Tool costs

I have just been configuring some small systems and some upgrades, and I
discovered some things that were not brought up at ³the meeting² that I
thought might be of interest.

First, when we configure a server, the costs of the tools are normally
included. So, when someone asked if SEU was now going to cost money, SEU has
always cost money ­ it was usually the person responsible for buying the
server who was paying that line item. In that regard, if the costs remain
inside the total purchase or upgrade of a server, most of the arguments on
this list will become a moot point ­ since you (the programmer) won¹t even
know about it.

Of course, that will affect smaller independent consultants and companies,
and ironically, they seem to be the ones bringing up the cost issue. Rightly
so, but it seems it will not affect the normal System i company.

Second, I just upgraded a 270 to a 520. The WDS costs are a wash, so they
should be covered by SWMA. Of course, that will depend on the number of
developers. But, when I configured a new 515, the WDS cost went from over
$6K to under $2K. For the power of the new 515 server, I am paying LESS for
the tools when I upgrade.

I did not count SWMA entitlements or any other upgrade concern, I was just
looking at the list prices here. It seems to me that most people are going
to be dinged for the cost of the tools when they buy V6R1 or when they
upgrade their server. For V6R1, there may be some change in the cost of the
tools ­ up for large companies, down for small/er companies, it seems. For
an upgrade, there may be many cases where the cost of the tools is reduced
significantly ­ and this seems true for the small to medium companies.

Just some observations to adjust our perspectives!