Experiences with Tricise

[Michael A. Lowry]

Like many other Automic customers, we have been asked by Broadcom to sign a support contract with Tricise.

I'm eager to learn from other Broadcom customers who already have experience with this outsourced support model.

Transition

• How are open Broadcom support tickets handled?
• Is there a single point of contact at Tricise who coordinates the transition for a given customer?

Support quality

• How does the skill level of Tricise specialists compare with that of Broadcom specialists?
• Can you give an idea of the typical response time and time to resolution?

P1 support

• What does the priority 1 support process look like?
• Is Tricise authorized by Broadcom to recommend direct changes to customer DBs, for problem resolution?
• Does Tricise involve Broadcom quickly when necessary?

Bugs

• Does Tricise have access to the Automic Jira?
• Does Tricise have access to the application source code?
• Does Tricise have access to Automic's special tools to aid analysis of traces?
• Does Tricise have access to author and edit KB articles?
• Does the extra layer of abstraction between customers and developers introduce additional delays in communication and problem resolution?

I'd estimate that about 80% of our ~25 open tickets with Broadcom Support pertain to bugs in the code. I am hopeful that the introduction of a new partner for software support does not impede delivery of fixes for these bugs. I must admit though that I am somewhat more concerned about how new bugs we find in the future are handled.

Thanks in advance for your feedback.

P.S. How is one supposed to pronounce Tricise?

[Nicole Boeger]

Dear Michael,

we have support from Tricise (former Capture) for 2 or 3 years now and have had no issues with them. Our Automic system is rather small, so we have had just a couple of Support cases.

I am pretty sure they have all information they need from broadcom (but I dont really know what databases they have access to) to do the first level support. I have never had an issue that had to be redirected to broadcom (no priority 1 support case).

During our upgrade phase to Version 21 last year they were quick off the mark. The bugfix (Automic could not send any email via CALL-object) took a while to be delivered, but that's Broadcoms business. I'm sure whether or not we had support via Tricise or Broadcom would not have made any difference.

In my opinion the change in support has been rather an improvement for us.

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Regards, Nicole
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[Frank Muffke]

Heyho,

all in all satisfied.

Support quality

• How does the skill level of Tricise specialists compare with that of Broadcom specialists? => I would say much better, there are some good old friends known from good old Automic Support staff ;-)
• Can you give an idea of the typical response time and time to resolution? => P2 Ticket ~ 24 Hrs.

P1 support

                  never had a P1

Bugs

• Does the extra layer of abstraction between customers and developers introduce additional delays in communication and problem resolution? => sometimes yes sometimes no in my opinion - depending of the criticality and urgency....

How is one supposed to pronounce Tricise?

=> still Käptscha in our company

cheers, Wolfgang

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Support Info:
if you are using one of the latest version of UC4 / AWA / One Automation please get in contact with Support to open a ticket.
Otherwise update/upgrade your system and check if the problem still exists.
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[Christoph Rekers at Tricise]

Hi Michael,

How is one supposed to pronounce Tricise? => tree size  


Cheers

Christoph 

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--------------------------------------------------------
Automic Consultant and Trainer since 2000
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now Tricise
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[Michael A. Lowry]

Thanks for the feedback, everyone.

Last week I spoke with an Automic customer who has been with Tricise for a while. Below are the main points I drew from this conversation:

• Support quality varies greatly depending on who gets assigned to a given case.
• P1 support is very good; P1 cases are often assigned to former Automic staff including some of the original developers of the application.
• Bug fixes take longer than when working directly with Broadcom. In such cases, Tricise acts simply as a middleman, passing information back and forth between the customer and Broadcom, but adding little value.
• Tricise opens cases with Broadcom Support on the customer's behalf. The customer does not have access to read or edit these cases.
• Tricise specialists do not proactively ask Broadcom for updates and pass along these updates to customers. Customers must chase Tricise for updates.
• Tricise does not have access to:
  • Broadcom Jira projects for AWA
  • Broadcom source code
  • Broadcom test environments

[Leon Carroll]

Hi Michael

If you are in Zurich on the 4th we can have a chat.

I do wish Tricise would maintain their own known bugs page, maybe on a new release proactively run a regression test and publish the results.

Cheers, Leon

[Michael A. Lowry]

Considering the number of bugs we find, Broadcom ought to pay us for this service, instead of the other way around.

I sometimes feel like Broadcom's most underpaid software tester.

[Keld Mollnitz]

Hi Miichael,

Tricise, like any other company, has to make a living, so I would fear an increased total cost..

/Keld.

[Michael A. Lowry]

I can only guess at Broadcom's motivations for outsourcing customer support.

Since the acquisition of CA/Automic by Broadcom, the quality of Automic support has definitely suffered. This is surely partly due to the increased administrative overhead that's inevitable in any large bureaucratic organization. For example, we have seen Broadcom's top-down attempt to impose a one-size-fits-all approach across its varied lines of business, and have observed the poor fit this approach was for CA/Automic. Broadcom also laid off many former Automic development and support staff, and inspired many others to leave. The internal struggles and surfeit of skilled people outside the company created an environment ripe for disruption. Third party firms like Capture/Tricise leapt in to fill the void.

Add to this the continuing cost-cutting pressures from above, and you can easily understand how it could be tempting for management to simply sell support contracts to an outside firm. Without the large bureaucracy, a smaller firm is in principle able to offer the same support more nimbly and responsively — as Automic itself had done prior to its absorption into CA and Broadcom.

This comes with downsides though. Any costs saved through reduced bureaucracy are potentially outweighed by the increased costs of adding middlemen who also need their slice of the pie. Also, the increased nimbleness of a smaller firm is partly undermined by the comparative inefficiency of further isolating customers from developers. We are concerned that this inefficiency will be particularly noticeable for customers like us; the vast majority of our cases are not simple how-to questions, but pertain to software bugs.

I shall withhold judgement until we have some experience with the new support model. It should be evident however that my hope is constrained.