DSIN access (was Re: Electronic SPR submission)

[Mark Sausville]

In article <1989Dec13.201513.10674 at decatl.dec.com> hoyt at decatl.dec.com (Kurt Hoyt) writes:

   OK, dream a little. What would the ideal support center for Ultrix (as an
   example)? Remember that somebody has to pay for this center (mainly you,
   the customer). Criticize, fantasize, but be realistic (kinda contradicts the
   notion of 'ideal', don't it?). Let your imagination run wild.

   But don't just do it here. Send mail to me. I might be able to do something
   about it. No promises, no commitments, just someone near the problem who could
   make a difference. I saw parts of the discussion from last April. Also, be
   sure to note whether or not you current have a software support contract
   (and who it is with...).

   I hope to hear from you (I've cleared out some disk space and fire-proofed
   my workstation...).

   -- 
   Kurt Hoyt
   Digital Equipment Corporation
   hoyt at decatl.alf.dec.com or hoyt at decatl.dec.com or hoyt%decatl at decwrl.dec.com
   "Daddy, you not people, you a GUY! Mommy a girl." -- Faith Hoyt

Well Kurt, here goes:

1.  A complete revamping of the logging process.  You need triage and
    dispatch to appropriate people.  Lots of calls can be handled by
    relatively unwizardly people.  Other calls are urgent and may only
    be soluble by people who have and can UNDERSTAND the sources (by the way,
    I had 3.1 sources before Atlanta and it took me a REALLY long time to get
    them; that's totally insane.).      

    One of the most frustrating things about the current setup is that
    the customer has to know when to put on pressure to elevate calls.
    If you have experience, you understand that if something is just 
    sitting, you have to make enough noise to get it bumped up to the
    next level.  Then you have to do it again ... and again ....
    The bottom line is that right now, to get what you pay for, you have
    to be a professional squeaky wheel.  I have neither the time or 
    inclination to do this.

2.  Email submissions of problem reports should
    play a major role in any reconstitution of Support.  Many things are
    best handled off line.  I am a support person, so I know whereof I speak.
    In fact, as part of your triage, people who don't or won't submit email
    reports could have it done for them by clerical personnel.  If people
    don't have connectivity, fax is another way to keep it electronic
    (i.e. out of the mail).  I've heard vague reports recently about
    products for Ultrix which go from ascii text straight to FAX (if anyone
    knows details about this, let me know).  My advice is go out and 
    buy it now.

3.  Ultrix support needs its own "Colorado", you know, hardware experts
    who can dialin to a remote console on the customer's machine.  Right
    now, Colorado is too VMS oriented to be of use to Ultrix users and
    communication between Colorado and Atlanta is slow and buggy.  Indeed
    it is very difficult to find people within Digital who understand
    the the interaction of the hardware and the software (at least Ultrix).

4.  Perhaps Digital could once again encourage third parties to develop
    value added environments on Ultrix platforms.  It's probably a mistake
    for Digital to try to be the be-all and end-all software source for
    Ultrix machines.   DEC has never been sucessful at this before and
    I see no reason to expect that you will be now.  These third party
    developers should see a special interface to Support in recognition
    of the fact that they probably would lighten the Ultrix support load.

5.  You NEED some way to indentify POSITIVELY whether or not a program
    or module is yours and if so what version it is.  I don't have time
    to reload the system for the convenience of Support.

    In addition, you need a rational cataloging and distribution
    scheme for bug fixes.

    The amount of wheel spinning that goes on in the DEC support
    organization (hardware and software) to fix bugs that have already
    been dealt with internally is truly bizarre.

    Addressing this points alone would probably enhance productivity
    by 50%.

6.  You may find that a national support center may not be the way
    to do things.  It may be that several regional centers might
    be better able to support the customers.  What I'm really getting
    at here is that as a place grows, it's abilty to respond quickly
    diminishes.  You need to find an organization whose response
    time is never seriously compromised.  You'd also be able to 
    retain good people if they are able to move around the country.

The software support I'm getting now (I don't bother mostly) is not
worth what I'm paying.  I came into this organization with the system
I'm maintaining already bought.   I wouldn't buy the support now.
Source (for us) is a better deal.

That's it for now.  I could probably say more but I'm blathered out
for the moment.

Mark Sausville                           MIT Media Laboratory
Computer Systems Administrator           Room E15-354
617-253-0325                             20 Ames Street
saus at media-lab.media.mit.edu             Cambridge, MA 02139