Let's exclude me from the picture. Say my client makes some changes to their phone system, renumbers a few extensions, changes which phones ring off which lines, updates employee names, etc. They then need to call in a certified tech (at I would guess a hefty minimum hourly fee, with an hour as a starting point) to backup these new changes. Then next week an employee leaves, so they rename that phone, switch it to not ring, etc. They then need to call in this tech (again at most likely an hour minimum) to do another backup?
You are the 2nd person to mention that things have been this way since the 60's or 70's, and I understand the company needing to protect their product base. However, I would think it would be MORE beneficial to them if more tech's were able to do at least some basic maintenance tasks on them.
As an example, I know of several large software manufacturers that hand out "demo" copies of their software packages that cost tens of thousands of dollars. They do this so that more people are familiar with how their software works, and thus would list that as a capability of theirs. Employers see more people comfortable with that software package, they will start looking into implementing it into their business.
Most end-user/business owners don't want to know how to run a backup or anything else. They also don't want to keep calling in a variety of different "specialists" for every minor task that needs to be performed. Having to keep a list of who to call for what. And then a vendor closes up shop and they are back to square one (which is what happened in this case, system was installed so long ago the old vendor is long gone and nobody at the business can recall the first thing about it.)
I am all for calling in the specialists to handle their specialty. But holding a client captive because no one else could do a thing without this specialist is morally wrong.
For the record, when I set/configure ANYTHING for a client. I supply them with ALL the top level usernames/passwords and any other information they would need should something ever happen to me, or they just become no longer satisfied with my services sometime in the future. I have yet to lose a customer due to that, but I have picked up SEVERAL from other local businesses in my same field because the client felt they were being held hostage and they weren't being given the information they needed to access their equipment. This makes it a headache for me as I then have to go on a discovery of their network infrastructure and try to power my way through all the configurations. This becomes expensive for my client as it is a time consuming process without many results to show for them. And is very cumbersome and tedious for me when I could be getting some real tasks done for them instead of just trying to get back to square one.
And for the record, I've never bashed the quality of Inter-Tel's product, just their (and apparently several other telecom hardware providers) operating practices. I am starting to realize why the movement to systems such as Asterisk are gaining such momentum however.
