R&S found out that Acme was interested in VOIP and decided to introduce its own new VOIP products to Acme representatives. However, Acme's people were very loyal to OTG on the voice side, and they told R&S that they weren't interested in the company's voice technology at this time. R&S took the news in stride. In fact, Acme needed to make some network changes to accommodate VOIP traffic, and R&S was there every step of the way with expertise guiding the network design. The pilot ultimately failed because of a problem in OTG's product that was not fixable at the time. However, the pilot would never have even got off the ground if it hadn't been for help from R&S, and Acme knew it.

Fast-forward to the year 2004. VOIP was maturing and becoming more mainstream, and Acme decided to revisit the project. The company had a lot of financial incentive to make it work as long as the technology was reliable. OTG had introduced products based on newer technology that supposedly didn't suffer from the problem that had plagued the original pilot. Acme tried to work closely with OTG to verify that its new products did indeed solve the earlier problem. However, due to some inflexibility in OTG's customer-support policies, the relationship with Acme deteriorated to the point that Acme decided to open up the project to other VOIP vendors.

Acme continued to involve OTG in the project but also invited responses to a request for proposals from other vendors, including R&S. The differences between OTG and R&S became more evident as the project progressed. R&S did everything it could to provide assistance to Acme: Its staffers answered every question, provided all the requested documentation and brought in numerous experts to consult on network design and configuration. On the other hand, OTG's inflexible customer-support policies and general support procedures continued to be an impediment to Acme.

They wept and wailed

In the end, Acme decided that the response from R&S met its requirements and was the best fit for its environment. As you might imagine, this did not sit well with OTG. The company's representatives wept and wailed and dumped truckloads of fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) upon the Acme voice and data staff, but to no avail.