Operators Are Standing By

I got a news flash from Handy Andy tonight, and the news ain't good folks…

Starting on March 13, 2006, Microsoft will be making the following changes to telephone-based Professional Incident support for IT Professionals and also Enterprise Developers.

Before 3/13/06
– All severities
– 24 hours a day
– Monday – Sunday
– $245 per incident

After 3/13/06
– All severities
– 6AM – 6PM Monday – Friday (Pacific Time)
– $245 per incident

– Business critical severity
– 6PM – 6AM Monday – Friday (Pacific Time)
– All day Saturday and Sunday
– $490 per incident

(Yep – that's a 100% price increase for after-hours support)

Hours of operation are not impacted by holidays.

Business-critical after-hours support is available for $490.00 USD and provides support only for business-critical issues. Business-critical issues are defined as situations that involve a system, a network, a server, or a critical program down situation that severely affects customer production or profitability. These are high-impact issues where production, operations, or development are proceeding but could be severely affected within several days.

Microsoft will provide continuous effort to resolve the problem 24 hours a day. Senior managers at Microsoft are notified. The customer must allocate appropriate resources to sustain a continuous effort 24 hours a day. The customer's management must be notified.

International only: After-hours support will only be provided for business-critical incidents on English version products and in the English language. If you require local language product support, please consider contacting a local support provider.

Source: http://support.microsoft.com/gp/afterhours