>And yes, the SCC is a joke SCC? CSCC to the rescue!!!
Fred Reimer, CISSP, CCNP, CQS-VPN, CQS-ISS Senior Network Engineer Coleman Technologies, Inc. 954-298-1697 > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:cisco-nsp- > [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Justin Shore > Sent: Tuesday, May 20, 2008 2:53 PM > To: Phil Mayers > Cc: [email protected] > Subject: Re: [c-nsp] Maintenace management > > I've spent the last 6 months working on getting our contracts > straightened out and ready for renewal. I've run into a number of > major > problems. First was the sheer number of contracts that we'd > accumulated > over time. We bought some things through our sister company, a > partner. > Some of the contracts were in their name. We bought all of our new > items direct from Cisco but they managed to be on about a dozen > different contracts even though they were all bought on the same damn > PO. As items were shipped Cisco, in its infinite wisdom, created a new > contract and put the items that just shipped on that contract instead > of > putting everything on one big contract. We had numerous internal items > that were on assorted contracts and some that weren't covered at all. > Still more internal items were mixed up with the sister company and we > discovered that we'd been paying for the coverage on some of their > items. Even worse was that somehow some of the sister company's > customer SmartNets had somehow gotten associated with us. We also had > numerous ISP contracts. Some of the items had been bought 3rd-party or > off of eBay. 2 of them still had active contracts being paid by the > previous owner (thank you Wal-Mart!). We also had contracts on leased > CPE equipment that I didn't know about (I'm still hearing new items > fitting in this category every couple of months). To say that our > current arrangement was a "cluster" would be putting it lightly. > > I spent the last 6 months trying to sort things out. First I had to > have an accurate list of what we had including model #s, serial #s, > device locations, device names, etc. Every detail that I'd need to > track that device effectively. Unfortunately this required a lot of > driving time to manually read serial #s off of chassis since you can't > pull the SN out of many Cisco devices. Who ever got the brilliant idea > to put the SN sticker for the PIX 515Es on the *side* of the chassis > where it's covered by the 2-post rack should be taken out and flogged > with 1700 series power cords with the power bricks attached. I worked > with a Cisco rep to create contracts for each of the device categories > we have (internal, ISP, CPE) and for each service level we wanted > (24x7x4 and 8x5xNBD). This is when we discovered that you can't have a > Sup's service level differ from the other linecars in a chassis (see > C-NSP archives). In the end the price was so high that we decided to > look at return-to-factory options (RTF). So we reworked the quotes > again with RTF prices and included lab hardware. I built spreadsheets > with both options to tally things up so I could present it to > management. Unfortunately my numbers aren't accurate because Cisco > insists on pre-dating some of our hardware back to the day that our > contracts expired (they expired far sooner than the year that we paid > for because of a problematic sales process. We didn't get the major > pieces until January but the 1yr contracts expired in November for > everything we bought last year. Nice). > > So here we are 6 months later with a ton of hardware that isn't covered > and me trying to work the wrinkles out of the prices so I can present > it > to management. In short, how do we manage our contracts? With blood, > sweat and tears; and brute force. > > I blame a lot of the hassle on Cisco's SmartNet process. Apparently > there isn't a way to have a single general account that you can then > associate *items* with (according to what Cisco folks are telling me). > Instead items are associated with service contracts that can not be > modified after the purchase has been placed. So in the end, instead of > having a single account and a bunch of devices associated with it and > one bill at the end of the year, you end up with an insane amount of > contracts and no way to organize them until the next year when you get > to redo everything and create new contracts again. And yes, the SCC is > a joke. The amount of money we've lost this year to the work required > to get our contracts straightened out is immense. The system needs an > overhaul and organization. > > Justin > > > > Phil Mayers wrote: > > 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/
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