There was "a lapse in coverage of a few days that caused us to scramble."ĭonald Springer, IS manager at A.
#BACKUP EXEC LICENSING LICENSE#
John Halamka, CIO at Harvard Medical School and CareGroup Healthcare System in Boston, said Symantec forgot to send his office a license renewal reminder for his Brightmail Anti-Spam application.
I can see how some customers would not be happy and we're addressing that head on."īut Symantec's problems don't appear to be limited to Veritas products.
"It does sound like some customers are experiencing some waits that are longer than normal. "We did add significant staff to our support lines to make sure we could handle the call volumes for year end and also the changes in process and upgrades," he said.
#BACKUP EXEC LICENSING SOFTWARE#
Thompson said Symantec weighed deploying Backup Exec 11d with wanting their customers to experience the benefits of seeing a combined licensing portal, its new software buying programs and the ability to interact with Symantec and Veritas as one company. Symantec posted a message on its new software licensing portal telling customers that due to a high volume of inquiries, it will take five to seven business days to respond to requests.
#BACKUP EXEC LICENSING UPGRADE#
Ladewig said he was told by Symantec tech support that because the company decided to merge the Symantec and Veritas licensing programs at the same time it was launching a major upgrade to its SMB backup software, Backup Exec, there are thousands of upgrade invitations on hold. If a client wanted to see one earlier, we could probably facilitate that one client receiving it earlier." "We'll have all those batches sent out to clients by mid-February. "We're dealing with hundreds of thousands of users here that need to get licensing keys and register," Thompson said. To address the issue, Symantec has been meting out the number of new license notifications for Veritas software customers - about 20,000 at a time. Previous customers with Backup Exec didn't have to register and tell us where the product was being used and identify technical contacts," he said. "Both companies did licensing just slightly different. He said the licensing system is necessary in order to ensure that pirated copies of Backup Exec and some other Symantec software products he would not identify are not being used by customers. The new online licensing system is slowly combining Symantec's existing process for registering customers and assigning them identity keys with recently acquired Veritas customers.
Thompson told Computerworld that the licensing slowdown is being caused by a new ERP system and online licensing system, the rollout of which was just completed few weeks ago. Yesterday, I was on hold for an hour," he said. "I've just seen online that people have been having a difficult time getting support. Ladewig said he's waiting to upgrade his Veritas Backup Exec software from version 10.1 to version 11d, which was launched earlier this month (see " Symantec unveils next-gen backup, imaging, antivirus software"). Olin School of Business at Washington University. It seems to be a huge fiasco," said Scott Ladewig, manager of networking and operations for the John M. "According to customer support, they have thousands and thousands of invitations being held because the merger of Veritas licensing with their own has been such a disaster. Another said he has waited up to three hours on the phone for technical support help. At least one user said he has waited three weeks for an upgrade to Veritas Backup Exec 11d. began last year and that their software licensing program for Veritas Backup Exec software is in a logjam. Some users are complaining that Symantec technical support has deteriorated since its merger with Veritas Corp. "It's a growing problem that we're trying to head off at the pass."Īlthough the company is pointing to piracy as a major issue, customers are less concerned with the cause of licensing backups and slow support - and more upset about the results. counterfeit versions of Backup Exec," Paden said. as far as transitioning customers through the new licensing process is minimal what our support people would endure if they were having to deal with customers using. Cris Paden, Symantec's manager of corporate public relations, said more information would be released in the next few weeks and called the piracy ring "humongous," saying it represents sales of software that amounts to "eight figures."