Support Contracts (was Re: Paid Sun Patches)

Tue Feb 18 15:50:36 PST 2003

(1) How much does the support contract cost, per year?

(2) How much is support, on a per diem basis, per hour?

(3) How many hours of per diem support can you buy before it becomes
cost-effective to have a support contract?

(4) How much (worst case) does downtime, cost, per hour, to your
organization?

(5) How much would it cost to assemble a set of spare parts onsite, and
would it be cost-effective, in light of (1), (2), (3) and (4)?

(After all, you don't need to go to Heald College to learn how to swap
parts, any more than you need a BS/CS to install software, or an
accounting degree to do basic cost:effect analysis, for that matter.)

These are the critical questions you should ask when evaluating support
contracts.

I find that question (4) is a good test of the integrity of my management
and my employer. For instance:

One NFS server providing home directories to 1000 users whom are each
costing a company $20 an hour (not counting overheads like rent and
utilities) is $20K per hour, or $160,000 per eight-hour shift. One shift
of downtime may be enough to pay for 32 separate 4-hour-response, 365
days a year support contracts.

The problem lies in convincing the people whom originally set the budget
that (a) they are wrong, and (b) you are right. Jobs are lost over issues
like these; care is indicated.

-- richard

Mark Allen wrote:

> Some Sun patch advisories require a SunSolve contract... I'm
> just curious if there's any consensus out there about whether
> it's worth the time, money and hassle to have a software contract,
> or if I'm really okay sticking with the free-access public patches.
>
> My operating environment is mostly light duty work behind a firewall.
> (ie., no direct Internet facing services, and applications like low
> volume mail hub, DNS secondary, etc.)
>
> Mark
> --
> Mark Allen -- mallen at byte-me.org -- http://www.byte-me.org/~mallen/
> PGP: 0x5CDC2161 Mark Allen (Personal Key) <mallen at byte-me.org>
>
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