hlezama's blog

SLAs in Education; did you get what you paid for?

Thu, 19 Oct 2006 08:58:23 -0600

It is almost the end of the first mini at CMU and most of us are grateful that we are going to have a couple of days off. Turning back for a minute I asked myself… Did I get the educational service I paid for? Were my courses worthwhile? Where can I compare if I got what I was supposed to get and if not how do I demand a refund/compensation? In short, where are the courses’ SLAs? (read more..)

Score: 9.3, Votes: 3

Getting rid of inadequate templates

Wed, 11 Oct 2006 10:39:04 -0600

There was a discussion on the ITSM class about what to do when a service template is not being profitable. Some people suggested to simply get rid of the template while others mentioned that maybe certain templates are not meant to be profitable at all. I strongly agree with the second posture; companies usually offer ‘luxury’ service plans or ‘highly customized’ services that are not meant to be profitable, they just serve to create the illusion of ‘choice’; usually those kinds of services are extremely high priced and only a few customers will be willing to spend their money on them but the company will benefit from the ‘image’ that having multiple alternatives creates. So in summary, the whole idea of having N number of service templates is to never say no to the customer; so although a template may not be seen at first as a profitable one maybe that is just what the company intended.

Score: 7.5, Votes: 2

About Microsoft Error Reporting capabilities

Mon, 25 Sep 2006 11:43:57 -0600

I remembered someone mentioned on the ITSM class that Microsoft Error reporting capabilities (e.g. the little box that appears when something goes wrong with a program) was a critical part of Microsoft’s effort to monitor their products/services.

Score: 7.0, Votes: 2

Microsoft Dynamics CRM; An example of Microsoft push on services

Wed, 13 Sep 2006 12:23:48 -0600

How is Microsoft CRM pushing SaaS? ... I had the opportunity to work on the summer at Microsoft Corp. Specifically, I had the chance to work on the Business Solutions Unit designing some cool features for Microsoft Dynamics CRM (MSCRM) newest version codename: Titan. (read more...)

Score: 6.5, Votes: 2