Bob,

I would have to echo Chris Mander's thoughts as well. Their 2 hour
callback is a joke. We very rarely call them, but when we do the results
are always a mixed bag.  

Thanks,
Chris

-----Original Message-----
From: veritas-bu-bounces at mailman.eng.auburn.edu
[mailto:veritas-bu-bounces at mailman.eng.auburn.edu] On Behalf Of
Christopher Jay Manders
Sent: Tuesday, October 10, 2006 2:14 PM
To: Bob Stump
Cc: veritas-bu at mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] symantec and VERITAS merger good or bad?

Hi Bob,

We also have noticed.

Support is the most notable difference for us. We try hard not to call
any more, which may actually have been a strategic move on their part...

I heard they 'let go' of quite a few support engineers.

Anyway, the support system really feels like climbing up the ladder to
get the backline folks involved. Escalation just takes forever and has
become quite unacceptable.

Their 2 hour call-back is a joke, in our current experience. Was great
before.

The system broke within months of the takeover, I note. Before the
merger/takeover/buyout we touted how responsive they were. Now, as I
say, we rarely call unless there is absolutely no other choice.

It is a Symantec corporate culture issue, from what I understand. They
did it with the Norton acquisition, too. Licensing and support of their
products has also suffered. "Completely unresponsive" is the word I hear
from our security folks in regards to their desktop firewall and
antivirus software as well.

I should also add that for at least 9 months responding to the support
emails resulted in BOUNCED emails back to me. When reporting it to them
they denied any issue, but looking at the header for the emails showed
that there was a BIG mixup on their end in the translation of
support at veritas.com into support at symantec.com. Was this even ever
resolved? It was so unprofessional seeing the bounces and hearing their
repsonse that I just have nothing really nice to say anymore about them.

Sorry for my rant. But, you hit a BIG button there for us. Wish it were
otherwise....

Of course, others' milage may vary. And, this is my own $.02 and does
not reflect the opinion of my own employer or mgmt here at LBNL. ;)


Cheers!

--Chris



> It's been some time since the merger and I was wondering how things 
> may have changed for you either positive or negative. My experience 
> has been negative. For instance. I work for the "State of Michigan" 
> and have an extremely large environment. symantec pulled our VERITAS 
> salesman and a very knowledgeable NetBackup support engineer and 
> replaced them with a symantec side salesman and support engineer. 
> While they are very symantec knowledgeable, neither one knew much 
> about NetBackup. I think symantec does not know the complexities of 
> the NetBackup product. It takes a long time for the end user to even 
> know how to begin to understand the NetBackup environment. If there is

> a problem with your network or DNS, then NetBackup will quickly pointy

> out the problem. This is just 1 example. I think the support services 
> has also degraded but I have no metrics to support my theory. How has 
> your experience changed?
>
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