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

[Richard B. Gilbert]

On 2/14/2011 7:00 AM, Jan-Erik Soderholm wrote:
> 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 ??
>
>

When you realize that it's HP you are dealing with, you should know 
better than to ask!