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HP To Charge For Service Packs and Firmware For Out-of-Warranty Customers
New submitter josh itnc writes "In a move that is sure to put a wedge between HP and their customers, today, HP has issued an email informing all existing Enterprise Server customers that they would no longer be able to access or download service packs, firmware patches and bug-fixes for their server hardware without a valid support agreement in place. They said, 'HP has made significant investments in its intellectual capital to provide the best value and experience for our customers. We continue to offer a differentiated customer experience with our comprehensive support portfolio. ... Only HP customers and authorized channel partners may download and use support materials. In line with this commitment, starting in February 2014, Hewlett-Packard Company will change the way firmware updates and Service Pack for ProLiant (SPP) on HP ProLiant server products are accessed. Select server firmware and SPP on these products will only be accessed through the HP Support Center to customers with an active support agreement, HP CarePack, or warranty linked to their HP Support Center User ID and for the specific products being updated.' If a manufacturer ships hardware with exploitable defects and takes more than three years to identify them, should the consumer have to pay for the vendor to fix the these defects?"
... they sure as hell will now.
I'm not an IT person, but weren't there a few companies that tried this crap wwaayy back when? I seem to remember them all failing miserably.
One more reason to avoid buying or recommending HP to would be buyers. The last thing I'd want to deal with is not being able to get a copy of a firmware update for someone's out of warranty system, server or not because I'm not "HP certified support" or whatever. In 2014, there is no fucking reason whatsoever to not have all issued patches available as direct downloads. This is especially true for legacy hardware.
does not qualify as news
I cannot believe they would do something like this. Is there something that I do not understand about this? Is it really that much of a burden to provide access to updates?
Hewlett and Packard were something special.
Now it's just a bunch of MBAs trying to massage their stock price.
It shouldn't be a legal mandate either. Keeping already released patches available should be a courtesy that all vendors willingly do. The good will encourages repeat buys. Eventually, vendor support will be so expensive and so unappealing that people will just run a free unix on commodity hardware because they get better help from internet forums than they do from vendors.
Ladies and gentleman, this is it.
This is the end of Hewlett Packard.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Aren't service packs and firmware updates fixes to defective computers/software? Why are they trying to charge for fixing something that is not supposed to be broken in the first place?
... but in this case I won't fault anyone if they have to download the essential patches from pirate sites.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Wow! What a great reason to avoid buying new server hardware from HP! It is a massive disincentive to purchase. I cannot help but think this is supremely short sighted and a decision made by somebody up high who is not technically inclined.
Its happened twice this year that I've tried to find drivers on the HP website for notebooks aged 3-5 years, and found they're not on the HP website. After phoning HP I'm told that warranty isn't valid and for this kind of support I must pay an hourly fee. Only after threats of a lawsuit and an hour of my time occupied, the rep has been able to e-mail the drivers to me, instead of actually listing them on their website for the other owners of the same models.
Look at this the other way. Lets say you sell something you warrant to work for three years. Some four years later, there's some kind of security flaw - why should the company not need some extra funds to develop a fix? To my mind this change is something that will lead to better support for older products, because you can keep on paying and demanding fixes for your payments...
Car analogy! Have you ever heard of a safety recall? You will note that it isn't only new vehicles, or vehicles still under warranty that get recalled. It's ALL the defective vehicles, and the manufacturer has to pay for the repairs. Why you may ask? Because they designed something that is faulty and thus poses a risk not only to the people who bought the car, but to everyone else on the road. Why should software security be any different? If you get compromised, it doesn't just affect you, it can potentially affect a lot of other people.
Now of course for bugs that aren't security related you maybe have a point, if the back seat cupholder tends to break in a car the manufacturer may not be held reliable to fix it, as it doesn't pose a safety risk, but of course not fixing it is sort of a dick move....
Monstar L
That's interesting, my experience was the exact opposite. I was recycling my HP desktop for a colleague to use and realised that I hadn't created recovery media after sticking Linux on it. I called HP expecting to be charged for the media (it was 18 months out if warranty) and the bloke just sent it out free of charge. It turns out I now have two copies - I found the original media when clearing out a cupboard a month later.
Maybe the difference was consumer grade laptop vs business grade desktop, even if it that were the case, there'll probably be no difference between the two now.
Did HP hire Ballmer?
