[c-nsp] Maintenace management

[Michael Balasko]

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: cisco-nsp-bounces at puck.nether.net
[mailto:cisco-nsp-bounces at puck.nether.net] On Behalf Of Phil Mayers
Sent: Monday, May 19, 2008 11:01 AM
To: cisco-nsp at puck.nether.net
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?
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