I thought it was now "No one ever got fired for buying Cisco". Maybe I have
been in networking too long....

My vendor support story was with HP. I would call with weird LAN errors in
their switches, and have a new guy tell me something off the wall. Later on
the HP Network Support manager told me that when I get someone like that,
please call him with their name and he'll see that they get more training.
He explained that everyone gets the same training, but some get their facts
confused. I was happy with this resolution, any actually never needed to
call him up.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Derek Neighbors" <derek@gnue.org>
To: <plug-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us>
Sent: Monday, April 22, 2002 2:55 PM
Subject: Re: Need *credible* vendor support stories


> > > > two issues come to mind.  Legal defensability (i.e.finger pointing),
and
> > > > warm-fuzzies (i.e. making upper management feeling safe; kind of
like
> > > > Dilbert(?) peeing in a warms suite)
>
> Well I think the finger pointing is only part of the equation, BUT a very
> VALID one.  Let me bring to light a very real example.
>
> Once upon a time there was a huge energy company(Enron), who decided to
> things right they better get a goat, a scapegoat.  So they hired this
> little bitty group of accountants (Arthur Anderson).  When the crap
> started to fly guess who everyone readily pointed the finger on?  Its
> quite likely it will help them.
>
> So there is some 'reality' to having a deep pocketed sucker in which to
> cast your problems. (though that doesnt make it right)
>
> Back to my other point, most large corporations have a fellow called the
> CIO or CTO.  Generally this person is paid rather nicely (and would like
> to keep his job), but hasnt been in the trenches for some time.  So when
> big decisions are on the line having someone to blame is nice, but its
> even better to be able to justify it by saying 'competitor X uses this
> too'.
>
> The old saying used to be: "No one ever got fired for choosing IBM." which
> has become "No one ever got fired for choosing MicroSoft."  When a CTO/CIO
> can point out that 3 out of 4 of his peers are making the 'same' choice
> its really hard for a CEO/COO to discredit that even if its more expensive
> and ultimately hurts the company.
>
> end rant...
>
> -d
>
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