key fees -- BPCS-L

Al is right.

ASAP has numerous customers on its BPCS Helpline who have upgraded their
AS/400. One client upgraded their AS/400 a few weeks ago from an old F45
(bring back memories?) to a 270. They needed a new key. SSA charged a
fee of $10,000 for the new key. Expensive? Yes, but a fraction of what
the OGS fees would have been. That fee could have been negotiated if it
was end of quarter, end of year, etc. So, careful planning can reduce
that expense. You can contact your SSA rep to see what the key fee would
be in your particular case. If you have a decent SSA rep, they will
include in the key fee the right to have a key for your test box as
well. This was the case with the above mentioned conversion.  Again,
careful planning is important. With regards to BMRs, there are
substantial bug fixes released each week for all modules of BPCS. Our
typical client does not have all the modules, and most of the fixes do
not affect them. The client requests critical bugs addressed, we fix
them (in a timely manner) using SSA standards, document changes, perform
validation, change control, and turnover. All information with regards
to their system is stored in our knowledge base, so we have a record of
every action ever taken on their system. We also support all of their
modifications, interfaces, education/training, and 3rd party packages on
their AS/400. In some cases, the entire IS function is outsourced to
ASAP. Most people have horror stories of "What? You modified the
program? Sorry, we don't support modified programs. <Click>" Or how
about "we are not able to duplicate the problem. <Issue closed>".  In
SSA's defense, those clients still on OGS HAVE noticed an improvement in
the quality of service, but still not enough in their eyes. Bottom line:
if a customer thinks they may want to upgrade to the latest version of
BPCS within a year, we recommend they purchase OGS.

Sincerely,
Paul Reed
Advanced Systems and Products (ASAP)
PR@BPCSPros.com



-----Original Message-----
From: bpcs-l-admin@midrange.com [mailto:bpcs-l-admin@midrange.com] On
Behalf Of Al Mac
Sent: Tuesday, October 29, 2002 12:08 PM
To: bpcs-l@midrange.com
Subject: Re: OGS pricing

Peter

There are many companies running a version of BPCS which is no longer
supported by SSA.  How do they get their KEY?  They CANNOT get OSG or
BMRs
because their version of BPCS is no longer supported by SSA.  When they
upgrade their machine, they need a KEY to continue to operate that
version
of BPCS.  I am sure that someone in the SSA know will be posting a
clarification to this thread, regarding some of the questions we have
been
discussing.

In times past, with my employer dealing with SSA, the KEY has been
handled
separately and independently from OSG, and also from the number of users
LICENSE to use BPCS.  In times past, we have talked to someone at SSA
who
was on some kind of a time constraint, in which if the contract could be
booked in a particular month of SSA fiscal year, it would be much better
for them, so they willing to negotiate a lower price if we sign the
contract sooner.

Sometimes they issue a key that does not work, so you basically have to
ask
for several temporary keys in case you are doing an upgrade outside
regular
business support hours, and try to apply the key and discover it not
working.  Then after BPCS is running on a temporary key (which expires
in a
few days) you get a permanent key.

Currently we are getting our tech support from a place other than SSA.
The
KEY came from SSA, and we have the LICENSE to operate BPCS for a certain
number of users.  I anticipate that when we replace our AS/400 with
another
box, we will have to pay SSA some Fee to get the KEY for the new box.  I
am
hoping that my management finds out what that Fee is going to be before
signing any contracts with IBM for the new box, because depending on
what
the Fee will be, they might want to delay our move to the next box.  I
have
no idea what the Fee will be.  It could be thousands of dollars, under
the
new policy.  I am sure that someone in the SSA know will be posting a
clarification to this thread.

Kanukurti Rao and vincent.byrne ask good questions.

For disaster recovery testing, there would have to be negotiations with
SSA
in advance, with respect to what we planning to do, and the serial
number
of the test machine.  SSA would have the right to charge a Fee for the
temporary KEY needed to test BPCS on the disaster recovery testing
machine
at the other site.  Cindy Wilson's company could do disaster recovery
testing, but not BPCS because the fee that SSA wanted to charge was a
higher price than the company was willing to pay for the peace of mind
of
knowing that their disaster recovery plan would actually work for BPCS.
I
am sure that someone in the SSA know will be posting a clarification to
this thread.

Yes, if Rao's company does in fact move to a DIFFERENT AS/400 that has a
DIFFERENT CPU then the KEY is for the serial number of the OLD AS/400.
I
believe it is possible to buy more CPW for the existing machine, so that
under past contracts, no new KEY is needed, but contracts evolve and
people
can lose track of the nuances.  Many years ago we were on a contract
with
SSA that said BPCS was paid for so long as we remained on the S/36, so
then
we moved to Advanced S/36, and there was a contract conflict.  SSA had a
big bill.  Management said Advanced S/36 was still BPCS on 36.  I felt
SSA
had a legitimate point because we were getting much more value out of
BPCS
on AS/36 than on S/36.  That fight was resolved, but I could see the
same
kind of battle over CPW.  I believe lot of differences with CPW, but you
know it depends on how the SSA contract is phrased and interpreted.  Not
all SSA customers have the identical contracts.  I would not be
surprised
if some contracts are based on some machine particulars in addition to
model and serial #.

>Hi,
>
>Al, thanks for explanation.
>
>If me knowledge is well, Raos BPCS will not work on new machine with
old
>key.
>He must ask SSA to generate new key, and SSA will say SORRY You must
>have OGS.
>
>This is me point of view, me understanding off SSA Key policy.
>
>Regards
>Peter
>
>Kanukurti Rao wrote:
> >
> > We are currently running BPCS Ver 6.02 on AS/400 Model 9406/820.
> > Our OGS has just expired and the management has decided not to renew
the
> > same.
> >
> > But we may upgrade the AS/400 to higher capacity but with in the
same model
> > 820.
> >
> >      Processor CPW  : 600CPW.  [ Current =370 CPW].
> >      Interactive CPW     : 240 CPW. [ Current =120 CPW].
> >
> > Would the same BPCS key (of the existing model) work?
> > Could some one advice?
> >
> > Rgds
> >
> > Rao K.R.
> >

-
Al Macintyre (macwheel99@sigecom.net via Eudora)
Al's diary http://radio.weblogs.com/0107846/
Cure cancer. http://members.ud.com/about/



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