Re: High maintenance fees Was: Next Version of JDE World requires i 7.1

Rob -

Over the last 25 years I have worked in over a dozen shops which had JDE software. The ones who paid for support had a license for the source code and had heavily modified the code. The primariy reason for staying JDE support was NOT for their help desk - IMHO many of the guys on their help desk were a joke - rather, they did it to be able to periodically receive the JDE updates (particularly the annual 1099 updates) with the lastest versions of the code, enabling them to maintain the code themselves.

On my very first call to JDE support, I had an issue with a program which we had modified. I was fairly certain that the problem was in the original JDE code, not the mods we had made, so I called the JDE support line to report the problem.

The guy on the support line asked me several questions, including 'have you modified the program?'.

When I answered "Yes", he condescendingly said:
'Well, you obviously must have introduced the bug when you modified the code."

I bit my tongue and thanked him for his time, asked him to keep the support ticket open, and hung up.

I then went into the JDE 'Pristine' environment where the unmodified code is kept and confirmed that the bug was in the original unmodified code.

On my subsequent call to JDE support, the guy noted that they would need to duplicate the problem on /their/ system, so he gathered the necessary information from me and told me that it would take a few days for them to investigate the problem.

I got a call a week later indicating that they had found the problem, but that the fix would not be available until the next release of the software, which would be a few months in the future.

Result:
I found and fixed the problem myself and [except on rare occasions] never called JDE support again.

The most common answers that I received on other JDE support line calls were:

'The program is working as designed'
or
'We cannot duplicate the problem on our system'

(Meaning "Sorry, you are SOL")

-sjl


Rob wrote:
That is a pretty salty maintenance fee.

If you didn't know that JDE support was a million bucks, would you feel
that the 3rd party maintenance people are really worth several hundred
thousand dollars per year? Do you really feel that you get the benefit
out of them that you wouldn't get in having a team of consultants on your
premises full time for that whole year? Because for several hundred
thousand dollars per year that could be done. Or is this one of those
deals where it's "Honey, the list price on this mattress is $1,500, see
the tag? But they only want $350!"


Rob Berendt