Oscar Olsson wrote:

On Thu, 4 Dec 2003, Stephen Fouchek wrote:

SF> Our local Legato support engineer as well as Legato tech support have
SF> made mention that sending email to:  feedback AT legato DOT com  and to your
SF> local Account Rep to have them pass it on to their product manager will
SF> greatly help.  Seeing as how they have to handle the support issues
SF> behind these issues, many of them are as frustrated as many of us are.
SF>
SF> I am figuring the more feedback the merrier.

Indeed. As this thread is slightly off-topic, I will not comment on this
further. However, there are some issues regarding support, product updates
and software quality that have existed for quite a while now. I guess most
of you already know of some of these issues. 90,5% satisfied customers? I
wonder who they are, if one looks at what should be improved.

And regarding the feedback, I have been whining somewhat both here on the
list and to our account manager at Legato in Sweden. I think he
understands my point, however I get the impression that the critisism
isn't taken seriously, for reasons unknown, since both I and he believes I
have a point here and there. The reason for this, pure speculation
ofcourse, is, in my opinion only, due to that the people at legato in
general seem to think that license fees and support contract fees just
keep flowing as usual, as long as the marketing department does its job.
There is just not enough focus on improving some issues.

So what issues am I referring to? Here's a brief summary:

* Responsiveness and overall quality of Legato support. Obtaining product
patches is a hassle, at best. There is no notification of needed patches
to current products, which have some rather serious bugs. Some patches are
included in the same release which is silently re-released.

* There is no way to conveniently obtain product updates and/or patches.
There are also no recommendations to what patches should be applied to
certain releases

* New versions of the software are not conveniently available for anyone,
not even software update subscribers. The media kit is so 1990's. The
distribution method is slow and not at all as convenient as downloading
the software packages off the Internet. At best, one has to request
evaluation of the software, and wait for a human to email the links.

* In general, some sales information about product updates, product
stability, online service and so on is often too out of sync with reality.

//Oscar

It is true that the only time I ever got a good personal response to
this kind of issue was a few years ago when I wrote to someone in charge
of investor relations.  I indicated many of the things that are noted
above.   Sometimes it seems like Legato is hiding the lore of how you
actually use their software; other times we see that Legato employees
are reading this list and responding.

What I can't understand is why they don't perceive their software and
patch distribution methods as a waste of THEIR time and money.   Since
the software soon becomes worthless without a license, I can't figure
out who it's not ubiquitously available with a checksum for all the
world to download.

So the first question I'd ask is this -- the NETWORKER mailing list
respresents just about the most concentrated group of Networker users
around.   Who inside Legato is interested in any feedback from us?
Does anyone have a name? email?   If Legato behaves like most of the
hierarchical, top-down organizations I've had to deal with, it only
wants to hear "good news" from below and hates when staff says things
like "all of your customers are ticked off."

Do we know who's listening?

                                       mht

--
=============================================================
Matthew Temple                Tel:    617/632-2597
Director, Research Computing  Fax:    617/582-7820
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute  mht AT research.dfci.harvard DOT edu
44 Binney Street,  ML105      http://research.dfci.harvard.edu
Boston, MA 02115              Choice is the Choice!

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