4 ms·

Why would HP choose to do this? Is it really likely to increase revenue? I can't imagine many customers without a support contract now getting one purely for fi

by omh 13y ago

Why would HP choose to do this? Is it really likely to increase revenue? I can't imagine many customers without a support contract now getting one purely for firmware updates - they'll just ignore them. So perhaps a few extra sales from people who really need the bug fixes. But at the expense of at least a loss of goodwill and increased hassle for legitimate customers.

cones688 13y ago
I had a thought about this that a lot of growing economy are using second hand kit to run vast virtualised environments, HP could be trying to shut the door on people buying old enterprise kit instead of their shiny new ones?
- omh 13y ago
  That sounds plausible. For the most part though I'd expect those users to just use the old hardware anyway, so it's not a loss of revenue. And I'm sure the resources used to serve the updates wasn't significant.
acdha 13y ago
> I can't imagine many customers without a support contract now getting one purely for firmware updates - they'll just ignore them. I believe this is more widespread than you might think – many places are looking to cut budgets and if you have in-house staff who handle most of the work support contracts are a glaring line on your budget. It's not just about the customers who did drop support but also those who might be considering doing so in the future. > So perhaps a few extra sales from people who really need the bug fixes. But at the expense of at least a loss of goodwill and increased hassle for legitimate customers. Agreed: this is classic management-by-spreadsheet encouraging short-term thinking. I remember a few microcomputer and NAS vendors trying the same thing before going bankrupt, selling the business, etc. because everyone involved recognizes it as a shakedown operation. At multiple employers we switched to more ethical vendors specifically in response to moves like this.
wmf 13y ago
HP is trying to eliminate third-party companies that provide support contracts cheaper than HP's own.

by omh 13y ago

cones688 13y ago

I had a thought about this that a lot of growing economy are using second hand kit to run vast virtualised environments, HP could be trying to shut the door on people buying old enterprise kit instead of their shiny new ones?

omh 13y ago
That sounds plausible. For the most part though I'd expect those users to just use the old hardware anyway, so it's not a loss of revenue. And I'm sure the resources used to serve the updates wasn't significant.

acdha 13y ago

> I can't imagine many customers without a support contract now getting one purely for firmware updates - they'll just ignore them. I believe this is more widespread than you might think – many places are looking to cut budgets and if you have in-house staff who handle most of the work support contracts are a glaring line on your budget. It's not just about the customers who did drop support but also those who might be considering doing so in the future. > So perhaps a few extra sales from people who really need the bug fixes. But at the expense of at least a loss of goodwill and increased hassle for legitimate customers. Agreed: this is classic management-by-spreadsheet encouraging short-term thinking. I remember a few microcomputer and NAS vendors trying the same thing before going bankrupt, selling the business, etc. because everyone involved recognizes it as a shakedown operation. At multiple employers we switched to more ethical vendors specifically in response to moves like this.

wmf 13y ago

HP is trying to eliminate third-party companies that provide support contracts cheaper than HP's own.