Microsoft Exchange Team Blog: PSS hold times (updated)

March 8 2004

As most of you know, I write an official weblog on www.lotus.com/weblog as well as contributing content here on my own site.  So it is with a fair bit of interest that I added Microsoft's official weblog for MS Exchange to my RSS reader several weeks ago.  MS has taken a team approach to the blog -- several people are contributing content, and they do typically have profiles posted so you know who said what.  I am intrigued by the process -- it seems quite different from what we do on lotus.com.  It does, however, suggest an approach I could take with the Lotus weblog -- remove the branding (which would be fine by me) and move to a model of more of a group effort.  Something to think about.
However, today's MS Exchange blog discusses hold times for MS Product Support on Exchange.  I find this open admission fascinating. Here is Microsoft essentially airing dirty laundry in public:


"I called in, waited for an hour and the they told me I'd get a call in 4 hours".

Yes, unfortunately, this is what happens these days.
I am not casting stones at MS PSS by quoting this (though I do find it a bit amusing that a company with $60 billion in the bank doesn't have enough support people for a product that is known to be .... well, ok, anything I'd say here would be a cheap shot Image:Microsoft Exchange Team Blog: PSS hold times (updated)).  Anyone who has ever worked in IT has been in this situation with support or a help desk -- and those of us who have been on that end of the call know how uncomfortable and disappointing it is to provide less-than-ideal turnaround time for help requests.
At any rate, I think it's quite intriguing, on an official blog, to be reading about support turnaround time problems.  It's refreshing, but a bit risky.  Were it me writing for that blog, I'd be worried about my competition taking that information and spinning it in some way to customers.... oh...um,.... er, uh, nevermind.
Update: I've commented on the flareup this blog entry created.

Ed Brill Highland Park, IL USA Category:  Microsoft  Add/View Comments [7]

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  1. 1  Brian  | 3/8/2004 5:20:36 PM

    That got me thinking. I haven't called Lotus Support in 2+ years. We're on 6.5.1 today. Redbooks, LDD forums, Domino bloggers... the resources are there.

  1. 2  Tony Lee  | 3/8/2004 6:34:02 PM

  1. 3  Philip Storry  | 3/8/2004 6:54:28 PM

    Brian> I'm not sure it's just resources.

    I also only haven't called Lotus support for years, but in the UK the support did go through a flaky patch (some years ago) which discouraged me from escalting anything to them anyway. Especially as I was consulting at the time, and often had issues which were way beyond the first-line experience, which made it frustrating for me.

    However, the real reason that Domino/Notes support is untroubled by this particularly happy man isn't just the resources that are out there. It's the architecture of the product.

    Domino/Notes has excellent re-use of code. Each feature is well-defined and clear in its purpose. The http task serves web clients. The pop3 task serves pop3 clients. Guess what the ldap task does? *grins*

    The only real exception to this is the slightly unusual seperation of mail into the SMTP listener for recieving, and the router for SMTP sending. But that makes sense at the mail routing level anyway, and it's actually an excellent distinction - it means that intranet servers (and others which don't need to recieve SMTP mail) can still send via SMTP if needed, but aren't listening - so they can't be open relays.

    Better yet, deeply rooted in the architecture of Domino/Notes is a good seperation between data and presentation. That makes a good security model possible - in multiple layers. It also helps a lot when it comes to adding features like replication.

    All in all, Domino just positively reeks of good design and architecture.

    Contrast this with a *coughs* competitor *coughs* like Exchange/Outlook.

    The storage format at the client isn't the same storage format as at the server. The server does try to seperate the features it offers, but puts them into different Windows Services in some cases (like the Internet Mail Connector) and then puts other protocols like POP3/IMAP into the Information Store service. It's security is tied to the platform it runs on, and doesn't go very deep - probably because of the data storage format used, but there may be other reasons. The information stores come in different kinds, which have different capabilities (mailboxes/public folders). And the list goes on.

    It's not that it's very badly designed - but it's certainly not as well designed or architected as Domino/Notes.

    The fact is that Domino might be slightly harder to learn (especially if you're used the the "Microsoft Way"), but Domino is certainly far easier to master.

    And that's down to a good architecture which is both constistent and evidently compartmentalised. In the long run, support costs are lower with Domino because when you approach those "edge cases" of your own knowledge, it's much easier to guess correctly what's going wrong - and therefore fix it.

    Long live the better architecture. :-)

  1. 4  Gregg Eldred  | 3/8/2004 9:27:49 PM

    I know from reading LDD that there are a few people that will not agree with me. However, I have had nothing but good experiences when I call support - even on the weekends when we have gotten in a bind with an upgrade. Always have gotten through with minimal hold times and the people have been professional and friendly. The few times that I have had to call on a Domino on iSeries issue, I have gotten the same results.

    I am amazed at the breadth and depth of the free support, LDD, list servs, and the like. I don't think that you see the same stuff for the other applications/servers.

  1. 5  Exchange Security blog http://www.e2ksecurity.com/archives/000700.html#000700 | 3/9/2004 8:20:52 AM

    "point out one key difference between IBM and Microsoft's support programs. With Microsoft, any customer with a credit card can call Microsoft PSS and get support for any active product. If you want to buy a support contract, fine, but if you don't, you can still get support."

    Cheap? me? Oh, and reminder to Paul -- edbrill.com is not an IBM website.

  1. 6  Nathan T. Freeman  | 3/9/2004 9:43:30 AM

    "Exchange Security?"

    Oh man... anything I could say is so obviously predictable.

    At any rate, my experience with IBM support is mixed. Always have great success getting through to someone who's polite and professional. However, the knowledge level is very mixed. It took nearly three weeks of back and forth to convince someone there was a bug that I'd already backdoor confirmed directly with development in about 20 minutes. That being said, I only deal with support about once every six months, and rely on online resources much more.

  1. 7  Can a company blog be too open? http://napps.nwfusion.com/compendium/archive/004387.html | 3/9/2004 2:37:22 PM

    (ERB: No real insight, just someone noticing the serve and volley. Adds a bit to my post-mortem debate as to whether I should have admitted reading the Exchange team's blog in public.)