[30] in Tooltime
Re: vendor hell
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Harold Pakulat)
Thu Feb 22 18:47:52 1996
Date: Thu, 22 Feb 96 18:47:42 EST
To: Kim <kim@MIT.EDU>, tooltime@MIT.EDU
From: Harold Pakulat <pakulat@MIT.EDU>
Cc: cec@MIT.EDU
Hello-
How to proceed? I don't know if there are alternatives other than to grind
through the difficulties with our top prospects, Scopus right now. The group
has my sympathy, (having gone through some of this) and my general reaction
is that the only solution among the alternatives we can't leave with is one
that would cause us to go through the same process again in a few years.
That is, if there are trade offs in the wish list, we can't make long-term
strategic mistake around something like security. We can probably give up
some functionality associated with specific platforms such as: it will only
run on certain Mac platforms. We obviously want the vendor to be around for
a while, but none of these firms are giants.
Harold
At 05:34 PM 2/20/96 EST, Kim wrote:
>
>=>This vendor game seems to be such a crap shoot. Anyone have any
>=>recommendations/preferences as to how we proceed here?
>
>I feel as though we're at a decision point. I think we need to do a
>cost (time, money, etc), benefit, and risk analysis based on what we
>know about each product. I think we need to face the reality that
>there are disadvantages to each product, to accept them, and to move
>on.
>
>The down side of Remedy is security and unified name space
>management. Regardless of which product we select, we'll be managing
>our own name space, so I think that point is moot.
>
>The advantage of Remedy is that they are proven in the market (the
>largest help desk supplier, anyway), and the software is easily
>extensible to meet both current and future needs.
>
>The down side of Scopus is their unresponsiveness. They don't seem too
>willing to negotiate on price nor fix our installation problems. This
>makes me wonder whether they will be willing (and capable) of
>delivering on the customizations we want. Another thing to keep in
>mind is that they have only 200 installed sites, none of them are
>academic.
>
>I think we need to face the hard reality that there isn't an ideal
>solution. I don't have a lot of confidence that Vantive will be any
>better than Scopus or Remedy, and don't think we should spend a lot of
>time investigating.
>
>Each product we've considered has its pitfalls. I think we need to
>accept the fact that there isn't an ideal solution, and make a
>decision to go with a particular product. What do other people think?
>
>Based on what we've recently learned about Scopus, and past experience
>with other vendors, I think we assume the least risk for the greatest
>benefit deciding on Remedy. Although Remedy doesn't meet all our
>needs, perhaps we can, over time, rally with other universities to
>push Remedy to implement the features we want.
>
>
>
