A Brief Conversation with Alden CEO about DIFAX (fwd)

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Robb Kambic                                Unidata Program Center
Software Engineer III                      Univ. Corp for Atmospheric Research
address@hidden             WWW: http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/
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---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 11 Sep 2000 01:43:17 -0400 (EDT)
From: C. Vandersip <address@hidden>
To: address@hidden
Subject: A Brief Conversation with Alden CEO about DIFAX

[this is a resend of message I sent Saturday. I had it under a reply
heading that I thought might get passed over, and thought it important
enough to resend under a new title.  You be the judge.]

 Believe it or not....

I spoke with Alden CEO David Doyle yesterday.  I had left a message on his
voice mail regarding this whole mess and he returned my phone call. (!)  
I explained to him the frustration we in the Unidata community were
experiencing from the lack of information coming out of Alden regarding
their troubles.  He explained that the network problems with MCI and their
subcontractor last month were real and were unrelated to the company's
current financial woes. He also confirmed that the company was undergoing
a restructuring that he expected to be finalized yesterday or today, with
services continuing.

I told him I appreciated this information, but that he needed to directly
address his customers with some type of official message.  I gave him the
ldm-users@unidata email address and suggested he present an official
explanation/future plan of action to the forum.  I reminded him again that
the opinion of the company was now quite low, not so much because they
were having problems, but because they had chosen not to communicate with
their customers who keep them in business.  Hopefully he will do the right
thing and contact the list.  We'll see.  I don't know why so many tech
vendors choose the secrecy route when they have problems.  Witness Sun's
current woes over flaws in the 400MHz UltraSparc II chip that were kept
quiet until a couple of weeks ago

[http://www.computerworld.com/cwi/story/0,1199,NAV47_STO49485,00.html]

and the earlier backlash against Intel's cover-up of Pentium problems.
If customers were treated less like potential enemies and more like
partners, much of this animosity could be avioded.

FWIW,

Chris

On Sat, 9 Sep 2000, Jim Koermer wrote:

> It looks like Alden ku-band DDPLUS died around 09/0445Z. This was the
> same time that NWS seemed to be having problems, since data (mainly
> surface) for several hours after that time seemed to be a bit light on
> both NOAAPORT and IDD. However, those systems seemed to come back to
> normal, but who knows about Alden. We are seriously thinking about
> dropping our service, but that may be a moot point given the
> circumstances.
> 
>                       Jim
> --
> James P. Koermer             E-Mail: address@hidden
> Professor of Meteorology     Office Phone: (603)535-2574
> Natural Science Department   Office Fax: (603)535-2723
> Plymouth State College       WWW: http://vortex.plymouth.edu/
> Plymouth, NH 03264
> 

         ###############################################################
         #                      Chris Vandersip                        #
         #        Computer Research Specialist/Dept. Sysadmin          #
         #  Rm. 024, Dept. of Meteorology, Florida State University    #
         #          address@hidden   (850)644-2522                     #
         ###############################################################