When a turnkey computer system incorporating hardware from several vendors is installed, no single manufacturer will assume maintenance responsibility for all of the system hardware. In choosing equipment from multiple manufacturers, the system owner faces the prospect that each manufacturer will blame the other's components when something goes wrong. In order to avoid this situation, some turnkey system vendors obtain all of the hardware from a single source, others do their own maintenance and, occasionally, some rely on "third party" maintenance.
A "third-party" maintenance firm is usually one which has service as its primary business, is licensed to service each of the components of a system, and emphasizes rapid response time by virtue of maintaining service offices near its clients.
Third-party maintenance, while extensively used in industrial and governmental applications, is relatively rare in library automation. Libraries have tended to purchase turnkey systems which consist of hardware from a single manufacturer (DataPhase's use of Data General, for example) or diverse source hardware maintained by the turnkey vendor (CLSI, for example).
There are times when the needs of a library are best served by creating a "hybrid" system with components from two or more manufacturers. For example, the 300 MB disk drives produced by Control Data Corporation (CDC) are less expensive and more reliable than the comparable capacity drives produced by most other computer manufacturers. A number of libraries have pressed DataPhase Systems Inc. to provide CDC rather than Data General drives. However, the company has been reluctant to give up the Data General hardware maintenance support available to it when it installs an all-DG system.
We have recently determined that there are more than seventy third-party maintenance firms licensed to undertake Data General repairs. Virtually all can also repair CDC disk drives. The companies have offices in nearly 100 communities ranging from 50,000 to several million in population. There are even more DEC-authorized third-party service organization.
We talked with some of the customers of third-party maintenance organizations and determined that most charge lower rates than those levied by equipment manufacturers. The most common hourly rate is $60 per hour, as compared to $75-84 per hour for manufacturers service. Annual contracts are available.
The responsiveness of third-party firms varies. Those in large cities will guarantee 4 hour response at their standard rates and faster response if a premium is paid. Some of the most price competitive firms offer same or following day response.
However, using a third-party maintenance organization for a hybrid system may not necessarily eliminate all of the "finger pointing." Arguments can still arise between the turnkey vendor and the third-party maintenance organization as to whether the problem is in the hardware or the software. Some libraries have dealt with this difficulty by specifying that the turnkey vendor assume responsibility for managing total system maintenance including the hardware maintenance which it may subcontract.
