From the customer side - I dealt with Netezza and Softlayer before and after IBM acquisition. In both cases an almost palpable drain in support and intelligence. I hate to say it like that as i know that there are brilliant folks in IBM (Watson, etc)
Softlayer and Netezza in different ways were smart, nimble and fearless companies. You had real relationships with the engineers. I got to know Netezza folks in Massachusetts, Poland and Australia - some of the smartest folks I've met. They shared scripts and passionate expertise.
IBM took it over and the bureaucracy set in. The term "TAM" brings tears of rage to my eyes... Opening a support ticket is about as hard as applying for a mortgage online. And they want to have these endless conference calls with 7 or 8 folks from their side. And nothing gets done.
I am embarrassed about the way I have acted on these calls. I have called folks out and out liars. I have screamed at and bashed conference phones.
Maybe it would have been better if I hadn't known the Netezza folks - they were good.
And Softlayer...
I used to be able to call a guy down in texas and after a 20 minute phone call have a cluster of servers ordered. Once did a hadoop cluster this way. Go off and have lunch come back and the servers would we ready by the afternoon.
And now: 2 major outages in the past 2 months. No communication - in both cases entirely their fault. Power failure and network misconfig causing an arp storm. Ignored for hours while we submitted tickets and called support... Nightmare.
And an absurd situation where their security dept threatened us with taking an haproxy server offline due to a clean-mx false positive - even after the tireless guy running clean-mx emailed to that effect...
It became apparent in the discussions following this event that the TAM and sales support which has had our account for years, knew nothing about our business.
Just horrible bureacracy and bad service.
So I have had really negative experiences with 2 IBM acquired companies. Hopefully it will be better for StrongLoop.
For anyone affected - watch for the good folks shedding off.
I hear you on the support side. I used to work for a company that used a product that was bought by IBM. Before that, you could pick up the phone and talk to the lead developer. After, you opened a support ticket online and waited 24-48 hours for a response from someone in Costa Rica or India. Now I work at IBM with this same product, and even I as an employee who supports the product, even I have to go through the same Level 1 tech support crap.
However, the cash injection made the core product worlds better, and it was good to begin with. Support got worse, the product got better. It's almost an even balance.
Softlayer and Netezza in different ways were smart, nimble and fearless companies. You had real relationships with the engineers. I got to know Netezza folks in Massachusetts, Poland and Australia - some of the smartest folks I've met. They shared scripts and passionate expertise.
IBM took it over and the bureaucracy set in. The term "TAM" brings tears of rage to my eyes... Opening a support ticket is about as hard as applying for a mortgage online. And they want to have these endless conference calls with 7 or 8 folks from their side. And nothing gets done.
I am embarrassed about the way I have acted on these calls. I have called folks out and out liars. I have screamed at and bashed conference phones.
Maybe it would have been better if I hadn't known the Netezza folks - they were good.
And Softlayer...
I used to be able to call a guy down in texas and after a 20 minute phone call have a cluster of servers ordered. Once did a hadoop cluster this way. Go off and have lunch come back and the servers would we ready by the afternoon.
And now: 2 major outages in the past 2 months. No communication - in both cases entirely their fault. Power failure and network misconfig causing an arp storm. Ignored for hours while we submitted tickets and called support... Nightmare.
And an absurd situation where their security dept threatened us with taking an haproxy server offline due to a clean-mx false positive - even after the tireless guy running clean-mx emailed to that effect...
It became apparent in the discussions following this event that the TAM and sales support which has had our account for years, knew nothing about our business.
Just horrible bureacracy and bad service.
So I have had really negative experiences with 2 IBM acquired companies. Hopefully it will be better for StrongLoop.
For anyone affected - watch for the good folks shedding off.