Re: Power 7 Order and Return

> Why is this the rule?

Because for some software there are upgrade charges and others not. So you upgrade them first and get that grief overwith. Once the boxes are the same version/release now you do the 'Transfer'.

> OK, so you're implying that there's some reasonable, workable solution
> for the customer.

Yes. I don't know if you can purchase these licenses AFTER the software transfer but at order time you basically set the quantity of licenses and the number of months you want them in parallel. That price should be in the proposal to the customer right up front.

> How would the customer know to do this?

99.44/100ths percent of the won't. It IS (sadly) back to the BP again. The BP in this case not only made a mad customer but lost out on revenue by not knowing there was something else they could sell

> Anyone who keeps insisting that IBM is blameless has lost sight of
> normal-person thinking.

Maybe but think of it this way. If IBM's BP community, who deals with this stuff all the time, can't be trained properly what are the chances that the CUSTOMER can be trained about this stuff? (*zero)

Should IBM have a way to fix this for this customer? Yep, might cost a few bucks but it should be there. Perhaps the BP should step up to the table and foot that bill after all they mucked it up to start with.

> Can just anyone be a BP, or is there some kind of certification required?

Certification *IS required and several of us on the list write those tests. We would make them harder so that we're the only people that can pass them so that WE can see y'all yer stuff. :-) But there are only so many questions you can ask and even if you pass the tests there are a lot of things we might not have asked. It's very VERY likely that on the next round of tests this will be highlighted a bit more. :-)

Also remember that some of this stuff is in place due to IRS rules.

Also remember that some of this stuff is in place because the hardware is commodity now and profit on hardware = itty or bitty. Software is the revenue source (see ORACLE :-) ) so they have to do what they can to hold pricing for people who can do their cutover straightaway while those customers who need parallel time can get that for the right price.

- Larry "DrFranken" Bolhuis

www.frankeni.com
www.iDevCloud.com
www.iInTheCloud.com

On 3/5/2013 3:02 PM, John Yeung wrote:

*This message was transferred with a trial version of CommuniGate(r) Pro*
On Tue, Mar 5, 2013 at 2:10 PM, DrFranken <midrange@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

THis is a failure of the Business Partner.

No one is contesting this.

The rules are and HAVE BEEN
for some time that the Donor and the Recipient machines are at the SAME
SOFTWARE level and that permanent keys are lost on the donor machine as
soon as they transfer to the Recipient machine.

Why is this the rule? I'm not saying there's no good reason for it;
but I'm asking because I don't know. And, it sounds like the customer
had decided that they wanted the same software level on both machines
anyway, just that they jumped the gun on one of the steps.

If you absolutely need to run the two machines in parallel
then you can order from IBM as part of the process extra time on the old
machine.

OK, so you're implying that there's some reasonable, workable solution
for the customer. How would the customer know to do this? If you say
"well, the BP should be able to handle this" then we're back to
relying on the BP, whom we've already established is a bonehead.
Clearly, the customer wants extra time. At least more than 15 days.

The point is, the customer's requirements don't sound to me like
crazy, let's-really-take-advantage-of-IBM kind of requirements. They
sound pretty reasonable.

Anyone who keeps insisting that IBM is blameless has lost sight of
normal-person thinking. The hoops and rigamarole that IBM has put in
place seem extremely arbitrary to me. I'm sure I'm ignorant. But for
the prices IBM is charging, they should be offering exemplary service
and should be utterly customer-focused. Even if the fault is entirely
the customer's, how does it hurt IBM to still come back and say "OK,
we're sorry your business partner didn't handle things properly, but
let's figure out how to make this work."

Can just anyone be a BP, or is there some kind of certification required?

John