• On MovieTome: Megan Fox on TRANSFORMERS 2!
November 12, 2007 3:37 PM PST

The best software support comes from...Oracle

We in the open-source world like to gloat about how great our support is, and so it is (or can be). But the company that apparently leads the pack in terms of software support is Oracle:

Oracle today announced that Oracle Support has been honored with the "Services Industry Leadership" award by the Service and Support Professionals Association (SSPA). Oracle is the first recipient of this award and is being recognized for outstanding contributions to driving thought leadership and innovation in the technology services industry and helping to set the standards for delivering world-class customer support.

"Oracle is committed to delivering world class customer support," said Stephen Smith, Executive Director of the SSPA. "Their long-standing focus and dedication to customer success is evidenced both in their world class support offerings as well as their significant contributions to the technical support industry to help drive it forward. It is the latter that we are recognizing them for with the first ever SSPA Services Industry Leadership award."

Well done, Oracle. I guess open source doesn't have all the answers, after all. :-)

Matt Asay is general manager of the Americas and vice president of business development at Alfresco, and has nearly a decade of operational experience with commercial open source and regularly speaks and publishes on open-source business strategy. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
Recent posts from The Open Road
Mozilla: The right attitude for the web's gatekeeper
SugarCRM: Opening up the source to SaaS
Executive moves: Sonatype and Novell upgrade their open-source execs
The BBC urged to become UK's "open-source media platform"
Microsoft boosts revenue through licensing complexity
Add a Comment (Log in or register) 2 comments
ORACLE support?! Isn't that an oxymoron?
by FellowConspirator November 13, 2007 10:59 AM PST
They received and industry award for their COMMITMENT to providing world
class support, not actually providing world class support (and open source
software probably wasn't even considered).

One need only be an ORACLE customer / technical user to know that
ORACLE's support outside of sales (closing the deal) is astoundingly bad. For
example, try to find someone in their professional services group that knows
the ins-and-outs of the XML connector or NDM and you're SOL. Adn god-
forbid you buy into the Oracle applications suite... No, there's nothing
particularly notable about ORACLE support.
Reply to this comment
Normally I'd agree
by Matt Asay November 13, 2007 2:43 PM PST
As I have no great love for Oracle. But Oracle has consistently won awards for its support. Do a Google search for "Oracle support award" and you'll see a few awards pop up, including SSPA's.

So, again, while I've heard and told the same stories as you have (and I know a wide range of Oracle customers - including customers who love Oracle - who think its support is trash), Oracle also continues to win awards among its peers. Maybe that's an indication of just how bad support is across the board in enterprise software?
Reply to this comment
Powered by Jive Software
advertisement

About The Open Road

Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to the Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is general manager of the Americas division and vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.

Add this feed to your online news reader

The Open Road topics

Featured blogs

advertisement

Inside CNET News

Scroll Left Scroll Right