I had a similar situation six or seven years ago, when a client of mine
bought a 720 in the used marketplace. It had a 44- serial number. When I
called to get license keys, the entitlement people told me that the machine
couldn't possibly be in the U.S. I said it must be, because it had been
running right next to me for over a month.
This went on for several weeks. I finally had to lie and claim a "Machine
down" condition when I called. Somehow, that got me past the idiots in the
entitlement department and onto the phone. The issue was resolved in about
10 minutes.
IBM has made things worse recently, in that when I needed to discuss a
software licensing issue, I spoke first to somebody (unintelligible) in
India, then was transferred to somebody (also unintelligible) in Canada,
then to somebody (barely understandable) in Brazil, and then finally to
somebody in Atlanta.
I sympathize with you, Clare. I suggest that if your software maintenance
agreements are all paid up, you need to speak to a real IBM employee in the
UK, rather than beating your head against the wall with the entitlement
schmoes.
Is anybody at IBM listening? I'm still waiting to collect my $1,000 from
Mark Shearer. Hey Larry, can you remind him when you see him today?
Paul Nelson
Cell 708-670-6978
Office 708-425-4198
nelsonp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[
mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Clare Holtham
Sent: Tuesday, May 01, 2007 12:21 AM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Cc: SSA's BPCS ERP System
Subject: Licpgms key problems
Hi all,
One of my customers has a problem on one of their boxes (a 720!) - it was
purchased in Europe so had a serial no beginning 44, then shipped to New
Orleans where IBM insisted on changing the serial no to a US one,
i.e.beginning with 1. All fine so far. Then when New Orleans had the floods,
we managed to scoop all the data off the system by FTP from the UK, and put
it on their UK system. Subsequently the US users have been working on the UK
system, and so the box was shipped to Head Office in Norway, where it was
upgraded and sent out to Saudi to replace 2 very small boxes (620). Only
problem is that first PDM (ADT) key expired, and now Query key has also
expired, and ST1 key is threatening to expire in 30 days. The company that
did the upgrade said that this should not have happened. The box was
upgraded from P20 to P30, but customer understood this was taken care of in
the upgrade price. The upgrade company obtained a temp key from IBM UK for
PDM, but this expired while the box was in Saudi customs! (We really need
PDM to get the box up and running with new BPCS 'environments' otherwise it
means FTPing stuff backwards and forwards to do it.)
As I don't know the intricacies of Passport Advantage and ValuPak and all
those other IBM sales rules and regs, can anyone point me in the right
direction? Does it look to you as though the problem was caused by IBM
changing the S/N (which caused problems when the upgrade company asked for
the keys from IBM over here), or by the upgrade company, or by the
customer???? And any idea how I should help them resolve this?
Perhaps I should explain why they are still on 720s - they have BPCS, and
SSA/Infor are asking for extortionate amounts of money for new BPCS keys,
the BPCS key is by Model and Serial no. So they can upgrade within their
existing models (a mix of 620s, 720s, and 820s) but not go to current
hardware which would give the same amount of CPW power at a lower tier
group - P10 probably! Catch-22.
Thanks for any pointers you can give me!
cheers,
Clare
midrange.com
