Thursday 27 August 2009

App-Compat: The Pro's weigh in...

Application Compatibility is a money maker. I knew it!

Well, for most people it's a real head-ache, and so Microsoft has launched a telephone based service to deal with application compatibility issues.

The link to the service description can be found here: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?pr=advisoryservice.

"The delivery time for Advisory Services is generally 20 hours or less and consists of a specific service scope. It is designed for developers, IT Professionals, and other customers who do not require traditional onsite consulting or sustained account management services that are available from other Microsoft support options."

Microsoft Professional Break-fix support is an incident based, fixed price, reactive support option that focuses on a specific problem, error message, or functionality that is not working as designed."

The service is pretty hefty I think at $210 per hour. Given that it takes, on average (at least from my experience) 2-4 hours to identify and resolve a compatibility issue with a particular application.

That works out to (on average) over $500 per application. Wow!


And, here is the best bit: "The following Advisory Services are currently available only in the United States and Canada."

Good thing Europe and Asia don't have application compatibility issues... Errhh Oopps!

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