The problems with tiered support are back to where all problems come from. Humans.
As someone that's managed technical teams for 3+ decades, I've seen the deterioration, first hand. It's all about costs/profits.
C-suites view support (IT in my case) as a cost-center, without seeming to understand that our infrastructure is what all revenue travels over. We are a cost, but a cost with a purpose. In the pursuit of ever-higher numbers, they continue to replace local staff with 3rd party entities who are incentivized to close calls, not solve problems. These 3rd parties often have wholly unqualified staff. In some cases, the staff is qualified, but doesn't have the access or the information required to address the issue.
Let's not go to paid access to support. With humans involved, in less than a decade, there will be 1 person answering the "poor folks" line, that you'll wait for 2 hours to speak to, while being told every 30 seconds just how important your call is. The rest of support will be "generating revenue" by resolving problems for better-heeled clients.
> C-suites view support (IT in my case) as a cost-center, without seeming to understand that our infrastructure is what all revenue travels over.
I think that's well understood as cost-centers go. What's also understood is that improving that infrastructure beyond a certain point doesn't change how much revenue travels over it.
What's not understood is 100MB switches are OLLLLDDDDDDDD and outdated, and in some cases, the reason IT can't get your radiology image to transfer between DICOM servers in a reasonable amount of time.
It works, so it doesn't need to be changed is how most infrastructure deteriorates. Ask me how I know this. :)
That's not in conflict with what I'm saying. Costs centers require a certain amount of investment to ensure the business runs efficiently. If you under fund it, the results are often catastrophic. However, if you over fund it (as in, put in more money than is needed to keep things working properly), there's generally no additional positive impact on the bottom line. So, from the business side, your main goal tends to be to find ways to keep cost centers running efficiently with less money... without inviting disaster.
Old, under-performing and flakey switches do have a negative and potentially disastrous impact on the business, but if you replace the network with "gold-plated" high-performance 100GbE switches, you're not likely to see much more upside than if you just had properly sized and maintained switches.
As someone that's managed technical teams for 3+ decades, I've seen the deterioration, first hand. It's all about costs/profits.
C-suites view support (IT in my case) as a cost-center, without seeming to understand that our infrastructure is what all revenue travels over. We are a cost, but a cost with a purpose. In the pursuit of ever-higher numbers, they continue to replace local staff with 3rd party entities who are incentivized to close calls, not solve problems. These 3rd parties often have wholly unqualified staff. In some cases, the staff is qualified, but doesn't have the access or the information required to address the issue.
Let's not go to paid access to support. With humans involved, in less than a decade, there will be 1 person answering the "poor folks" line, that you'll wait for 2 hours to speak to, while being told every 30 seconds just how important your call is. The rest of support will be "generating revenue" by resolving problems for better-heeled clients.