BMS Blog: SBS Consulting in the UK

Well I think its fair to say the transition from Eopen to VLSC has been fraught with issues!

First of all the VLSC site “went down for maintenance” for several days after the transition which didn’t help and I’ve had problems accessing the site ever since.

However, the biggest problem by far is there is no way to add new agreements to the site! Yep you read that right – Microsoft have removed the ability for me to add my own agreements electronically! In Eopen I simply had to drop the agreement and licence number in and job done – I could access the downloads and licence keys.

I logged a support call with the VLSC help centre about a week ago (after being on hold for 45 minutes) complaining about the lack of being able to add agreements and was told that it was being worked on and a fix would be available soon. A couple of days later I got a call back apologising for the delay and letting me know it was still being worked on.

Today I called again (another 35 minute hold) and this time was told that the only way to add agreements was by telephoning the VLSC help line and they would add the agreements. When I questioned this they said it was for “security reasons”.

There’s something not right here. First of all I’m told they are fixing the problem and then they deny there is a problem and we have to call them to get them to add the licences! No wonder there is a 45 minute wait on the phone – Microsoft are asking every single partner and customer who used to add their own licences to call them so Microsoft can add them instead. What’s that about!

I suspect there has been a major cover up here and the representative I spoke to did nothing to disguise the fact the whole thing has been a fiasco and even went as far as to say they hadn’t even been able to access the training resources themselves in able to learn the new site and features before launch.

What we deserve is an apology and compensation from Microsoft for causing delays in us being able to install Open licences and therefore delaying customer installations. I won’t be holding my breath…

<rant mode on>

In this enlightened age it is rare that we come across the old school of bearded, bespectacled Unix infatuated dinosaurs of software developers that we had the misfortune to encounter yesterday.

Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against the various flavours of *nix etc. In fact I was treasurer of the local Linux User Group for a while. However, I do have a big issue with the fact there are still developers and support companies out there that think they are so superior to everyone else just because their program runs on Solaris. They:

1. Think they can charge for the privilege of returning your call even though you placed the call 3 days previous.
2. Refuse to provide clear documentation so that the convoluted keyboard commands that are specific to their program only can be properly understood.
3. Still insist on using a dial up modem for support rather than that new fangled Internet thingy.
4. Talk in an alien tongue so that even the most hardened MCSE doesn’t understand the first word that comes out of their mouths.
5. Are so stubbornly set in their ways they have to have a conference call with 10 other *nix developers because we want them to reset the stupid serial print queue that will only print to an outdated dot matrix printer running in a little heard of emulation mode on hardware that was out of date before the ark was even thought of!

So, if you are reading this Mr. Plant Machinery Hire software developer, your days are numbered. That doesn’t mean I’m so incensed by your total lack of disregard for your customers that I’m sending the boys round to batter you about the head with a copy of MS SQL until you can’t remember what lpstat -t is for - I don’t have to. You seem to be doing a perfectly good job of alienating your customers on your own.

Where have you been living for the last few years? It certainly isn’t in the same world as the new breed of customer focused, business savvy IT consultants that I know - a world where we help each other out and deliver what the customer wants in a friendly manner driven on by partnering with other like minded companies. Your monolithic approach is outmoded, outdated and smacks of desperation.  You are an analog company in a digital world and it is about time you pulled your bootstraps up and took that first step in to the 21st century.

<rant mode off>

Today I decided to set up a new PC at home with Vista Ultimate and Office 2007 installed. Everything went swimmingly apart from the fact my printer manufacturer (HP) has yet to pull their finger out and write Vista drivers for it.

However, in my previous machine I had a pretty standard tape drive which I transferred to my brand new spanky Vista machine. Device manager picked it up no problem as can be seen in the pic.

Everything OK so far then. Next was transferring my files and settings over from XP to Vista which worked fine for the most part using the transfer wizard. Lastly I wanted to setup a full backup before I installed anything else so I could return to a baseline install.

In XP this was simply a matter of firing up the built in backup program, choosing ASR backup and having a floppy disk to copy the required drivers to. In fact I’ve restored mine and others systems using this very method and it works so well I’m surprised it doesn’t get used more often. You merely boot from the XP CD, hit F something (I can’t remember which No.) and it asks you for the ASR floppy, stick it in, it rebuilds a default install of Windows then asks for the tape. The tape does its stuff and before you can say “I love ASR backups” you are back to where you started.

Now imagine my surprise when I accessed Vista’s backup program and found that there is no backup to tape option! Yup, you heard me right - you can’t backup to tape in Vista!

Well, after a very large whiskey (medicinal purposes only you understand) I looked at the available options. Hmm, I can backup to disk but it is greyed out (presumably because I only have one hard disk), I can backup to CD or DVD. OK, DVD doesn’t sound too bad, I’m a modern bloke and I can understand the advantages of digital optical media such as DVD. Now lets do some maths. Previously my tape drive was capable of backing up 40Gb of compressed data. As I have 37Gb of data (when compressed) this fitted on to one tape quite nicely. Now with my nice new shiny operating system I’m forced to use at best DVD. DVD can store 4.x Gb of data. That means I need 9 or 10 DVD’s to complete a full backup!

Now call me picky, but I’m guessing your average joe on the street faced with a full backup on to 10 DVD’s is gonna make an informed choice and head for the local pub instead. Why on earth has backup to tape been removed from Vista? What logical reason can anyone have had to do this? I appreciate not many people spec. up a machine with a tape drive, and for the corporate user it would be a waste of time, but surely it didn’t warrant being pulled? I mean what harm would it have done to leave it in?

Right now I’m on download.com looking for a free alternative, so if you have any suggestions please let me know. You will find me down the pub!

A new breakfast networking club has just started in our area so I thought I’d pop along and see what sort of turn out there was and maybe sign up if it looked worthwhile. There was around 25 people there which is pretty good for a group that has only been going for two weeks.

Each of us did our 60 seconds on who we are and what we do etc. and it turned out there was someone else there who does IT. I was interested to talk to them afterwards to find some common ground and to explore where we could be of assistance to each other. Before I had a chance to get in to a conversation they told me they had already become a member and therefore I was “excluded” from coming to any more meetings! I explained that we have good working relationships with other IT companies and didn’t see why this should be any different but it cut no ice.

Now I know networking clubs such as the BNI have a ruling about how only one person from each industry can join, but they at least understand that IT covers a vast amount of different competencies and areas and are therefore happy to have web designers alongside developers and infrastructure specialists etc. Maybe when this particular club is more established they will realise the benefits as well.

The sad thing about this is I know this particular company struggle with the larger infrastructure installs etc. and we would have been quite happy to help them out as and when required, and vice versa as I’m sure they have skills we lack. Needless to say they are not members of the SBSC community and obviously prefer to go it alone. I wish them luck but I suspect the road ahead would be easier and more rewarding for them if they engaged with the community.