. _______________________________________________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE or access ARSlist Archives at www.arslist.org attend wwrug12 www.wwrug12.com ARSList: "Where the Answers Are"
