On Jan 15, 2011, at 12:56 PM, Brad Knowles wrote: > The Windows group didn't have to deal with any of that. They were given > direct access to the systems to let them try out all the various possible > hardware configurations, it would generate unofficial prices, and then all > they had to do was to get the official Dell rubber stamp on those prices.
I should add that they also had a Dell & Apple certified field technician on-site (a UT Austin employee), and he covered the entire campus. He had been doing that kind of job for something like 30 years, and he consistently got the highest possible ratings for the customer service that he provided -- from both Apple and Dell. In fact, year after year, he consistently won top national awards for the customer service that he provided -- as in, the single very best field technician that either company had throughout the entire country. So, whatever hardware problems that the Windows group had that they couldn't deal with themselves out of their own stock of spare parts, etc... they could always turn to him and get the best support that could be had. On the Sun side, we had our own stock of spare parts, etc... but we didn't have a hardware support contract. UT Austin had previously been considered a VAR in their own right, and VARs don't get hardware support contracts from Sun. In many cases, Sun actually depends on VARs to provide the hardware support service for their customers, so if you're a VAR and you've got a lot of Sun hardware then you're basically on your own -- because you should be able to handle any hardware failures that occur, otherwise you wouldn't be a VAR. Once Sun changed how they handle VARs and UT Austin was no longer in that situation, our management decided that a hardware support contract didn't make sense, and instead declared that our datacenter management staff should take the responsibility to find and buy whatever replacement hardware that might be necessary should there be any failures -- and then it was up to the people in the Unix group to handle the replacement components once they arrived. Given our position and how much Sun hardware we had, I think we should have had a platinum support contract, which was effectively what the Windows group had from Dell. That sure would have made our lives a lot easier when some of the more ancient systems finally started expiring, and spare parts were extremely difficult to find. Of course, new systems were covered under whatever warranty they had been bought with, but that was itself a bit of a pain to track and manage. -- Brad Knowles <[email protected]> LinkedIn Profile: <http://tinyurl.com/y8kpxu> _______________________________________________ Tech mailing list [email protected] https://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tech This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
