Re: Software Subscription strikes again.

[dhandy@xxxxxxxxxxx (Douglas Handy)]

Rick,

>Two months ago I received a letter from IBM telling me that since I
>'sneaked' in an upgrade from a 200/2031 to a 620 that my monthly support
>line contract would be retroactively increased from the date of the upgrade
>from $116/Mo to $463/Mo.  Included was a bill for $3,993 

The 200/2031 is in the P10 software tier.  The 620 series has two
models in the P20 tier (2178/2179), two in the P30 tier (2180/2181),
and one in the P40 tier (2182).

I'm going to assume here that you got either a 2178 or 2179, because
those are roughly 4 or 7times the CPW of your 200/2031 and a 2180
would be roughly 10 times the CPW.  So I'll assume you are now in the
P20 tier.

When you did this upgrade, you would have had a substantial software
price to pay to move from the P10 to the P20 tier.  Had your rep/BP
not explained that supportline and software subscription would also be
affected by the change in tiers?

It is real unusual for someone to move from a CISC machine to a higher
software tier on a RISC machine, unless the company has had phenomenal
growth.  Generally the RISC boxes have enough more horsepower to give
you the speed increase you need without jumping tiers, and sometimes
you can even lower your tier while gaining significant speed.

For example, the 620/2175 has a CPW rating of 50.0 and is in the P20
group.  But the 170/2385 is still in the P10 group and also has a CPW
rating of 50.0 for interactive work and a whopping 460.0 for
client/server (batch) work.

Which model 620 did you get, and why?  There are legitimate reasons to
get a 6xx over a 170, but one would hope it was from an informed
position regarding ongoing support and software costs.

>    Has anyone had similar experiences?  What is the story?  

Everybody which moves up a software tier gets higher prices.  That's
why there are tiers. <g>  The question is why didn't your rep/BP go
over all the ramifications when deciding what you should upgrade to?

Also puzzled,
Doug
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