A sad little passing last week, of the Oracle Support Blog and related tweets by Chris Warticki.
Last week Chris posted this comment on twitter
followed by this terse blog posting:
Support Blog: No longer available
By chris.warticki on February 12, 2010 4:08 PM Please use My Oracle Support Communities instead
Subsequently he’s twittered the comment : “I’m not allowed to represent Oracle Support through social media. Please escalate SR.”
From the looks of it the blog’s been terminated with extreme prejudice, with all of its old postings no longer accessible (“Access Denied”). This is a real shame as there was some excellent information on how to use the support process efficiently, and some interesting discussion around it too.
Chris took an awful lot of flack last year when the new flash-based My Oracle Support was launched. He did his best to soothe tempers, and from what I saw - as a grunt on the ground just using the product - was the only real person from Oracle actually communicating with the Community. Everything else that Oracle put out was empty-worded platitudes and patronisations that did nothing to address people’s real anger and frustration at what was clearly a Challenged implementation.
I remember at the time being impressed that someone from within the organisation was prepared to put their head above the parapet and actually try to work with people experiencing problems. The rest of the communications that I saw from Oracle appeared equivalent to a five-year old putting their fingers in their ears and shouting “na na na na i can’t hear you there’s no problem na na na na’”… :-(
He posted last week If MOS is down, then what?, and maybe this was the final straw. How can an Oracle blogger post something that acknowledges that My Oracle Support is fallible? That a system that people pay a lot of money to use is not only dog-slow because of an awful flash-interface, but that it’s actually UNAVAILABLE? In addition, his blog’s comments section gave a platform to a lot of people raising grievances about Oracle’s support platform, and maybe that disturbed the corporate PR monster too. No adverse comments equals no problem, right ? ….
So the blog’s gone (it still exists in the ghostly whispers of the Google Cache, for how long I don’t know), and with that the Corporate dignity of Oracle is restored, maybe to the relief of their PR dept but to the loss of those of us reliant on actually using and implementing the products they sell and need support for. Even if MOS were perfect (ho ho ho), then having an insider communicating with us plebs on things like escalation processes is invaluable, and a great way of enhancing people’s perceptions of the company and support it offers. As it is, MOS is far from perfect, and there’s a lot of unhappy folk out there.
Update 23 Feb 2010: Oracle Support Blog back online, kinda.
