PB Support

[Former Member]

My question is about purchasing support for PB.  We recently upgraded to PB 12.6 and are considering the possibility of purchasing support.  As you can probably guess, we're concerned about the price and about what we'll get in return for that price.

Do any of you use PB support?  If so, how has your experience been, and would you purchase it again knowing what you now know?

Thanks ...

[Former Member]

Hi John.

We have a support contract. Except from EBF's we can open cases to SAP Support, and we have access to KBA. I'm for support contracts, but not for fixes... I preferred the old model, when ebf's were available to everyone... The most useful thing a support contract provide us is the ability to submit requests for fixes when we face a problem. Finally I will mention that Sap support contract comes in a lower cost than Sybase...

Andreas.

[Former Member]

Hi John;

  FWIW: Most of my Canadian Federal Government clients no longer purchase support. I think that they find with a mature & experienced PB staff that they can handle issues as they come along. That mentality als stems from the fact that they never adopt the latest releases either but usually stay back 1-2 releases on a known & trusted build.

   For IT departments that wants to be on the latest release of PB, DBMS and O/S though, it certainly might be very prudent to have a support contract in place.

  What has the PB community fuming though is SAP's requirement to have a support contract to get fixes for PB software that they have already paid for. I personally do not know any leading software company that has this practice. Normally, EBF's and MR's are free.

Regards ... Chris

[Former Member]

I guess SAP believes in the adage "Good marketing is getting people to buy things they don't need".