For
several years it was impossible to convince the IT guys, buyers or directors
from ROBECO
to try and buy our Smart Bridges. Despite all the brilliant arguments form the
best consultant I ever met in my life, Andre Mooij, it was
their firm opinion that it could not be as good, and certainly not better than the
ones they used from IBM. Until…….
On that
Friday night, around 17.30 local time, I had the call form a very nervous IT
manager. His first question was if my last offer to test a MADGE Smart Bridge
was still valid. The truth unveiled after a couple of extra questions, all IBM
Bridges were down and nobody had a clue what happened and how to solve it. So
one Bridge for testing would not be enough. Based on the 6 floor building,
consisting of 2 towers each, at least 12 were necessary to have the rings in both
towers up and running again.
The
solution was one of a kind, based on the hard work of brave people in the
warehouse in the UK who shipped the bridges, arranged the flight, a colleague
that took the time to fly from Heathrow to Rotterdam and back, having the seat
next to the 12 bridges and a poor guy form Robeco who had to pick up the stuff
at the airport later that night. I guess it was around 23.00 that I had the
call from the same guy who asked me to do this miracle that all bridges were up
and running. He is probably still a Madge Superfan. The bank changed policy
from IBM to MADGE almost instantly.
For
those of you who were with Madge that period, you all remember I was punished for
this action on stage during one of the international meetings, based on the
fact that all logistic, technical and financial principles, guidelines and
rules were broken to have this fixed. The risks were obvious but I choose to go
for the opportunity to make Robeco a happy customer. I promised to never do it
again and that is the real end of this story.
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