Re: OEM DISKS -- MIDRANGE-L

At 11:19 AM 8/8/97 -0400, you wrote:
>Hi, Midrange friends:
>
>We are investigating the possibility of using OEM disks in place of the
>internal drives on our 320 systems.  Very soon, we will also be 
>upgrading our RISC systems to CISC.
>

I would like to tell you the story about a customer of mine who used OEM
equipment, to save money.

About four years ago, my customer (who if you tell to turn right, turns
left) ran out of addresses on their AS/400 model B70.  They hadn't IPLed in
9 months.  It took too long.

When they called the support center, they were instructed to do a delayed
off.  My customer, 'knowing that a delayed off never works', red switched
the machine.

Red switching the machine blew out the (vendor with 3 initials other than
IBM)'s memory, and blew out the (a different vendor with 3 initials other
than IBM)'s load source DASD.

They started placing service calls.  After 13 days, with the three vendors
pointing fingers at each other, they instructed me to enter into a contract
with a disaster recovery center.  I indicated that this would be extremely
expensive (possibly as much as a million dollars), as they were currently
experiencing a disaster.  They had me go ahead.

They spend 40 days running their business from a disaster vendor's center
(non-IBM, of course), during which time the interactive functions of their
systems were dramatically impared, because of a lack of connectitevity.
During this time the three vendors pointing their fingers at each other.
The disaster recovery vendor charged then in excess of $600,000.

20/20 hindsight would have shown that recovering at IBM would have been
less expensive and IBM would have brought better skills to the table.

When they were through, they purchased a few new AS/400s from me, all true
blue.

The reason why we buy premium prices AS/400s is to get IBM to do the
integration for us.  We buy everything from one vendor (hardware, software,
database, security, etc.) and when it breaks, we have one phone call to make.

Personally, I get all the free hardware I want from anyone (except IBM).
All of my hardware is IBM.

Al

Al Barsa, Jr. - Account for Midrange-L
Barsa Consulting, LLC.  
400 > 390

Phone:  914-251-9400
Fax:    914-251-9406





Private mail should be sent to barsa@ibm.net
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