Rockwell Tech Connect

  • Thread starter Joe Jansen/TECH/HQ/KEMET/US
  • Start date
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Thread Starter

Joe Jansen/TECH/HQ/KEMET/US

Has anyone had any experience with Rockwell's new TechConnect support system? I have heard practically nothing about it from my vendor, but what I am hearing from other sources is a bit disconcerting. I would like
to be in the know by the time my renewal comes around.

If anyone can detail the good and bad portions of the new structure, I am sure that I would not be the only one interested in hearing them.

Thanks!

--Joe Jansen
 
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Jeremy Pollard

My next column in Control Design deals with this. I have investigated the plan and it does seem like its a good thing sort of depending on who you are and what you have and the problems you need fixing, and if you are wearing a
red shirt and its wednesday.......

Its based on product group, and numbers of products in that group.

So to solve a problem you might need 3 or 4 support contracts in place to access all areas that you might need.

This is the type of service product that can be really misinterpreted and it IS confusing.

Make no mistake tho - its a money stream creator.
Yikes!!

Cheers from: Jeremy Pollard, CET The Crazy Canuckian!
Integration and Automation Training, Consulting, and Software
 
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Joe,

I believe we were one of the first to do this.
It took a while to get the kinks worked out but now we have 16 sites over the eastern US covered by the same support contract. This saved us about $16K this year. We are a company that unfortunately pays maintenance personnel very little and is continually short-staffed. Support is the main reason we continue to use AB.

Dan
 
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Gerald Beaudoin

When I got the first quotation for Tech Connect support I nearly fell off my chair. Partly because of price and partly because of the new structure.

Rockwell has decided to group the various support packages together, sorta like the cable companies do for TV channels. If you want support for a particular product, then you must subscribe to the entire package. In our case, we wind up with a lot of support that we don't really need. Others may be different, perhaps the Ford's and GM's figure this is a great thing... we are are not in their league. Rockwell has recently made efforts to attract small to medium scale business, but I don't think this change contributes in a positive way to that effort. Furthermore, in some packages, like the one that includes RSLOGIX 500, the cost of the support is directly linked to the number of PLCs that you have in your facility. I find this to be a direct disincentive to acquiring more PLCs. Our experience has been that as the numbers of a given type of equipment increases, the familiarity also increases, and the need for support GOES DOWN!

At one point there was an attempt to link support cost of VFDs directly to the number of units in the facility. That sure makes you want to buy... the competition! This feature for the drive support has apparently been recinded, but it sorta makes you wonder if its not going to come back at some later date... like a boomerang.
I can accept that a revision of the support structure was perhaps necessary. For those who have heavily invested in Rockwell Software in the past with a given set of rules, the total change of the game plan is a bit hard to swallow. I still have some difficulty seeing where the advantage is for the customer in this new structure.
Maybe the revised quotation for support cost will allow me to "see the light".

I have always felt that Rockwell support was of the best available and it was generally always at a fair price.
I would like to think that this will continue to be the case.

Gerald Beaudoin
 
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It all depends on what type of company you work for, system integrator or end user. For system integrators/machine builders it is a lot better. For the end users it can go either way. If you were keeping up the support on all copies of software that you owned the price will probably stay the same of may actually go down. If you owned 20 copies of RSLogix and only kept one serial number on maintenance then you will see a drastic increase in yearly cost. If you are a large end user Rockwell will probably work with if the new plan drastically changes your support cost.
 
I have just gone through the pains of the new Tech suport and for us we saved a fortune but it took a lot of work but then again we were 100% legal on our support up until now and we have over 200 packages...

From what I can tell, if you are not "legal" and have been "cheating", it will cost you a lot... in other words in order to deal with Rockwell, you will have to get legal which after all is the "ethical" thing to have been doing all along... cost of doing business and all that...

I think I have the system figured out and could answer e-mails offline at davco @ grandnet.com... no spam please.

Dave
 
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