Services
The nature of computer time-sharing was that a dissatisfied customer could always "hang up the phone." This put great pressure on time-sharing vendors to provide attractive levels of performance and support. Hardware vendors of the day saw different priorities; they did not focus on consistent day-to-day support. Likewise, the in-house systems groups responsible for mainstream data processing were often seen as unresponsive by their end users.
Feinleib relates a telling story about NCSS customer support, and how a problem at Bell Labs was resolved:
One day something happened to the disk they had their files on. It was a hardware failure. Now that wasn’t a problem because we did routine backups of all our customer files. Except, for some reason we didn’t backup Bell Labs files.... tell them exactly what happened – that we screwed up and didn’t back up their files. Explain how it happened and then say that we will do anything to help them get their data back. He sucked in his gut and did it. After the initial shock, the folks at Bell Labs rolled up their sleeves with us and gathered stacks and stacks of printouts that we used to get their data keypunched, which we reloaded into the system. The way we handled this problem so impressed Bell Labs that they went on to become a much larger customer than ever before.... that technology is fragile, and having confidence in their vendor relationship is the most important thing.
In this climate, NCSS built a strong support and consulting organization, able to help end-users bypass their in-house technical resources. This organization allowed the NCSS sales force to ignore traditional data processing procurement routes; they could instead sell directly to line managers with discretionary budgets and revenue responsibility. Doing so flew in the face of the technology establishment, which had hitherto maintained tight control over all technical decisions. Empowered end users were now able to ask and answer their own questions, without having to deal with the intermediary of a Computer Science professional. This released many frustrations, and helped changed expectations about the role of information technology. Agile companies exploited this situation, and out-competed their slower-paced rivals.
These changes fostered a transformation of business structures of the 80s and 90s, forcing technical resources to respond more directly to corporate and customer needs, and encouraging the creation of new user-centered methodologies (such as rapid prototyping and joint application design). End user access to interactive computer systems was a key step in this change.
Ironically, the same users who used timesharing to outfox their MIS departments eventually became early adopters of PC technology. This shift ultimately marked the end of the timesharing industry – which was unable to exploit or even embrace the paradigm shift that it helped create.
Read more about this topic: National CSS
Famous quotes containing the word services:
“Men will say that in supporting their wives, in furnishing them with houses and food and clothes, they are giving the women as much money as they could ever hope to earn by any other profession. I grant it; but between the independent wage-earner and the one who is given his keep for his services is the difference between the free-born and the chattel.”
—Elizabeth M. Gilmer (1861–1951)
“Working women today are trying to achieve in the work world what men have achieved all along—but men have always had the help of a woman at home who took care of all the other details of living! Today the working woman is also that woman at home, and without support services in the workplace and a respect for the work women do within and outside the home, the attempt to do both is taking its toll—on women, on men, and on our children.”
—Jeanne Elium (20th century)
“I see this evident, that we willingly accord to piety only the services that flatter our passions.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)