Product Support Rant! :)

Many years ago, I had an old car. It had 120,000 miles on the clock, but it still ran and did exactly what I needed out of a car. Twice a year, I'd get it serviced. I'd hand over some dosh and it'd work just fine for another 6 months. Whenever I turned up at my garage holding bits of the car in my hands asking for help I got help. They never, ever told me they couldn't help because the car was too old and wasn't supported anymore.

Currently, I have some network appliances in one of my Data Centres. The kit was purchased in 2007. Apparently it's end of life, not supported. So, I've been told I need to replace these perfectly good units with some new units so I'm supported. The old units have never failed, have never gone wrong and we've never asked for support. The manufacturer has been getting money for old rope for the support contract. Now I need to spend a load of capex to deliver absolutely no benefit to my business whatsoever. I fundamentally object to these tactics of revenue generation and it can be nothing more than that. Today the appliances are working fine and are supported and do the job. Tomorrow apparently they're out of date, a security risk and shouldn't be in our network. What the hell?? Who decided that?!

Why isn't the IT industry be like the manufacturing industry? The thousands of Windows XP desktop machines on my network run just fine, but Microsoft is telling me that soon they'll be no longer supported. Why? It's because they've decided, nothing more than that. To get support, I must spend money and upgrade to Windows 7. There's little to no business benefit from doing so, but I'm being forced to change.

So, here's my idea: Why not enable third parties to support these products from the official EOL? How about just like in the replica and pattern-parts business for the car industry, IT hardware and software manufacturers allow 3rd parties to continue to support products with their own security patches, OS upgrades, hardware support, etc. The car industry seems to survive with all these other 3rd party industries around them supplying non-original parts for those of us with dodgy old motors so why not the IT industry? Or one better, why not just make it all open source? Keen volunteers keep Linux up to date, why not enable the same to happen for Windows XP, or the firmware of an old Cisco box?

Then perhaps I'll have an opportunity to make the upgrade decision at a time convenient to me when I can provide a business case to the board that makes sense rather than the lame "Er, well, X company have told us we have to because they don't support Y product any more". Please, it's embarrassing for me and you. Stop it, now. Get creative, do something about it before someone else does.