We are a small shop and we are running 3 VMs on a single HP Proliant G7 Server. It has enough memory and resources that it could probably run an additional 7 VMs if we wanted to. HP is having to face the reality that the people are buying less hardware because realistically the ratio of VMs to servers is high as 10:1. HP is trying to gouge customers on the warranty because they can't make it up in server sales. Our Proliant DL380 G7 hit the 3 year mark a few months ago and is now out of warranty. The additional cost of the most basic warranty (4 hours/day phone, no onsite) for a single Proliant server is approximately $3000 for three years. That is easily half the cost of the server. And that's the cheapest warranty option. Don't even ask about the 24/7 onsite warranty. This change effectively kills the secondary market for HP hardware. Denying access to firmware means that it will be next to impossible to install or update your OS. I've had to run the HP SPP firmware upate several times to address issues that would otherwise have rendered our Proliant server useless. In fact I have an unresolved issue with our server where it refuses to reboot to the OS, unless I boot from the HP SPP tool first. If I need a critical firmware update in the future, the only option may be the Piratebay. Ugh If HP doesn't reverse this decision, our next server will most likely be a Dell. Unless Dell decides to follow HP into the dark side as well.
Now it's just a bunch of MBAs trying to massage their stock price.
You got that right.
Algorithm:
- Get hired for a big salary and a LOT of stock options.
- Make the company appear more profitable by cutting off investments in the future to reduce costs now.
- Declare victory and what a great guy you are.
- Cash in the stock options and move on to a bigger company where you can repeat the process for even more money and reputation points. PROFIT!
- Your successor inherits the house of cards and takes the blame when it collapses a few years later.
The Harvard Business School has a reputation for graduates who use this algorithm.
Interestingly, boards of directors keep falling for this. (You'd think they'd look at what happens to companies candidates had "turned around" in the several years AFTER they left when evaluating CEO, COO, and CFO candidates. But apparently they usually don't.)
= = = =
Similarly, if a high company official starts enthusing about the book "Crossing the Chasm" and you're an early hire, cash any vested stock options and get out, before you and the other early hires are laid off. (Interestingly, they usually fire them too soon, when they're still key to the company's success, and the company usually falls INTO the chasm rather than crossing it.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Last year -- I downloaded all the Compaq (now HP) SP's from their FTP site -- don't quite know what to do with them. I downloaded all of the SP's in case HP stopped supporting 'older' Compaq's (There are several of the old systems that I like for nostalgia)
.. is this policy going to follow through with other HP equipment? I've got a HP color laser jet printer: Will I experience the same issue with that? I've got three HP scanners -- will I need to put them in the garbage? (No one will want them if they can't get even basic driver support).
Now for the big problem: HP or Dell. Dell is firing 15,000 of it's employees --- and HP's new support policy sucks (REALLY sucks).
My question is
I do know this much: If I need to "throw away" otherwise perfectly good equipment as HP will not provide basic user accessible support for it -- I will not replace the equipment from the same manufacturer with the same BAD policy. I have three 'old' Proliant (580, 585 & 360) servers in use now. If (when) they fail -- the equipment will not be replaced with modern equipment from HP (assuming this policy remains in place).
Now for the big problem: HP or Dell.
There's always Oracle hardware.... OK this is self-confessed flamebate!
I suspect they will only try this in some countries. They would be in breach of consumer laws in countries like New Zealand to charge to fix defects.
Regardless, other have said, it will weight in favour of other suppliers for new purchases.
The notice is about HP 9000 (read PA-RISC and HP-UX) and HP Integrity (read Itanium and HP-UX). HP 9000 was end-of-saled years ago and you know Itanium. The products are a dying remnant that some companies may be trying to stick to. Honestly, sometimes just people need to let go.
So if you're yelling loudly about your network or PC stuff not getting BIOS-upgrades, go back to fix your comments.
(What a coincidence, the captcha word is "extort")
No, it's just that the link went to the email received by a customer who is using HP9000 stuff. The change DOES also apply to the usual stuff like HP Proliant DL380 etc. For example, the mail I received today (as a Proliant user) was:
"Update: HP ProLiant Servers: Access to Firmware Updates & Service Pack for ProLiant
You are receiving this communication because you have been identified as a customer using HP ProLiant Servers and HP Services.
