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

[Richard B. Gilbert]

On 2/14/2011 6:14 AM, Neil Rieck wrote:
> 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

Service contract management has been a nightmare for as long as I have 
been dealing with DEC/Compaq/HP.  They haven't a clue what hardware and 
software you have.  Their quote will include equipment that you NEVER 
had, equipment that you scrapped three years ago, and which you had to
fight to remove from each succeeding contract quote, etc.

I got pretty good at playing the game!  I created a database of all the 
DEC/Compaq/HP hardware and software that I had, with manufacturer, 
model/part numbers, serial numbers, date of purchase, line number in the 
contract quote, etc, etc.  Even after I told DEC/Compaq/HP exactly what 
we wanted, actually getting the paperwork to reflect that was still a 
nightmare.

Oh well, it helped pay my bills for a number of years!