Re: IBM SupportLine -- MIDRANGE-L

any guess on if ibm considers support line a profit center, an expense or a
wash?

the reason I ask is to determine how agreeable ibm would be to providing
free access to its problem determination database and the level 2 support
people to 3rd party support providers.

Consider a situation where people who want to provide support would register
their area of expertise with a 3rd party support provider/router. Those
seeking pay per incident support would email the support provider. The 3rd
party support provider would route the msg to the registered person who
could resolve it and be paid for their work.

Steve R.


-----Original Message-----
From: Scott Klement <klemscot@klements.com>
To: MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com <MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com>
Date: Thursday, May 24, 2001 7:20 PM
Subject: Re: IBM SupportLine


>
>Hello Bale Handleman,
>
>My company bought 30 minutes of supportline time in 1995.  So far, I think
>we've used about 10 or 15 of those minutes.
>
>I recently priced IBM SupportLine, when we bought out new RISC box, and
>set up hardware maintenance.   They no longer seem to have the option to
>buy a certain number of minutes -- you have to pay for a contract for a
>period of time -- I think it was a year, but my memory is fuzzy on that
>detail -- anyway the prices were just absurd, something like $1500/year
>for "prime shift" and $1900/year for "full shift".
>
>When you consider that I've only used 15 minutes in the past 6 years,
>you can see that these prices are a bit crazy.  If I continued that
>trend, I'd be paying something like $200/minute. :)   If I need IBM
>support, I'll just pay the hourly rate....
>
>By contrast, I wouldn't be caught dead without the hardware maintenance.
>My iSeries/400 is mission critical.  If the machine starts smoking, I want
>to know that I've got a trained export I can call!
>
>
>On Thu, 24 May 2001 D.BALE@handleman.com wrote:
>
>> I'd be curious to know the mix of the MIDRANGE-L population that has an
IBM
>> SupportLine contract.  In the past, this was always a given in any shop
I've
>> worked in but, for reasons unknown to me, we supposedly have only one
>> SupportLine contract for one of our boxes.  Given the fact that we're
mostly
>> on V3R7 around here, we may not even have a SupportLine contract anymore.
>>
>> In the past, I considered SupportLine as an absolute necessity before
>> embarking on any OS upgrade.  I may have treated cume PTFs in the same
manner,
>> although my memory is fuzzy on that.  I also seem to recall that, at one
time,
>> if you had SupportLine you also had IBM hardware service, and vice versa,
but
>> I know that's not the case now.
>>
>> I see that IBM is offering a rebate for new SupportLine accounts and
thought
>> I'd better poll the collective mindset here before I go asking management
to
>> cough up the bucks for SupportLine, especially before we get going on our
>> upgrades.
>>
>> Are there any viable alternatives to SupportLine?
>>
>> - Dan
>> Dan Bale says "BAN DALE!"
>> IT - AS/400
>> Handleman Company
>> 248-362-4400  Ext. 4952
>> D.Bale@Handleman.com
>>   Quiquid latine dictum sit altum viditur.
>>   (Whatever is said in Latin seems profound.)
>
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