HP has made significant investments in its intellectual capital to provide the best value and experience for our customers. We continue to offer a differentiated customer experience with our comprehensive support portfolio. HP, as an industry leader, is well positioned to provide reliable support services across the globe with proprietary tools, HP trained engineers, and genuine certified HP parts. Only HP customers and authorized channel partners may download and use support materials.
In line with this commitment, starting in February 2014, Hewlett-Packard Company will change the way firmware updates and Service Pack for ProLiant (SPP) on HP ProLiant server products are accessed. Select server firmware and SPP on these products will only be accessed through the HP Support Center http://customer.hp.com/r?2.1.3... to customers with an active support agreement, HP CarePack, or warranty linked to their HP Support Center User ID and for the specific products being updated. We encourage you to review your current support coverage to ensure you have the appropriate coverage to maintain uninterrupted access to firmware updates and SPP for these products. "
After all, when is the last time you heard of a recall of a 1978 Chevy? There is a sunset period beyond which no one cares anymore. With the speed of computer development, that period is much shorter than cars.
If they say "we'll keep fixing and updating for 3 years, then forget it, on to the new stuff", then what?
Just consider that, before you throw out the baby with the bath water. Why exactly do they have to provide updates forever?
Frankly, Microsoft has done everyone a huge disservice by supporting XP for so long, people have gotten this idea that computers should be updated forever.
A few years from now, HP will no longer sell hardware.
Yes Cisco does. I have seen it a couple times with other enterprise products. It is evil. The product basically becomes a paperweight after the planned life cycle.
I won't touch Cisco gear with a 10 ft pole, and this is exactly why.
On the other hand...
When working in a Fortune 500 company there were some mighty expensive premium contracts with Cisco. Among them was an agreement I learned about when we had an outage late in the afternoon that affected about 15 people. We have hardware that could have affected hundreds of people, but in this case the outage only affected a few.
Cisco found the closest duplicate replacement part in another state, chartered a flight to a nearby airport, had a taxi driver on standby when the plane arrived, and delivered it to our door within about four hours of reporting the fairly minor problem.
I understand the contract is in place because we had hardware that affects hundreds of thousands of people. The Cisco crew was adamant that the contract had a clause that required a six-hour turnaround on any of that class of hardware. If it had been a major device at a major data center those same four hours could have felt like an eternity, so for those people where an outage can cost thousands of dollars every second in lost productivity and sales I can certainly understand the need for the contract with the devil.
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
You'd think they'd look at what happens to companies candidates had "turned around" in the several years AFTER they left when evaluating CEO, COO, and CFO candidates. But apparently they usually don't.
No, that is part of the scam. The MBA applying for the new job points out how everything went to shit after they left, so clearly their genuius is worth paying big bucks for and any other merely qualified applicant will surely fail in such a high pressure, highly skilled role.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I'm not an IT person, but weren't there a few companies that tried this crap wwaayy back when? I seem to remember them all failing miserably.
If you were a reader of slashdot you'd know that Oracle is suing companies for providing patch access to customers without a support contract right now. And people are finding ways not to be an Oracle customer (right now) as a result. Naturally HP thought it would be a good idea, as they have too many customers.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I would demand a refund for any defect found in firmware/etc.
This is only going to lead to court cases where the defect report was filed during the warranty, but the fix comes out after warranty expiration.
We are the 198 proof..
We had a 48port netgear switch that didn't pass ipv6 traffic, and netgear supported wanted to charge us for the firmware update, we didn't get it.
Yes, but cars are heavily regulated, computers are not... In addition, there is a time limit beyond which they no longer do recalls and the manufactures no longer have to pay for them.
After all, when is the last time you heard of a recall of a 1978 Chevy? There is a sunset period beyond which no one cares anymore.
That sunset period is ten years.
With the speed of computer development, that period is much shorter than cars.
The sunset period reflects the period in which the product may be in use, not the period in which the product is state of the art. Many servers are regularly in place for ten years. The average age of [a] personal computer was 4.5 years in 2006. The average age of a car in the US is now 11.4 years and the lifespan of an OTR truck is 4-5 years. It seems reasonable to have a 10 years sunset lifespan on computers to me, especially given that their useful lifespans are increasing, not decreasing. The rate at which processor, memory, and storage speed is increasing has slowed, so we're using our PCs longer — their lifespans are increasing. The support period should thus increase.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I use old HP servers for fun, development, and test sandbox work. I get most of them for free (salvaged from customers who replace them) and upgrade them with parts from eBay. So having to pay for firmware updates is certainly something that will annoy me on a personal level.
