DELL Buys Sonicwall... should help Untangle Sales

[automationstation]

Don't know if you saw this, but this will probably help Untangle Sales and open up conversations with new prospects who currently use SonicWall devices:

http://www.crn.com/news/security/232....htm?cid=nl_vi

[dwasserman]

OMG!!! The next step is HP (or IBM or Cisco) buy Untangle?

[sky-knight]

That's actually not good news, that means Dell like financing on a primary Untangle competitor. Of course, that also likely means Sonicwall will be worse than ever.

As for anyone else, if you aren't expecting Untangle to sell to someone at some point. You're delusional. Everyone owns a business these days with the express goal of selling it at some point.

It isn't a bad thing, it's just the way things are.

[YeOldeStonecat]

I'm actually semi relieved.......
I have some clients that have been using Sonicwalls for a long long time.
Solid units...rock solid. But if you need their support...holy crap what agony...it's worse than ripping out your pubes with a pair of tweezers.

I remember my first experience with their support...back in the Win95/NT 4 days...was setting up a WAN. Had an issue setting up the IPSec tunnels between 2 sites...the Sonicwall support guy told me over and over that router to router tunnels wouldn't work if one of the ends was on PPPoE DSL because it needs a static IP address. I grabbed as big of a hammer as I could to try to force him to grasp the concept that some ISPs do static biz accounts on PPPoE and that the IP reservation is bound to the username/password..but the guy told me that was impossible, that all PPPoE accounts are dynamic/random like home accounts. Even though I'd been setting up routers with SNET (prior to SBC..prior to ATT) DSL on the east coast of the US with the first batch of 100 Linksys BEFSR routers that came off the assembly line.

Needless to say, another colleague of mine that was very familiar with Sonicwalls (he was a gold partner) helped me find the other issue and blammo...we got the tunnels up...including another 4 tunnels that day...on static PPPoE DSL!

Other times since then..calls to Sonicwall support..painful. Never had a good experience with their support.

Hopefully...I'm sure it will take time, Dell will migrate their support into the business support line..so it's in the US..and painless, like the rest of their business workstation/server support is.

[hescominsoon]

i'm actually semi relieved.......
But if you need their support...holy crap what agony...it's worse than ripping out your pubes with a pair of tweezers.

roflmao!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[sky-knight]

There is no better description of Sonicwall support... However, I will also point out that this is my experience with Dell support.

I don't see a distinction here. Sitting on hold for an hour waiting on someone to open a ticket to ship me a power supply is unacceptable. Sure the supply got here tomorrow, but I can place an order for a part from a random vendor in 5 seconds and do the same thing.

[ntldr]

There is no better description of Sonicwall support... However, I will also point out that this is my experience with Dell support.

I've always gotten excellent support from Dell on business hardware (Precision, Latitude, Optiplex, PowerEdge/PowerVault). I dread calling on the consumer stuff though.

SonicWho?

[sky-knight]

Dell's laptop support center used to be in Tempe. I had some friends that worked there, one of which was a team leader. They had the setup to do things right! Then Mr. Dell came back and shut it down to send it back to India. I left Dell at that point, and never looked back.

Doesn't matter to me, unlike some I have the ability to white box some killer stuff. I build it myself and send it out.

[YeOldeStonecat]

There is no better description of Sonicwall support... However, I will also point out that this is my experience with Dell support.

I don't see a distinction here. Sitting on hold for an hour waiting on someone to open a ticket to ship me a power supply is unacceptable. Sure the supply got here tomorrow, but I can place an order for a part from a random vendor in 5 seconds and do the same thing.

Well, you and I have beaten this worse than a dead horse heading to the Alpo dog food factory. But I think we both have to concede and consider which side of the support you and I deal with...in other words...different spectrums.

You deal with consumer grade/home grade computers most of the time...and I'll agree...Dells support for those are just as bad as any other brand...you're stuck calling Habu in India that reads from a scripted outline to you. "Have ju run dee restooor Ceedee?" when you're sitting there with smoke billowing out of the power supply that is obviously smoked and not able to be fixed by running a restore CD.

And I deal with their business grade support pretty much exclusively (Optiplex, Precision, PowerEdge)....which is US based, get a live body quickly, get the results you want within about 5 minutes..and depending on your support contract...they do the rest of the work for you (like send a monkey to go onsite and swap a motherboard out so you don't have to)

White box component support is similar...we can't just pick on Tier-1 computer brands here....for cloner builders, it's very painful to deal with Western Digital or Seagate or Intel or Crucial or Asus or <picky some dang part and enter a brand name here>.

I don't want to spend more than 5 minutes troubleshooting/warrantying some component....it's tedious and doesn't make much money. Rather spend my time on bigger and larger billing things. If I find myself spending more than 15 or (god forbid) more than 30 minutes...I'm pissed off that that product and likely to not return to it again.

[sky-knight]

Yeah we have very different support models, and I'm certain the differences between our markets is driving the perspective shifts.

However, I do need to point out that I know the difference in Dell support levels. I don't like EITHER of them.

Then there is the philosophical debate of how do you support the software without supporting the hardware. Us two specifically have diametrically opposed viewpoints on that debate. Neither approach is wrong, they both have good and bad. And the great part is the market can choose which it wants and we're both getting paid. So in the end, it doesn't matter.