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Top 40 IT Vendors Rated
An anonymous reader writes "CIO Insight has asked its readers to rate their satisfaction with their vendors. Not surprisingly, 'CIOs are disappointed and disgruntled with the performance of their most important vendors. In fact, the number of companies with lower scores in 2006 than in 2005 outpaces those with higher scores by a margin of two to one.' In first place was CDW, edging out last year's top vendor, Red Hat, which tied for third place this year. Microsoft came in at number 24. The coverage includes a detailed methodology on how the survey was conducted. 826 qualified respondents participated."
I worked for one of these companies, and they come in the bottom five.... I'll not name the company, good luck in your quest to figure it out.
They laid me off after 21 years, a RCH away from full retirement with benefits... go figure. I was in the middle of a research project that would've connected the corporate on-line directory to APIs for IP phones (this was 3 years) ago. There was an entire team ready to fund my work and we figured in addition to increased productivity, there would be incredible hard dollars savings (no we hadn't done the business case yet). It was a promising project and there was a lot of buzz around it.
But, meanwhile, my real responsibilities were to be on the team that created the public facing web site...
Here's why a company like this doesn't end up in the top ratings: our team implemented the web site in .net 1.1 after
almost completely creating a java version of it -- Microsoft
convinced "us" it was important. And of course it was equally
important to port it to .net 2 when that came out, what a
nightmare.... those were decisions being made at the managerial
level. It didn't matter all of the extra work added
zero value to the customer experience, it
mattered we had .net 2.0.
At the team level, I once forgot to capitalize an object or method correctly and was confronted by a peer. This was a day after the code was checked in, tested, and part of the working code. He insisted/demanded it be made kosher, and we spent a little more than half a day getting it "fixed". (I know someone's going to say that's an easy fix... it isn't when the re-factoring tools don't work the way they're supposed to and you have to start pulling in the threads by hand -- and that's what we had to do.)
And our internal clients? Wow... we spent meeting after meeting trying to all agree on buttons and their shape and their color... mind you this was an argument about the shade of button, not selecting from a pallette of colors.
Attention to service for real outside customers? Nil.
Yeah, I liked the company once, it might be apparent on many levels why I don't now. By the time they booted me, I was reminded of the ill-fated Eastern Airlines crash all for the sake of paying too much attention to some landing gear lights while the plane slowly flew into the ground. Way too much attention to virtually irrelevant detail and way too little attention to customer satisfaction.
Um, last time I checked, they had basically zero enterprise presence. The CIO may like his ipod, but they are hardly a major IT vendor at the corporate level. I mean, Lenovo isn't on the list, but Apple is?
Most of these vendors like to stick a sales guy in your face and sell what you obviously don't need. They could sell you a 3MB piece of software but prefer to bloat it to 3GB DVDs so you "think" you get more for your dollars. These tactics no longer work. Times have changed.
"If our company had a choice we would continue to do business with this vendor."
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
That seems a bit funny, considering how Dell has usually been more customer/sales focused, as opposed to the focus on technology by HP. The Laptop-that-blew-up must not be helping their ratings either ;)
I don't know how it is in other countries but where I am, the customer support of Dell is outsourced to other companies. Even Siemens is one of the support vendors. And a lot of these people have close to zero knowledge on Linux. Considering the fact that Dell (kindof) supports RHEL, thats pretty stupid.
I've personally had to deal with morons from Dell support. One guy came in to fit a new server on our rack, and he came in with wrongly sized nuts for the rails. We redirected the surveillance cam at him to grab 50 minutes of him RTFM.. which I later showed to the management.
Needless to say our next server will be an HP.
I love humanity, it is people I hate
CDW is known for promising things they can't deliver, like wormhole technology. :)
So that obnoxious techie on the CDW TV commercials is actually right?
sig has been sent away for a few small repairs...
Since when do CIOs know about this kind of stuff? I have yet to encounter someone in an upper position like that who is aware of this sort of thing, although they do all have opinions regardless of actual experience.
My manager loves Best Buy for Business and Tiger Direct for instance; even though we get superior service and pricing through GovConnection forget that! Too convenient.
Can't keep Belkin and Belden straight either.
Microsoft cracked the top 40 list. Looks like all that hardwork is paying off!
If these CIOs are anything like my CIO...
I mean, all vendors are going to have problems, and cause problems from time to time.
But if these CIOs are anything like my CIO, their problems have little to do with the vendors getting the blame, and everything to do with the CIO's own ignorance and incompetence.
CIO: I heard great things about this vendor, but whenever we tried to work with them, they sucked.
REALITY: The vendor is quite capable of doing great things... for CIOs who understand the technology, its uses, and its limitations; and have planned accordingly.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
The MS one.e /14/0,1425,sz=1&i=147743,00.gif
Not really Happy Happy Joy Joy but many want back in.
http://common.ziffdavisinternet.com/util_get_imag
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I for one cannot blame our CIO. Since I deal with the people between him and me on a daily basis I know what he is up against. Basically the CIO is up against the same problem I am. The people in between. They will rarely, actually never, admit their decisions or lack of ability to make decisions are the problem. We continue down the same path as always because the middle refuses to take responsibility and having done so for so long they refuse to make new decisions to correct it. They collude with each other under the idea that if they all "buy-in" then it will just have to come out okay.
