It’s a typical day at Acme Worldwide Enterprises.  An Application Engine job bombs out when posting items.  The analyst finds a problem with the code and notifies Oracle support, who tells him that it’s fixed in Bundle #17.  The analyst hangs up the phone and sighs.  They’re only current through bundle #6.

The analyst approaches his manager and tells her what he found.  The manager realizes that this will be a big impact to the shared service group that’s responsible for testing the application.  Applying so many bundles at once will require compare reports, re-applying customizations, and full regression testing of every module.  She asks the analyst to see what it’ll take to develop their own one-off fix to get their otherwise stable application working again.

The manager then turns back to the task at hand – the next year’s budget.  She’s just been notified by Oracle that the license fees are increasing yet again – which means the annual support cost, calculated as a percentage of license fees, will be increasing as well.  This will be a tough sell.  The CFO already doesn’t understand why support is so expensive for an application that’s been live and stable for two years now.  The CIO will question why they should pay more per year going forward since the emphasis is on ROI and they don’t plan to upgrade for several years -- if ever.  After all, Software as a Service and Open Source solutions are all on the table.  But getting the periodic regulatory updates requires support.  What can she do?

According to Punita Pandey, CEO of netCustomer, Inc. , this is a scenario that happens all too often. And there is a solution.

We give customers an alternative path to paying high maintenance fees.  If customers don’t want to upgrade and have a stable application, we provide 24X7 technical support and regulatory updates, both customized to customer-specific requirements. 

Most customers can save at least 50%, and some up to 75% on maintenance fees with netCustomer. 

netCustomer customers get customized support.  When a customer needs a fix, they don’t get a huge bundle of fixes to apply; they just get a custom fix for the single issue.  They only get what they need.    It’s the same thing for regulatory updates.  And we assist customers through testing process. 

We help with customization troubleshooting as well.  Many issues have little to do with the core product, but with customizations.