What is 3rd Party Support?

Whiteboard Wednesday Episode 24: What is 3rd Party Support?

Welcome to Whiteboard Wednesday, this week, third party support. What is it? And why is it important to IT Asset Management? 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpsFsuVRb8U

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Within any market, you have the customer and then something we’re going to call the OEM (original equipment manufacturer) and I can buy directly from the OEM. Maybe I want to buy a BMW, I can go directly to BMW to buy that car. Bringing straight off the forecourt or I could go to a secondary market player and buy secondhand BMW. We can also do secondary options, secondary market options for support. So I can go and get my car fixed directly at BMW, or I can go around the corner because I might prefer them or it might be cheaper to do that and the same is true of software.  

3rd Party Software Support

I can go to SAP and buy SAP software but there are also secondary market options. So I can actually get support for SAP from another provider, apart from SAP this is called third-party support because we’ve got me the customer, the second is the manufacturer and three is the third party. So it’s called third-party support. 

Why do people do this?

So why do people do this? Typically, it’s because they’re spending an awful lot of money in their annual budget, on support, maintenance and not getting a great deal of value back. There are quite a few providers sprung up around IBM, SAP and Oracle because customers are spending an awful lot of money on support and maintenance and not getting a great deal back. So they explore the third party, and that third party will typically provide better, more responsive support and can be anything up to half the price of dealing with the original equipment manufacturer. There are strengths and weaknesses of using a third party but for Asset Management especially great way of saving money whilst delivering the same asset, the same service to the customer, but less cost.