As a product manager, I know all about your hatred of software maintenance bills. Oh yes, I know.

In fact, many of you hate that pesky annual bill so much that we have people on our staff responsible for chasing that maintenance payment through your various accounting systems. It's safe to say that these co-workers of mine don't whistle and skip into work every day.

But consider what you get for your maintenance money: Recently, one of our customers was stopped on a project due to a software crash. (I won't even deny that our software does crash occasionally - what software doesn't?) It was Friday evening, and support was closed for the weekend. Well, since this customer was paying maintenance, the problem was grabbed off the support line and escalated straight to Engineering. They fixed the problem over the weekend and had a corrected design and new software in the customer's hands first thing Monday morning.

So while our users sipped margaritas by the pool, we were grinding away getting the software prepared for their return on Monday morning. I don't think anyone at Microsoft spends weekends getting you up and running again when your new mouse driver crashes the operating system.

Let me explain the concept of maintenance. By definition, software maintenance is a percentage of the original cost of the software which the customer typically pays annually. In return for this payment, the customer receives highly technical support help - often in the form of on-the-job training - and greater consideration given to any enhancement requests.

You and I can both see, however, that the above statements only hold true if the software vendor actually reciprocates a positive return on the investment. Some vendors in our industry have caused a breakdown in consumer confidence regarding this licensing model.

But let a product manager assure you, the licensing model itself is not the problem! As is often the case, human error is part of the equation.

The seeds of discontent are usually sown when someone accidentally forwards a support call to the wrong extension, or an e-mail goes unanswered because there's some internal battle going on over what exactly the problem is and how exactly it should be solved - all unbeknownst to the anxiously waiting customer.