Questions about the Ability to Deliver Quality Support

Oracle wants you to ask us this question, because they want you to believe that they are superior in all aspects of their business. In fact, product development and technical support are two separate Oracle divisions, and to our knowledge, Oracle has never proven that they’re equally strong in both areas. 

Dissatisfaction with Oracle support – it’s pricing, responsiveness, automation, and coverage – is what has driven thousands of global organizations of all sizes to switch to third-party vendors. Gartner has predicted that the increasingly popular third-party software support market will triple by 2023 to over $1 billion.ⁱⁱⁱ 

Many Oracle customers are frustrated by the fact that if Oracle really wanted to, it could return to lower fees or more personalized support. But as a software company, Oracle has moved on to new objectives. It’s using the high-profit margins from your on-premise support fees to develop the next generation of cloud technologies, not improve your current experience. Their goal is to lock you into their roadmap, not to support you on your existing software. 

So, who can provide better support than Oracle? A company whose sole business focus is delivering outstanding support. That’s Spinnaker Support. 

Oracle-provided support is notorious for its slow replies to Service Requests (SRs), which can take hours or days. Most products do not even list SLAs, and they qualify those as merely guidelines.^v  Third-party software support is a live, global service that guarantees fast service with 24/7/365 availability. Say goodbye to time-consuming searches through My Oracle Support.

The Spinnaker Support SLAs mandate a quick response, which for Priority 1 and 2 issues means less than 15 minutes. In fact, we treat every issue with the urgency of a P1, and our actual response time for all priorities is usually five minutes or less. Escalations can occur at any point and may be initiated by users, support staff, or management. 

Just as important as a fast response is a shorter time to issue resolution. We’ve designed ISO-certified processes and deployed modern communication technology that ensure that every ticket is successfully resolved in a timely manner. We use a single IT Service Management System (ITSM) for all ticket types, which provides consistent tracking, detailed reporting, and transparency for the customer.

We’ve also eliminated the types of barriers between operations and development that often slow Oracle’s response times. We practice shared ownership across all departments – engineering, security, GTRC, development, interoperability – and this enables the kinds of cross-functional teamwork critical to solving complicated issues.

It’s easy to be skeptical when a deal sounds too good to be true. And when you’ve become numb to the high annual price of Oracle support, the idea of better service for less expense sounds either like a pipe dream or a loss leader for the service provider. 

In fact, it’s not difficult to offer service at a reasonable price when Oracle is overcharging for support. When it comes to pricing, our starting point for support is 50% of your current Oracle support spend. This is rationalized further for idle software, or shelfware, and unused licenses. All told, this bottoms-up pricing leads to an average savings of 62% – 67% with Spinnaker Support.

The higher quality that we described earlier in this guide is simple to explain. We simply focus on building the kind of services we would want ourselves:

• We hire experienced support engineers who are smart, courteous, and actually care about solving your technical problems. 
• We construct efficient internal processes that focus on transparency, accountability, and shared ownership. 
• We deploy modern technology to track issues, communicate with customers, and facilitate the fastest resolution.

In other words, we put a great deal of thought into how to provide excellent service for a fair price. We align our services to your individual needs, so you only pay for what you use. And we reinvest our profits back into operations to ensure that they are as high in quality as possible. Our end goal is to work with our customers as trusted partners for the long term.

Oracle support does not cover support issues that involve custom code – despite the fact that every product instance involves some level of customization. Oracle support engineers are instructed to stop working service requests until customers prove that the issue is not caused or impacted by customized code. 

In so many words, Oracle is saying that if you mess with its out-of-the-box functionality, be prepared to fix it yourself. For the latest cloud products, Oracle strongly discourages the use of any customizations. Third-party support is dedicated to working with customers to troubleshoot and resolve all issues, including when they are in custom code. 

At Spinnaker Support, we follow Oracle’s best practices for code changes for customizations. During onboarding, we run a coordinated knowledge transfer between your team and ours to become familiar with your customizations prior to having to resolve technical issues. This is a clear example of how we deliver both comprehensive and personalized service.

While many organizations prefer local support resources, the industry no longer works that way. Today almost all support consists of offsite engineers who assist your needs through email, phone, chat, and virtual conferencing. With the right infrastructure, established processes, and talented engineers, a business can provide quality, cost-effective global support from just about anywhere and at any time of day. 

So why do companies remain skeptical about support performed from outside their country? Most likely because what they actually want is the assurance of a fast response in their preferred language(s) during their established business hours. The real concern is not where the remote support originates but how effective it is.

Not all support vendors can promise this, but Spinnaker Support can. We offer effective support worldwide through stringent SLAs (see the previous question on fast response) and a highly connected global network of engineers located in eight regional offices and speaking more than 14 languages. We handle all tickets from wherever they are sent and at whatever time they arrive. If a customer has a need for a specific specialty in a specific country, we will hire for that need.