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Alpha Tech Support make money

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    Alpha Tech Support make money

    This is mainly for the people at Alpha.
    When are we going to see some kind of tech support contracts for corporate and developers users??

    As a corporate user and writing applications for my company using Alpha, my company wouldn't mind paying some kind of support deal with Alpha Software. Eventhough we have this message board, sometime developers or corporate users need a fast answer from someone that has the technical expertise in Alpha.

    I just hope that you guys take this into consideration for the future. Specially now that WAS is comming, I see a lot of companies and developers using it to make a living. As for my company we have some applications in Visual Basic and FoxPro. My boss was going to give me the Ok to buy the WAS server, but he asked me about some support options,.....I said only a message board. He din't like it that much. He says he can't risk putting a company's application on a server without any professional support.
    The Mexican

    #2
    RE: Alpha Tech Support make money

    Not to be a smart(*&^, but there are several people on this board who ARE Professional Developers (like I am), and I am quite sure that many of the others also offer support contracts for applications, as well as for Alpha Five itself. We offer contracts based upon the number of users, complexity of the business, and whether it is to be a "limited", or unlimited support contract.

    Comment


      #3
      RE: Alpha Tech Support make money

      Hi Mario --

      Alpha can offer tech support for A5, but when it comes to custom applications --- which you and many others need --- I think it's impossible to ask any one small team of people to serve all such needs.

      I suggest you do what many of my customers have done: Find an Alpha Five consultant who can learn your needs, your custom application and your methods of business. Put that consultant on a retainer or other contract. That way you have an Alpha Five expert who develops a specialty in helping YOU. This is certain to get you a much better level of help than you could ever get from a software company's tech support crew.

      I'm not knocking tech support here, understand. But I'm saying they're limited in what they can do. There's a difference between product tech support and custom application and programming support.

      Good luck!

      - Steve
      -Steve
      sigpic

      Comment


        #4
        RE: Alpha Tech Support make money

        To add my 2 cents worth (if even that), I have been developing applications for lots of years, as have many people on this message board, all the way from Lotus 1-2-3 to Q&A to Alpha 4 to Alpha 5 and I have NEVER known of a company that offered support beyond how to install their program, and some very simple needs - simple being the key word here.

        What Steve and John are saying hits right to the core. You cannot expect tech support specific to your custom application from the software vendor. Look at the developer's portion of the Alpha site, read the posts on this message board, talk to people and you will hopefully come up with a short list (4 or 5) people who seems to know what they are doing. Contact them and do as Steve suggests. Anything else could be a waste of your time and money.

        Dave
        Dave Jampole
        www.customalpha.com

        Women and cats will do whatever they want. The sooner men and dogs realize that, the happier they will be.

        Comment


          #5
          RE: Alpha Tech Support make money

          I agree with these comments.

          The reality is that there is more Alpha Five expertise in the independent consultants (who have been using A5 for years) than there can ever be in a Tech Support person who will never has the same kind of history with the product that the expert a5 consultants have.

          Comment


            #6
            RE: Alpha Tech Support make money

            Just a thought here:
            Let's suppose Alpha decided to create some full time positions to staff a dedicated support desk. As they received applicants for these positions, other things being equal, they would be delighted to hire a person who had been been an Alpha consultant for the last 10 or more years. This would be a person who understands the product and who has a wealth of hands on experience implementing solutions in the real world. This would be a person who can differentiate between Alpha problems and system problems.
            Well, if that's the best Alpha could hope for, then that's the best that you could hope for. They are available right now only they don't work for Alpha. Take a look at the message threads on the board. I think you will see that there are a number of highly qualified individuals working for companies that could provide prompt "professional" support.
            Good luck

            Comment


              #7
              RE: Alpha Tech Support make money

              I agree with all of the above, but also think Alpha needs to have in house paid tech support. There are times that users need a quick answer, whatever the cost and also situations where new users can get very discouraged by not having someone that they can talk to on the phone to hold their hand as they learn the basics.
              Perhaps Alpha could even farm out some of the tech support to the qualified developers by having them call back on support calls for the usual fee. This could help support those developers that have the time for this and provide a means by which Alpha can appear to have better phone support than the actual number of bodies sitting in Burlington. Alpha could then do some sort of a follow up emial to make sure that the issue is solved.

              Just a thought

              Russ

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