Re: IBM is so confusing!

My vast universe of 4 IBM i hardware customers is down to one (having changed platforms for "more modern" software) and IBM pulled my ability to sell hardware because of failing to deliver sales during the worse US economic downturn since the depression (Ouch, I sound a bit bitter...not so) so I don't have all that complex an environment. HP, Acer, and one of my distributors, Techdata, send me monthly reports on my hardware and software purchases and windows for renewals. Avnet will give me a heads up on renewals as well so I don't have to keep redundant records. Those folks eliminate my need to build systems to manage the stuff I sell for them so I *CAN* concentrate on delivering excellent programming and consulting services. That is why I use them as vendors and distributors: They make my job easier and more productive so I can concentrate on what I do well for my remaining customers. Avnet lets me know when my one remaining IBM i hardware customer is up for renewals. So yeah, you are right in saying how hard can it be to remember to request SWMA renewals that occur at 4 different times during the year? Just add a reminder to my calendar program that it is coming up (which I will do for next year).

Sure, I could take time away from serving customer needs to manage a tiny, puny part of my business that is more irksome than critical, but why should I have to do that if (a big if) IBM wants ME as a customer? Silly me, wanting IBM to serve me the way I serve my customers...my business is a minuscule part of their business so for a tiny business like mine, they can take or leave me. For me, if I can improve my delivery of service to one of my customers by even a tiny bit, that could be the difference of a support renewal on my own software products so I'll go the extra mile to do that. I have the same expectation that the businesses I partner with will do the same for me.

You said: "It is not IBMs job to make a partner have good business practices, rather to enable it to have good practices." Requiring BP's to monitor their own SWMA expiration runs counter to that, IMHO. Forcing me to track something that *they* have an economic and business interest in (and easily have the means to do) seems a bad practice. It would be like requiring MY customers to keep track of their own software renewals instead of me doing that for them. The shoe is on the other foot for IBM here. Let them step up and treat BP's like they expect BP's to treat their customers. That's all I am sayin' (well, whining....)

Pete Helgren
Value Added Software, Inc
www.asaap.com
www.opensource4i.com


On 2/10/2011 11:30 AM, Jim Oberholtzer wrote:

Pete:

Isn't an IBM Business Partner's job to understand its customers
environment and assist them in keeping current? Part of that is having
its customer list along with the products they have regardless of if the
partner sold it to them or not and then helping upgrade or maintain the
products, in this case software maintenance, when it is ready to be
sold. That requires knowing your customer's environment and knowing the
expiration dates on the maintenance. Then getting in front of the
customer to sell that maintenance upgrade before the competition does.

Why then should it be IBMs job to remind you to keep up your own SWMA?

SWMA and other maintenance is one of the highest margin deals a partner
can do. Failure to keep up with it separates the average partner from
the great one that makes a profit in today's world.

It is not IBMs job to make a partner have good business practices,
rather to enable it to have good practices. IBM does a great job of the
later....

Jim Oberholtzer
CEO/Chief Technical Architect
Agile Technology Architects, LLC


On 2/10/2011 11:42 AM, Pete Helgren wrote:

Do you see any irony in that? The people who serve and build the
customer base have the most difficult time with IBM administrivia?

And really, how hard can it be? My difficulty is in dealing with the
changing product ID and part numbers as the OS level changes and the
product names evolve. They have a machine that can play Jeopardy but
can't manage a simple date that triggers an email message?

I may be nit picking but MyEclipse is smart enough to send me a notice
and even warns me from within the IDE that support will be expiring
soon. I guess I hold IBM to a pretty high customer service standard and
for a small company like mine, paying $532 vs $177 per seat for RDp SWMA
is significant.

Pete Helgren
Value Added Software, Inc
www.asaap.com
www.opensource4i.com


On 2/10/2011 10:20 AM, Vern Hamberg wrote:

Pete

I do not know that IBM ever notifies its partners on the lease program
about SWMA expiring - I've not seen at the last couple places I've
worked. I just credit it to, IBM expects its hardware partners to handle
this. Unfortunately, OUR BP is IBM Techline, and they don't do it.

However, the re-up charge for maintenance is less than civilians pay, as
I recall.

Vern

On 2/10/2011 10:58 AM, Pete Helgren wrote:

Not to add fuel to the fire here but I have encountered an interesting
twist in just the past 2-3 years. It isn't only initial licensing that
appears to be a area where IBM has turned to recover some development
cost, it is SWMA as well. I have a developer lease so I get some pretty
substantial discounts but the past three years I haven't gotten any
notice of the SWMA lapsing and further, with the OS and*some*
individual licensing of products it has gotten more and more difficult
to figure out which products have individual SWMA and which are covered
by SWMA on the OS. Thus, IBM can charge higher prices for reinstating
SWMA (three times higher with RDp for instance). As a business partner,
I sometimes don't receive an IBM notice when my customer's SWMA is
expiring. They have to pay for reinstatement as well. Thankfully, the
distributor I work with has a better system than IBM to notify me of
customer SWMA that is expiring. But, heaven help you if you deal with
IBM directly and assume that they will notify you when your SWMA expires
because they won't.

Of course I could concoct some conspiracy theory but I think that IBM
has no economic incentive to notify of expiring SWMA because they can
charge for reinstatement. Every software license program I participate
in has some kind of notification system to alert me to expiring
support. All except IBM. Seems like the only company that isn't
"smarter" on this planet, is IBM. Don't get me wrong I LOVE this
platform and IBM support is top notch, but the systems that notify of
expiration and allow us to pay for SWMA are archaic at best and don't
reflect well on IBM.

I don't know what your experience has been, but I have never received a
notice from IBM that my SWMA was expiring. I usually discover that it
expired when I need to update something, as I just did (which triggered
the rant)

Pete Helgren
Value Added Software, Inc
www.asaap.com
www.opensource4i.com