Re: Why V5R4 is worthless and dead to me

On 4/29/2014 11:04 AM, rob@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

Ok, they weren't entitled to upgrades and support. Just to use it in
perpetuity. So, if they stay on that old box then all is well.
However if they want a version that will run at 6.1 (or higher), to me
that constitutes "support".

Agreed. And I've not seen a single one of them that expects it for free. They are willing to pay in some cases several YEARS worth of support but the vendor wants it all.

How about buying a new version outright? Would that be cheaper? After
all, no one pays list on really high priced software. List is just there
so they can jack you for maintenance at x% of list. What's the going rate
nowadays, 15% of list? 7 years of maintenance = purchase price.

Agreed the sometimes new is cheaper than all the years but that is a massive price still and if they are going to pay for an entire new package often they decide to get another package and often on another platform.

It's compounded by the fact that the customer often has modified things over all those years to the point where the new version isn't easy or sometimes possible to implement. In fact usually they are only after the handful of special programs with observability they need.

Now don't get me wrong, the vendors deserve monetary compensation. The problem I have is that they are throwing away significant money and simultaneously permanently losing a customer because they think they deserve the entire pie. In the process they are hurting IBM i and the Power brand.

For a while they even had a clause in their contract that said only W2 employees of the company could sign on to the system with QSECOFR or other admin level credentials so that you were required to contract them for all services. Luckily they took enough flack for that one that they backed off, but over the years I was 'Bob the operator' (wink wink) more than once.

- Larry "DrFranken" Bolhuis

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

Rob Berendt