Having said that however, I don't understand why you would make such an obviously emotional decision. If you really want to ditch HP (and I am not a stockholder so I am not protecting them) you should do an actual TCO calculation to see if the new support arrangement actually has any real consequence for you. If you already buy servers "by the ton" then odds are you already have a support agreement which will provide you with full access to the entire HP repository of updates.
I don't find it problematic that HP want's to charge prices for firmwares. In fact, I wished more companies did so. In reality you already paid for "lifetime updates" when you purchased, say, a G7 server. So let me just mention the possible benefits of a functional post-warranty market for updates:
1.) Over time, paid firmware update will decrease the price of the new server and/or its initial support contract. Rather than paying for "lifetime updates" the initial owner gets to pay only for his/her actual usage of updates.
2.) A functional post-warranty firmware market (with a culture where paying for this service was widely accepted) would mean more vendors would support their hardware for longer. Simply because customers would be willing to pay for updates. I have often wished it was possible to update the firmware for stuff, like network printers, small routers, older laptops, graphics cards, as well as servers. Have you never been in a situation where you wished you could throw 20 bucks at Asus to get a recent formware for ?
3.) Most hardware today is changed because of lack of support - not because of actual failure (or even the prospect of failure). Which is likely why HP seeks to make an actual business out of their post-warranty support. Paid updates could, if prices are reasonable, prolong the lifespan of gear - reducing e-waste and spent man-hours. There is no reason a server witrh the build-quality of a HP G7 or a BL c7000 should last only 3 years. It will easily last 8 if maintained properly, and if support options are available and fair.
Hell, I just fired up an old HP c3000 with 6 servers, 40 Xeon cores and 92 gigs of RAM. It uses a bit more power than new servers - sure - but the hardware was acquired for free, using it means delaying e-waste, and it gets the job done with no problems at all. But I am sure it would all have been a nightmare if updates were not available. New ILO2 firmwares, updated RAID controller firmwares, new version of LightsOut ... I would happily have paid a bit of money for that.
You should stop making decisions when you're emotional about something.
Calculate your TCO, including support and quality. Then decide if you should ditch HP or not.
If HP (and others) jkeep the price for these updates fair, I see no problem with this. In fact I welcome it, hoping it will gain attention from smaller vendors in the consumer space as well.
- Jesper
My security clearance is so high I have to kill myself if I remember I have it...
They charge too much and their hardware is always out of date.
I decided to buy some seriously high-end computing equipment for research, and I compared HP, Dell, and Red Barn. For the same price, Red Barn gave me newer hardware, more hardware, faster turn-around on quotes, better service, faster build times, and faster customer service. http://rbtginc.redbarncomputers.com
Bad assumption. The people making purchasing decisions (especially at large organizations) do not base their decisions on unimportant things like "quality" or "technical factors", they very frequently make those decisions based on 1) initial cost and 2) who they play golf with. I've seen this in action, where the people who actually know things are standing on their heads trying to get management to understand why buying $x is a bad idea for valid technical reasons, and some retard MBA makes the wrong decision because a sales rep bought them dinner at a conference once.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
Bullshit. It's not MY job to keep THEIR lights on. If they want to keep their lights on, give me a reason to buy more products from them. These days, better support and customer service will earn more business than trying to nickel and dime everyone. If HP wanted to increase their sales, they should have improved their support and service instead of decreasing it.
Yes, Cisco also does this and the necessity to call them, pleading for an up-to-date firmware when your brand new Cisco unit has a 2 year old ASA bin, ASDM and VPN which won't work with your client's newer Internet Explorer. This is also why it's common amongst IT people to say "screw you Cisco" and share firmware on secret yet publicly hosted HTTP sites made available through one service contract for one device.
More importantly, it is THEIR job to provide me with a working product. The warranty covers problems with the device caused in the field. If they sold me a product that has known issues then it is their responsibility to provide the fixes, regardless of whether or not I am in warranty. If I plug my 120v (US) router into a 240V (uk) outlet and let out the magic smoke and am out of warranty* that's fair. But if I'm sold an internet firewall that has a secret admin password that can't be changed, it's the company's responsibility to provide the necessary fix so the firewall works as expected.
