Required OEM Support

[janaya]

I am looking at the possibility of supporting a few Siemens systems and was inquiring about the need for OEM Software support.

Do you require the OEM support, much like Avaya's software support, and Nortel's PASS, for patches and OEM Tier 3 support, or does Siemens let you open up cases with them on a T&M Basis?

Once the systems are up and running, how much OEM support is required to keep them running?

 

[Phoneguy7]

Which systems do you currently have

 

[donb01]

I have been about 95% self-supporting my Siemens stuff for almost 15 years, and have working with Black Box/Norstan as my vendor for that long and my company has been with them for over 25 years. I've never worked directly with Siemens for support. Most of what I have had the vendor do is upgrades, and the occasional hard disk recovery - and even the last two of those I did myself. I have a really good working relationship with my vendor and techs and I am allowed to ask them the occasional questions via E-mail and get answers. I have to knock on wood, but say that the stuff just runs, and other than the occasional ancient hard disk that fails or a bad port or two on a port card I have had fairly few problems attributable to the hardware.

My equipment is very dated and end of life. I have updated one of my sites to the HiPath 4000 and really like it. I have had it for two years now and have had very few problems with that as well.

We are looking to upgrade all of our systems, possibly next year after we get our network stable so I can roll out IP, and while our process requires me to research many platforms and vendors I am hoping I am allowed to stay with Siemens and Black Box to take our company into the future. In this research process, interviewing several vendors, manufacturer's, etc I have come to the conclusion (and the vendors will openly share this) that Cisco will be the most expensive platform to maintain going forward and forces maintenance contracts, and Avaya is not that far behind them but supposedly you can opt for slightly lower levels of forced maintenance.

Siemens does not force you to have a maintenance contract, per se, and I would be able to continue receiving support from Black Box on my systems on a T&M basis, BUT... Today's world is all about software now and less about the hardware. Software is changing much more often than it used to - with much more of a process like windows with semi-frequent patches and updates. It is best to keep your software up to date if you can, and to understand that you will eventually have to do a little hardware updating to keep up with the software - servers might need more memory and horsepower as the versions change, etc... Siemens WILL end of life the various software versions as time moves forward, just like all of the vendors seem to be doing with their products - typically on a 5-year cycle, and there will come a point where if you do not keep your software up to date that Siemens will no longer support the vendor either, and they will force you to upgrade to newer software. This is a lot more flexible than most other vendors who will tell you the software contract is mandatory.

I have found that I can get a software-only support contract on my new systems and still pay T&M for hardware failures and upgrades as needed and save some cash. I am recommending the no matter what system my company goes with at the bare minimum they need to subscribe to software support - even if Siemens does not require an annual contract. Some of the other manufacturers will allow you to only have a software-only contract, but that is the lowest you can go and is typically considered a mandatory minimum. In my case I have 7 sites networked within a 15 mile radius representing about 1500 devices, and that support contract as of last year's bids would run about $95K annually. On top of that I am also already subscribed to software support for my voicemail and rightfax. The HiPath 4000 went off warranty in June of last year and is currently running T&M with no issues. I got the latest software patches right before I went off, so I will be good until we decide what we are doing with the systems, and if I stay Siemens that system will get upgraded as part of the project and then be under a software contract. If not, it will get replaced, and will be under a forced contract... Either way I recommend a minimum level service contract for today's systems.

That's just my $0.02 - other people's mileage may vary!

 

[janaya]

thanks for the answers. The systems are a mix of HiCom 300, HiComm 3000, HiPath 3000/4000 series systems. So what I was wondering is, what is the last OEM supported release of software on these systems?

Kind of a vague questions to ask, but I am in the process of helping them answer some questions. I am a Nortel/Avaya tech by training, the last Siemens system I worked on was the old Rolm 9700 series system.

Thanks for the help.