[c-nsp] Maintenace management

[Fred Reimer]

>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: cisco-nsp-bounces at puck.nether.net [mailto:cisco-nsp-
> bounces at puck.nether.net] On Behalf Of Justin Shore
> Sent: Tuesday, May 20, 2008 2:53 PM
> To: Phil Mayers
> Cc: cisco-nsp at puck.nether.net
> 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?
> 
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