Norm, There is no application that can solve the problem of ignorant management.
Part of my comment about buying Professional Services (and it not being covered by your support contract) is that you have to understand what that support contract is actually buying you. IMHO (and this may only be MY opinion.) the Remedy Support Contract really paid for: ) Development investment for the next version to be built -- This is very different than the right to download and use the software in my head. ) Upgrades to the next version -- This is just the media, download bandwidth, etc... ) ability for management to think they can ask questions of the vendor - Some people call that "support", but it really is not. ) ability for customers to "submit RFE's" and "Bug reports" -- Yes you heard me.. I think we PAY for that too. What it absolutely does not buy you: (Again ...IMHO) ) Any commitment that the Vendor will teach you anything. This includes but is not limited to: - What the product does. Before or after you buy/install it. - How to tailor it to your needs (config choices, or more "serious" changes like customizations) - What the future holds for the product you purchased ) Any commitment to support you as a "in-house" development team. - And this one is the one that really burns my britches. ARS is a development platform that you can use by just buying the server and User licenses. But... Good luck asking them how to get the ARServer to do "X" unless it is in the standard docs. It is like pulling teath to get them to BUG anything that is OBVIOUSLY different than the docs, much less just logically/pragmatically WRONG behaviour. ) Any commitment that they will be supporting your current OS/RDBMS/software version into perpetuity. They will move on, and if you do not. Well that standard contract just will be of less and less value to you. ( Nor does it guarantee that the other vendors for the OS, RDBMS, hardware, etc... will continue to support those parts too.) But before I finish this email let me comment on this sub-thread too. "Customization is inevitable." I have to disagree. Buying a product does not mean that you have to alter it. Weak management decisions that lead to a dependency on a Vendor to "support it" should also lead to the realization that "the vendor needs to have written it for me to be able to blame them for any problems". The decision to use an OOB to "cut internal resources" and then expect to be able to use "custom" code is tantamount to "wanting to have your cake and eat it too". Life just does not work that way. -- Carey Matthew Black Remedy Skilled Professional (RSP) ARS = Action Request System(Remedy) Love, then teach Solution = People + Process + Tools Fast, Accurate, Cheap.... Pick two. On 1/26/07, Kaiser Norm E CIV USAF 96 CG/SCWOE <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
** A few points: Why upgrade to version 7 if version 5 (or any version you're currently running) is OK? Because of support. While I'm sure that if you bring Remedy (or any vendor) bags and bags of money for "Professional Support" sure, you'll get support for their deprecated version. However, if you're expecting the standard support you get just by buying the product and paying the bucks for a standard support agreement, you can forget it. And the idea of paying the bags of money defeats the purpose of using an OOTB solution to begin with. I certainly don't disagree that ITIL, implemented right, is a good thing. However, in order for it or any other business model to work, EVERYONE involved in the business from top on down must be trained on it and 100% committed to it. Here's the issue. Many top managers in the DoD have no concept of what ITIL is. A top manager just asked me yesterday, "What is that?" Management's thought process is this: "Our asset tracking sucks. We don't know what we have. Let's buy something that lets us fix that problem." The way they see it is just like what you do at tax time. You need to do your taxes, so go to CompUSA and buy TurboTax. Pull it out of the box, follow the instructions, and boom! Your taxes are done. To them, the same with asset management or help desk or change or whatever. Need an asset management solution? Buy something! Pull the CDs out of the box, read the directions, and you're done! They don't realize how high a cliff they're jumping off when they decide on a product like ITSM. Perhaps BMC should sell ITSM as an ITIL solution more so than as an asset, change, service desk solution.
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