We are nearly 7 years into a 18month, 3 years at the maximum, project and still have years ahead of us. We suffer from all the problems. Software which really doesn't fit. Feature creep which prevents fixing what needs to be fixed. Pet projects which interrupt again what needs to be fixed. Pet consulting groups don't help either.
This of course at times get rolled off to the vendors. After all it "MUST" be the vendors who just haven't delivered. Can't blame the staff with any strength because that faults yourself - after all if the staff is a problem then why hasn't that been addressed? So vendors get to take the heat. Some of those in the middle are big players who do only big projects. No big project comes off without some problems. Little things that really are beyond the control of the vendor are hawked to extreme to cover up middle managements bungling.
I would put that in some cases Vendors are the whole reason much middle management (defined as VPs, Directors, Goverance Committees) survive so long. There are just too many convienent avenues of escape. Eventually it may catch up to them but before then they will have destroyed productivity and morale to a point where the staff will leave on their own; thus providing all new scapegoats. As with many companies the staff and even some CIOs can only hope that people get promoted out of where they cause harm or leave on their own. These days there are just so many "nanny" laws that firing anyone is dangerous. You end up just paying them to leave quietly and hope the new team can dig out before becoming the old team
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Where's newegg? Out of the 10 vendors on that list who I have bought from, none of there customer support comes close to newegg. Not to mention newegg ships stuff at record speeds.
Considering McAfee is nowhere close to the bottom, that says something about that list :)
A lot of companies have an Apple computer lying around just to test their webpage under Safari. 17% of companies probably means they have 1 Apple computer for every 1000 Dells.
Check out the Microsoft results. Even though they rank mediocre in almost every question (average between 50-60%, though sometimes up to a solid C+), 80% of vendors said that, given a choice, they'd still choose Microsoft. Strange O.o
This list somewhat confirms what I've been telling a lot of people - the technology industry is becoming WalMartified. Sales of commodity technologies: servers, switches, routers, monitors, phones, etc. are best purchased through national (or global) vendors, like CDW. These places have the size, scope, and presence to consistently deliver the best prices and service. In contrast, regional or local VARs are dying. They can't compete with CDW on price, service or availability. Most regional or local VARs are struggling to survive on their paltry margins from the manufacturers.
However, there is a healthy market for smaller, boutique consultants and specialty providers, especially for security. These places are thriving because they DON'T play into the margin game. They focus on specific services or expertise, areas where CDW isn't a good fit.
If you think about this practice, it makes sense. Where do you go to buy something when you know EXACTLY what you want? If you're like me, you go to BestBuy or WalMart or some such big retailer, because you know they will have the product and at a decent price. A local shop is less likely to have what you want and will probably charge more.
However, where do you go when you don't know what you want? Well, if you're like most people, you hire a professional to help you pick out what you need and implement it. I know nothing about roofing, for example. As such, I hire a roofing expert to help me pick out the right products and get my roof installed. I know I pay more from the roofers, but assuming I trust the roofers, I know that they will guide me into a educated decision.
The technology industry is falling along the same lines. If you know what you want, get it from CDW. If you aren't sure, or need consulting help, look for a local shop with expertise.
http://picasaweb.google.com/SkillWater/BRAINWASH/p hoto#5005252477500827698CDW Catalog Scan 1
http://picasaweb.google.com/SkillWater/BRAINWASH/p hoto#5005252670774356034CDW Catalog Scan 2
Back in 1998 I ordered WindowsNT Server software from CDW. When an advetised rebate was not included I called them on it. After the call I received this catalog in the mail.
CDW Says "Jerk Off" to it's customers.
(This is the actual scan of my CDW catalog)
-EnJoY My wAste
I think it's great that EDS didn't make the top 40. Where's the rest of the list? I'd really like to see where they ended up.
These are people who are using the same root password on thousands of network-attached systems all over the United States? The people who still ship machines with an account named oracle, password oracle (which they don't inform their customers about) TO THIS DAY?
Damn, CIOs are clueless... where do I get a job that requires no knowledge of the craft?
Things always look rosy at the CIO level who never have to deal with calling the tech support. CDW is #1? Give me a break. They've screwed up our orders so many times. I want to see a survey done from the techies' level who actually have to deal with these people.
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The most enjoyable part about these images is the fact that they are advertising a 17" CRT for $399.99. What a steal.
"Flee at once, all is discovered."
The (and with The I mean 'Teh')Real
Reason why CIOs are disappointed
and disgruntled with the performance
of their most important vendors is...
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95% of all sigs are made up.
Back in 1998, it was
I wish I was a neutron bomb, for once I could go off...
All you need to know is that Symantec came in at 14 out ot 40. If that doesn't indicate that either the study is worthless or that customer satisfaction is at disaster levels, it's hard to imagine what would.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
http://www.cioinsight.com/slideshow/0,1206,s=26924 &a=195461,00.asp
You just let every script-kiddie in the world know that Avaya has institutionalized truck-sized holes in their security. Thanks, you bastard.
Avaya system owners - find the Avaya Underground, they will tell you how to secure the machines. You have to hide your modifications from Avaya's support organization (because they don't want you to change anything) but it's doable as long as you have physical access. Avaya punishes end-users who share knowledge, so the Underground is, well, underground.
Hint: old guys working for banks.