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From: bradbury@oracle.UUCP (Robert Bradbury)
Newsgroups: comp.databases,comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Access to database on IBM/MVS from UNIX ?
Message-ID: <324@oracle.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 10-Sep-87 10:26:38 EDT
Article-I.D.: oracle.324
Posted: Thu Sep 10 10:26:38 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 12-Sep-87 09:30:08 EDT
References: <463@ambush.UUCP> <14459@topaz.rutgers.edu>
Organization: Oracle Corporation, Belmont, CA
Lines: 66
Summary: Customer support and software bugs
Xref: mnetor comp.databases:478 comp.unix.questions:3987

In article <14459@topaz.rutgers.edu>, ron@topaz.rutgers.edu
 (Ron Natalie) writes:
> First, I should point out that I hold Oracle and the Three Initial Corporation
> (RSI?) behind it in pretty low esteem.  They're customer support is about the
> worse I've seen, which is compounded by the preponderance of bugs in their
> software.
> 

Relational Software Incorporated (RSI) changed its name to Oracle Corporation
about 4 years ago.  (The other 3 initial corporations are/were Relational
Technology Inc (RTI)/Ingres and Informix (RDS))

I would be interested in knowing whose customer support Ron is comparing
us with.  In the process of porting Oracle to a wide variety of machines
I've dealt with customer support at Pyramid, AT&T, HP, Apollo and Amdahl.
I would put HP at the top of the list and AT&T at the bottom.

I base my impressions on two things: a) How responsive (caring) the
support is and b) how good the answers/solutions are I get from them.
HP rates high on both counts.  AT&T used to have good support (for 3B20s)
but in their efforts to be everything to everybody support seems to
have suffered.  I would say that Oracle is good on (a) and has some
work to do on (b).

Much of the problem at Oracle is that much of the support organization
is very new.  It is impossible to double the size of a company
(and therefore the # of customers and # of customer support people)
each year and expect the people at the interface points to be able
to know all the answers.  At best they can only be eager-to-please
go-fors who try to get back to you with an answer until they have
served as a pipe for enough information to know many of the answers.
Even this may be insufficient as changes in the existing products and
new products make keeping up with the flow of information a full time job.

We have been through several cycles of centralized/decentralized support
trying to find the best combination of keeping support people in
the field (close to the customers) or at corporate headquarters
(close to the answers).  Ultimately the best support (for technical
questions) is gotten when the person answering the phone is
the developer (or sits next to him).  Unfortunately if developers
spend all day on the phone (or answering questions for support
people) they don't get any development done.  Where would we be
today if Ken or Dennis or Bill had to support a customer base
of several thousand people instead of just throwing the tapes over
the fence?

As far as bugs go, yes we have them.  I think the bug database is
assigning numbers in the 8000 range currently.  Considering that
is over a 5 year period involving several megabytes of code
on 6+ major operating systems on dozens of different machines
we are probably doing fairly well.  I think bug database at
Pyramid is in the thousands and the numbers they assign at AT&T
range between 300,000 and 400,000 (I don't know when and how they
started counting).

I would be interested in hearing of other support experiences
(good and bad) and especially how people think support should
work given the problems of a fast development pace; a huge amount
of information to be juggled (Oracle documentation occupies
as much shelf space as a full set of UNIX documentation);
and limited resources.

-- 
Robert Bradbury
Oracle Corporation
(206) 364-1442                            hplabs!oracle!bradbury