Support Costs (Re: Buying UNIX for a clone)

[Ronald S H Khoo]

larry at nstar.rn.com (Larry Snyder) writes:

> paulz at sco.COM (W. Paul Zola) writes:
> >2) All SCO Support packages are "unlimited calls" - you can call in 
> >as many times as you like for as many problems as you have with your
> >particular supported product.
> 
> and the more you pay - the quicker the return call

This makes sense coming from a company that aims at the corporate
market.  If they cared about where they came from, they'd make sure that
the little guy who knows what he's talking about can afford to get some
answers in a reasonable time.

The usual way this is done (limited no. of calls allowed) is not something
I find particularly friendly, nor really practical.  But access to
good quality response for the first few calls, with credit for
real problems, and minus points for asking stupid questions seems
to be a sensible way to go.  A difficult implementation problem is
of course that front and second line support staff are often not
good enough be able to judge the quality of the issue at hand.  But this
difficult problem must be addressed.

That way,
	 * those who can afford top quality engineering response can pay for it
	 * those who need stupid questions answered fast can pay for them
BUT ALSO * those who need a small amount of good quality TIMELY answers
	   to real problems can get answers too.

Yes, support costs.  But the way things are, you make the small competent
developer pay for the support costs of the incompetent developer.  Yuk.

* This is not a good way to win the moral support of good quality
  small developers. *

SCO risk ending up with the dross of the industry forming a large portion
of their developer base if that's who their support policies favour.
Is this what they want?  Surely not.  And of course, these comments
apply in general to all vendors, SCO just stuck their neck out this time :-)
-- 
Ronald Khoo <ronald at robobar.co.uk> +44 81 991 1142 (O) +44 71 229 7741 (H)