[Info-vax] : Welcome to lockdown - HP limiting access to patches

[Neil Rieck]

On Nov 6 2010, 7:52 am, Neil Rieck <n.ri... at sympatico.ca> wrote:
> "A tale of two companies" by Neil (full of the Dickens) Rieck
>
> Company "A" (my employer)
>
> Our group had a fully paid up software (OpenVMS OS and layered
> products on Alpha) support agreement with the Compaq division of HP.
> We started this support in 2005 when our 3-year care pack expired. In
> 2007 our company was going to be taken over by a consortium led by the
> Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan, and including Providence Equity
> Partners, Madison Dearborn Partners, Merrill Lynch Global Private
> Equity, and Toronto-Dominion Bank. Unbeknown to us, sometime in 2007
> the corporate bean counters quietly canceled most software support
> contracts including ours (probably to make the company look more
> attractive to the new owners who were involved in a bidding war).
> Almost a full year passed before someone noticed that we had not
> received a shipment of optical media for quite some time. BTW - the
> takeover did not happen
>
> (make no mistake: the primary problem was caused by the action of bean
> counters on my side)
>
> Company "B" (HPQ)
>
> In August of 2010, I received an HP Alert telling me that, starting
> mid September, no one would be allowed to download patches from ITRC
> unless the customer possesses a valid paid-up support contract.
>
> Company "A" (my employer)
>
>  Fair enough. Although I always thought these patches were more like
> the warranty/recall process in the auto industry (making the s/w
> product work the way it should have on the day it was released to
> customers), I also know that no one works for free in a capitalistic
> world. Also, if paid-up support contracts are one way to signal HP
> that our industry still values OpenVMS, then I was willing to comply.
> So after explaining to my boss what happened, he authorized me to
> contact HP for a quote. So in August of 2010 I attempted to contract
> HP to reinstate (if possible) our software support contract. I sent
> them an email and cc'd three HP sales people who had helped me in the
> past year.
>
> The A-B Story Lines Merge
>
> One month later someone from HP Sales telephoned me stating that my
> email had been pinging around HP until someone knew what I was talking
> about. Yep, you guessed it. Most Compaq people have been purged and
> most HP people are unfamiliar with Compaq (DEC) products. Apparently
> they had no record of a software support contract at my location and
> nothing in their databases associated with my name so "could I send
> them any documents I might have from the previous software contract?"
>
> (my own employer purges inactive customer records after three years -
> into an archival system - but I guess I can understand this request;
> If most HP people are unfamiliar with Compaq products then why doesn't
> HP set up a single-point-of-contact website for all Compaq products?)
>
> So I located some documents (quotes with a Compaq/HP title) from
> December-2004 and emailed those into HP (this is a miracle since my PC
> had been evergreen-ed several times). Then I waited for another month
> or so never heard a peep. So on the first of November, I sent them an
> email wondering what was going on. They were very apologetic but
> informed me that my documents were too old, contained nothing with an
> actual support agreement number, so would probably be required to
> "repurchase my software" unless I could provide more information.
>
> (is it possible that the sales people at HP were just jerking us
> around because we are another large corporation? It appears to be the
> case)
>
> The original purchase cost of all my software was $100k and my boss
> damned near had a heart attack when I told him what was being
> requested. His only comment to me was "No way! We will work without a
> net before we go that route". So I started rummaging through the media
> cabinet and located a cardboard box with a shipping label dated
> December 2007.  This shipping label contained the Compaq support
> contract number as well as some other important stuff which HP sales
> was able to use to help me reinstate my support agreement.
>
> Yesterday (Nov-5) HP Sales asked me to provide them a list of the
> layered products we wish to have under support. So the ball is now
> rolling and I hope to have a quote soon (which my boss could still
> refuse).
>
> In all this it was not my intention to give anyone a black eye. I only
> wanted to share some of my experiences in case the same thing happens
> to you.
>
> Neil Rieck
> Kitchener / Waterloo / Cambridge,
> Ontario, Canada.http://www3.sympatico.ca/n.rieck/OpenVMS.html

Hey hey hey, I now have a fully paid up OpenVMS support agreement,
OpenVMS-8.4 CD-ROM kit, and access to the patch site at www.itrc.hp.com.
It only took five months (there was lots of stupidity at both ends of
the transaction; things would have gone a little faster without
Christmas holidays stuck in the middle; I could have saved 4 weeks had
I been allowed to use a credit card as HP wanted)  but we can now pick
up where we left off last September.

NSR