I have been doing this for a few years now and what I do is a combination of our vendor (Mountain States Networking), a bit of legwork on my part and CiscoWorks. They make sure everything we purchase is placed on the proper contract and they resolve any issues relating to that. Once our renewal is nearing term, I work with them to make sure all of our gear is covered. I then request a coverage report from MSN and revalidate that everything we need covered is covered.
The key for us is to keep the contracts down to a bare min and follow up to make sure everything is as it should be. I know 99% of folks are anti-CiscoWorks, but it does have the easy button for this (Contract Connection) that I am quite pleased with. I know some folks scoff at 350 devices, but that's currently what we carry support on and the process isn't that bad. It probably takes me 20-30 concentrated hours a year to make sure it's all "right". Not sure how that relates to the rest of the world, but it seems to be a reasonable investment to me. Michael Balasko CCSP,MCSE,MCNE,SCP Network Specialist II City of Henderson 240 Water St. Henderson, NV 89015 -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Phil Mayers Sent: Monday, May 19, 2008 11:01 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [c-nsp] Maintenace management All, We seem to have an incredibly hard time managing our maintenance contracts. Quite aside from the vagaries of CCO ("Sorry sir, your contracts have disappared from your profile, no TAC access for *you*") we are unable to gather all our maintenance into one (or a small number of) contract(s) and what contracts we have are very difficult to inventory. It goes without saying that SCC is a bad joke. Do any of you manage to do it better? How? _______________________________________________ cisco-nsp mailing list [email protected] https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/cisco-nsp archive at http://puck.nether.net/pipermail/cisco-nsp/ _______________________________________________ cisco-nsp mailing list [email protected] https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/cisco-nsp archive at http://puck.nether.net/pipermail/cisco-nsp/
