Seems that Oracle Corp. ran into some embarrassing problems this week with its attempted migration of customers from the MetaLink support website to a new site called Oracle Support. Enterprise application and middleware customers for several days experienced log-in and performance problems, prompting a blog fire storm and belated apologies from Oracle officials.
Oracle support people only made matters worse by responding online in a fashion that some angered customers called unprofessional. Oracle Senior Customer Support Manager Chris Warticki, for example, wrote in his blog, “If you’ve been off the grid, or totally out of the loop and completely clueless, Classic MetaLink retired on November 6th.” Warticki urged customers to “get in front of this one … seriously.”
Warticki later apologized “for any misinterpretation I may have caused in that blog entry,” writing, “I do accept responsibility and accountability for my actions.”
The whole experience, however, compelled several customers to speak up online with some obvious points:
- Enterprise customers consider online support sites like Oracle’s a critical production system that they rely for downloads, patches, and other tools needed to keep their own systems running and their own users happy and productive.
- Many of these enterprise customers pay millions of dollars each year for software maintenance and support. They don’t expect support sites to be inaccessible for days at a time. And they certainly don’t expect attitude from support providers.
Now that the Oracle Support sites seems to be back in operation, it would be easy to write off the whole episode as an example of the kind of overblown incident that so often animates the blogosphere. The whole experience, however, is yet another indication that, as enterprise software vendors continue to raise enterprise support and maintenance prices, increasing numbers of their customers are becoming frustrated, and some are questioning the value they get from those contracts.
The last thing any vendor should want to do is pour gasoline on that smoldering fire.
Fanning the Flames of Support Discontent
Seems that Oracle Corp. ran into some embarrassing problems this week with its attempted migration of customers from the MetaLink support website to a new site called Oracle Support. Enterprise application and middleware customers for several days experienced log-in and performance problems, prompting a blog fire storm and belated apologies from Oracle officials.
Oracle support people only made matters worse by responding online in a fashion that some angered customers called unprofessional. Oracle Senior Customer Support Manager Chris Warticki, for example, wrote in his blog, “If you’ve been off the grid, or totally out of the loop and completely clueless, Classic MetaLink retired on November 6th.” Warticki urged customers to “get in front of this one … seriously.”
Warticki later apologized “for any misinterpretation I may have caused in that blog entry,” writing, “I do accept responsibility and accountability for my actions.”
The whole experience, however, compelled several customers to speak up online with some obvious points:
Now that the Oracle Support sites seems to be back in operation, it would be easy to write off the whole episode as an example of the kind of overblown incident that so often animates the blogosphere. The whole experience, however, is yet another indication that, as enterprise software vendors continue to raise enterprise support and maintenance prices, increasing numbers of their customers are becoming frustrated, and some are questioning the value they get from those contracts.
The last thing any vendor should want to do is pour gasoline on that smoldering fire.