People often ask me what differentiates the service and support that Zerowait provides from that of an OEM. I like to break it down to three component parts: Cost, Complexity and Compromises.
The cost of support services from Zerowait is typically 40% – 60% lower than the cost for support from the OEM on the same equipment. The primary reason is that the OEM typically assumes that there is no competition for their unique product and the customer will not try to use another support organization on their proprietary parts. OEM’s seem to believe they have cornered the market. However, many customers have figured out that their vendors are using Off-the-Shelf components which can be (and have been) successfully cross referenced and inventoried by other support organizations. Further the OEM often recycles used equipment to service RMAs, while not exactly publicizing the fact. This leaves customers wondering what’s the difference? Pretty much none, as it turns out. Therefore, a customer looking for a support organization for legacy equipment support or seeking a source for inexpensive system improvements often discovers that their OEM is more expensive for no other reason than “because I said so”, coupled with an insistence on upgrading the customer to a completely new system. The problem for the OEM is that, especially in tough economic times, top-to-bottom upgrades are often not needed and cannot be justified. Cost containment is a big reason that independent parts, service and support organizations are growing.
Often OEM’s will say that their proprietary systems are so complex that no independent service organization can possibly handle their equipment’s unique needs. Meanwhile, these same companies habitually outsource their phone and field service to third party companies for their own cost containment reasons. As a result, complexity and simplicity are mixed in marketing messages. The reality of service and support is that OEMs design their equipment for either efficient parts replacement and repair or for OEM-service only repairs. For systems no longer under OEM contract, third party support organizations can and do provide an affordable and simple option for taking the complexity out of support and providing an alternative.
Many OEM’s try to say that using third party support compromises your legacy equipment’s reliability. This is perverse logic since these same companies, when asked about legacy support, demur that their engineers are no longer proficient with EOL equipment and therefore a customer needs to upgrade to maintain the highest levels of support. This logic makes it seem as if the high availability equipment that you purchased last year is now low availability simply because the OEM has superseded the equipment and no longer wants its people to know how it works. Does that make sense?
Ultimately, customers are put into a compromising situation if they do not allow competition into their data center. Without competition proprietary OEM’s will not have any reason to improve their support quality or lower their support prices. That is why savvy customers are engaging third party support providers and driving support prices down and driving support quality up.
