We were floored by Caldera's service model. The company routinely followed up after after handling incident reports to ensure we were satisfied with the solution, and the company sent us weekly updates via e-mail on the status of all incidents. By routing support calls to our support manager automatically, Caldera gained a huge edge over the competition, which generally required our verbal verification of account information. In fact, IBM spent almost as much time making sure we had a contract and generating incident-identification numbers as it did solving our problems.
Technically speaking, our account manager was able to handle the questions we dished out. The average time Caldera took to arrive at a solution for a noncritical incident was one hour, well above the average time periods needed by HP and Linuxcare but within Caldera's guaranteed response times. The solutions offered were correct--Caldera always solved our problems--even though its tactics sometimes differed from those we would have taken ourselves.
We were also delighted with the wealth of knowledge and technical tips accessible via Caldera's Online Manager solution, part of TEAM Services. General information, from configuration to security details, was at our fingertips. The Online Manager also lets you check the status of incident reports and submit new reports. This was one more value-add that pushed Caldera's solution ahead of Linuxcare's.
TEAM Services, $35,000 for one-year contract, $20,000 for six-month contract. Caldera (888) GO-LINUX, (801) 765-4999; www.caldera.com or sales@caldera.com
Linuxcare Enterprise Support Solutions
Linuxcare is aptly named--the company really knows Linux. Every situation we threw at the staff was handled quickly and efficiently. The average response time for noncritical incidents was six minutes, and for critical issues, four minutes, making this the quickest responding service among those we tested. After our problems were solved, the technical-support staff also spent time on education. The solutions were explained, as were alternatives. We were delighted with this facet of Linuxcare's Enterprise Support Solutions and were disappointed that none of the other vendors focused similarly on education.
Although none of the providers in our review delved into our "root password lost/changed" problem, Linuxcare did take some time, after helping us recover our password, to assist us in securing our system so that the same method could not be used to change the root password without our knowledge.
Linuxcare's solution is unparalleled in the sheer number of distributions supported. While all the providers we reviewed support the most common commercial distributions--Caldera, Red Hat, SuSE and TurboLinux--Linuxcare also includes Debian, RedFlag and Yellow Dog.
Linuxcare Enterprise Support Solutions, starts at $18,000. Linuxcare, (888) LIN-GURU, (415) 354-4878; www.linuxcare.com
Hewlett-Packard Co. Support Services for Linux
HP's offering is the most affordable of those we tested. It offers custom pricing, standard pricing based on number of servers, and per-incident pricing for both phone and Web-based support. This flexibility in pricing and access methods outshone IBM's pricey service.
Like Caldera and Linuxcare, HP doesn't care what type of hardware you're using. Although we weren't all that disappointed with IBM's Intel- or IBM-based hardware limitation, we know that plenty of other configurations are available and believe that flexibility in hardware is important, especially for OS support.
HP had some difficulties with our simple scenarios but came through with solutions in more-than-acceptable time periods: less than 20 minutes for noncritical situations and 15 minutes for critical ones.
HP Support Services for Linux, $1,260 per server per year with 24x7 support. Hewlett-Packard Co., (888) HP-LINUX, (905) 206-3913; www.hp.com/linux
IBM Corp. Support Line for Linux
IBM's offering is the most expensive of those tested and left us with no warm, fuzzy feelings. The staff had problems technically with noncritical, simple scenarios--such as configuring a machine for automatic mounting of a SAMBA share on boot (add it to /etc/fstab, guys!) and seemed more interested in getting us off the phone than solving our problems.
IBM contact methods are comparable to the competition's. It offers the standard list of e-mail, phone and Web access, and includes the ability to use S390 electronic submissions. Only Caldera provides more alternatives, including fax submissions. Calls to IBM's support line were not painful, but they were tedious. Verification of your contract, name and phone number is required, and after using HP's and Caldera's automatic IVR routing systems, we impatiently waited on hold with IBM to be put through to its technical support line.
Support Line for Linux, $17,884 with 24x7 support for up to five servers, unlimited workstations for those servers. IBM Corp., (888) 426-4343; www.www-1.ibm.com/services/e-business/linux_8.html
Technology editor Lori MacVittie has been a software developer and a network administrator. Most recently, she was a member of the technical architecture team for a global transportation and logistics organization. Send your comments on this article to her at lmacvittie@nwc.com.
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