RE: HP support of IBM Power hardware

Some stray questions about a 3rd party maintenance contract:

- Where would HP get its replacement parts? I'm assuming they'd have to get 'genuine IBM parts' from the local IBM parts depot-- things like disk drives in the IBM carriers; replacement cards; etc . I don't know how IBM prices replacement parts through 3rd parties. Of course, the price is part of the contract.

- Are the HP maintenance guys trained on iSeries hardware? Do they know how to use SST? DST?

And other contract issues that would affect -any- maintenance contract:

- Do they guarantee their work?
- What kind of response time do they guarantee?
- 24x7x366?
-Are they local?

Will they be supporting remote locations as well?

Paul E Musselman
PaulMmn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of bll1981
Sent: Wednesday, March 07, 2012 2:26 PM
To: midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: HP support of IBM Power hardware

All,

I realize this may sound radical to the iSeries community, but my company is
exploring a hardware maintenance contract change to HP. So this will mean all
the hardware maintenance support functions for our Power5/6/7 systems would now
be handled by HP, not IBM (hardware only). I have my own feelings about this,
and I am sure you all feel the same. Regardless, I am just trying to poll the
community for any other customers who currently use HP for their IBM i hardware
maintenance support. If so, please give me a little feedback relative to HP's
performance vs. traditional IBM hardware support.

Thanks,
Brad