I completely agree, and never meant to suggest that vendor support can be effectively replaced. I was addressing it from a "could you conceivably get by" angle. -- Alex Balashov - Principal Evariste Systems LLC 1170 Peachtree Street 12th Floor, Suite 1200 Atlanta, GA 30309 Tel: +1-678-954-0670 Fax: +1-404-961-1892 On Apr 2, 2010, at 2:37 PM, Mark Lindsey <lindsey at e-c-group.com> wrote:
On 4/2/10 1:23 PM, Alex Balashov wrote:
On 04/02/2010 12:49 PM, Lee Tannenbaum wrote:
Under the terms of the Acme Packet EULA, we will not support gray market purchased products like this. Please contact us directly for any further information. That is a well-known fact about most large telecom equipment vendors, and absolutely no reason for a small but well-capitalised company with good engineers not to buy grey-market equipment. You might be sweeping some legal and ethical questions under the rug with that "absolutely no reason" assertion. Nevertheless, there are good business and technical reasons to disagree.
In the short term, for just getting the equipment setup, good engineers can likely get you there. But in the long term, being smart doesn't replace having the source code.
The problem arrives when:
(a) You need a feature not present in the software version you obtained. (E.g., the quirky call-hold implementation next-month's CPE SIP stack release.)
(b) You need a defect fixed that IS present in the software version you obtained.
(c) You need to understand functionality in the software version you obtained to grow your maintain your network.
There's only so far you can go without vendor support. Good engineers can never replace replace access to the people who understand the source code. I've been working with Acme Packet since 2004, and generally know my way around their gear. But I'm no replacement for the software developers.
You need the vendor on your team. Paying the vendor to (a) fix bugs, (b) add features, and (c) answer questions is typically a good deal -- as long as you're sending revenue-generating traffic through the box.
-- mark r lindsey at e-c-group.com http://e-c-group.com/lindsey +1.229.316.0013
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