Hot Line

[Prof. David F. Rogers]

For Dave Ratcliffe:

Although I can certainly appreciate your problems with end runs and
absorbtion of Software Engineering's time, you should appreciate
your customers problems.

The basic problem is that the Hot Line is nearly useless for someone on
the East Coast. The scenerio goes something like this:

A problem develops in the early to mid morning. We spend the rest of the
morning and the early afternoon confirming that it is an SGI problem and
not our problem. That's only fair and responsible action on our part.
Right, it is now SGI's problem for whatever reason. Call the Hot Line.
No one available for an immediate answer. Get a number with promise to
call back. It is now 1530 EST or so. No way do we get a call back that day.

When we come in in the morning it is 0500 on the West Coast! No realistic
support can be expected until noonish, but that is lunch time so it will
be 1300-1400 local time before we get ANY response -- 24 hours!!!!
This is sure not a HOT LINE more like a COLD LINE.

There is usually 2-3 days of this before the problem gets defined, much less
resolved. We can't afford that and neither can commercial customers.
Hence end runs.

Note I am not one of the end runners.

I have long recommended and still recommend an electronic mail Hot Line.
This solves the time zone problem and significantly increases the
interaction for those of us who have email access. Why is SGI so
reluctant to develop an email Hot Line?

Dave Rogers

Professor David F. Rogers
Aerospace Engineering Department
U.S. Naval Academy
Annapolis, MD 21402
USA
Tel: 301-267-3283/4/5
 
ARPANET: dfr at usna.navy.mil
UUCP:    ~uunet!usna!dfr