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

[Jan-Erik Soderholm]

Neil Rieck wrote 2011-02-14 12:14:
> 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

Why on earth should one need a *credit card* to do business between
two rather large corporations ??