This should be no different than how automobile companies are expected to act. If a serious flaw is found in a car, it doesn't matter if it is this year's model or from ten years ago, or whether you are the original owner or have purchased it used; you are entitled to that fix. Why some software vendors have somehow gotten it into their heads that they have the right to sell us lemons and then make us pay for the privilege of fixing their mistakes.
* actually, warranty probably wouldn't cover this sort if user-stupidity either, but you get my point ;-)
I think as a customer you have to realize a company needs money to "keep the lights on". If you haven't given them money for more than three years, how are YOU keeping their doors open?
Yes, that's a valid question. What's in it for them? The answer is reputation. We're specifically talking here about patches that HP has had to develop anyway, to serve their customers with support contracts. The cost of distributing patches to customers can be low, if you don't have a massively overwrought web infrastructure as does HP. If you simply permit third parties to redistribute patches, it's virtually nothing. HP is hoping to strong-arm customers into giving them money, and no doubt it will work on a few of them. But in the bargain it will engender massive resentment in those customers, who will do their best to seek alternative solutions in the future — to say nothing of the effect it will have on your former customers who are not so tied to your systems and services that they cannot take their custom elsewhere.
Oracle is doing their best to plot their own downfall. HP is only still with us today as it is due to inertia. I, for one, will miss neither. But then, I never had an HP calculator.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Such things are covered under the Sale of Goods Act as manufacturing defects, since clearly any bugs would have been there when the car was built. The SOGA says goods must last a "reasonable length of time", which for a car has been generally viewed by the courts as at least 15 years.
Therefore any manufacturing defects discovered in the first 15 years of the car's life are covered by the warranty. The manufacturer can either do the fix for free, offer you a replacement car or refund part of the purchase price proportional to how long you have had the car (so after 10 years you might get 1/3rd of the money back, or whatever the market value of the car is).
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I'm not an IT person, but weren't there a few companies that tried this crap wwaayy back when? I seem to remember them all failing miserably.
What makes this more ironic is that HP recently went the other direction on their ProCurve line, offering full features and upgrades for life. I just deployed a cluster on mid-range HP switches yesterday and they were such a better deal than Juniper, specifically because of their software support policy.
But ... because of Juniper, Cisco, even Netgear to some degree they have to compete there. You'll notice that IBM just sold its server business to China, and Dell just announced 15,000 layoffs, both in the past week. HP is in a "last man standing" position, though they're only king of the Brand-Name Hill, while the Whitebox Mountains dominate the landscape.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
One of the reasons in gong with a major brand is the implied support that comes with the name. Changing the support paradigm has an effect on sales, it is just delayed. 3 years out is about the timing businesses are looking to upgrade their systems. If patching/drivers becomes a serious issue in managements collective "mind", this will influence the buying decision for next time.
A company can get away with this when they have a locked in market and customers with few alternatives. I don't believe this is the case in the desktop/server area.
For far less money than the Cisco support contract, you could have just bought several spares of each model of Cisco device, and have had the replacement on-hand a quickly as you could walk over and grab it.
Perhaps you missed the first part of my post. Fortune 500 data center.
If you are talking about consumer devices and even common office server room equipment that is quite true. We had lots of commodity stuff lying around. We also kept a bit of less common stuff around, such as spare UPS racks; the $30,000 price tag is low enough cost that we could keep a few of them around when equipment shuffles.
Note that some critical equipment gets mighty expensive. You can find a good deal on low latency, high volume interconnect that can handle ten million concurrent connections for around $250K, but you'll probably want to pay around $350K for the better ones. It would be insane to just keep a few of EVERYTHING lying around, just in case. Far cheaper for the Cisco contract that will get us any replacement we need, quickly.
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
What's even more interesting is that interlocking directorates in the same industry are illegal in the US per the Clayton Act, however the article points out that 1 in 8 interlocks are indeed in the same industry. There's simply no enforcement of this. Thanks again, Obama.
And the previous four administrations. This didn't happen in just the past 6 years. It started a long long time ago, and the Clayton Act, like the Sherman Act, has been out of favor for decades, because it inconveniences people with money.
Thank you Supreme Court for making sure people with money will always have the best government their money can buy.