Re: Just curious

I don't know if the way IBMi systems are sold in the US is any different
to Australia but having recently taken deliver of my shiny new Power 8
which was ordered with 5 years hardware and 5 years software 24x7 support
included and at the end of 5 years hopefully we will order the new Power X
with all inclusive maintenance.

And as an IBM BP we do this for every customer and commonly we just
include all the maintenance in the bundled cost.

Purchasing the maintenance up front is significantly cheaper and why would
anyone not want an insurance policy on their production system.

Not having maintenance is in my opinion not a smart decision.

Don Brown





From: "DrFranken" <midrange@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "Midrange Systems Technical Discussion" <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: 11/01/2018 02:00 AM
Subject: Re: Just curious
Sent by: "MIDRANGE-L" <midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx>



Worse with no contract. If you use per incident support a 5:01 call on
Friday likely results in a CE on site TUESDAY morning and no amount of
crying or begging for help will change that. If they are not busy
perhaps Monday, perhaps. But even they you must issue a P.O. for the
maximum amount IBM thinks it could cost to repair (given labor and
parts). Until you do that no dispatch. With per incident that is 24
hours from the time they get the call and your P.O. so that 5:01 Friday
call is an 8AM Monday call to them. Then add in the paperwork time and
Tuesday is very likely. The P.O is so that if what looks simple turns
into something 'Not Simple' they are holding your P.O. and thus can get
payment.

Sad that they had to go that way but far too many folks were dropping
support to save money then just paying only when problems occurred. This
doesn't leave IBM any money to stock parts with or to keep CEs employed
and trained. Worse it would tie up the ones they had at 'non-contract'
sites when someone with a contract called and couldn't get help. This
has probably been IBM's policy for over a decade now and we don't see
very many customers relying on per incident support as a result!!

- Larry "DrFranken" Bolhuis

www.Frankeni.com
www.iDevCloud.com - Personal Development IBM i timeshare service.
www.iInTheCloud.com - Commercial IBM i Cloud Hosting.

On 1/10/2018 9:54 AM, Jim Oberholtzer wrote:

Yep try to save a couple of bucks by not having 24/7 hardware support so
when 5:00 pm rolls around you just bought potentially 16 hours of

downtime

(or more) waiting because IBM actually honors it's agreement with the
customer. The customer got lucky this time that Rochester support even
bothered to talk to you after 5:00pm, they were not obligated to.

Moral to the story: You get what you pay for. 24/7 support is cheap

after

just one failure on a production system during the evening or worse,

over a

weekend.


--
Jim Oberholtzer
Agile Technology Architects


-----Original Message-----
From: MIDRANGE-L [mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of

Paul

Nelson
Sent: Wednesday, January 10, 2018 8:28 AM
To: 'Midrange Systems Technical Discussion' <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: RE: Just curious

Post mortem:

The service tech who changed out the power supply claimed a card needed
replacing, and the partitions had to be powered down. Of course, there

were

no cards in the Austin warehouse, so one was ordered from Dallas. She

left

at 5:00 at the end of her shift.

A hardware guy from Rochester called at 6:00, and said he had been

reviewing

the notes on the PMR. He said that when the power supply failed, the

system

had stopped recognizing the card, and a reboot would wake the systems

back

up.

Bing-badda-boom, and we were functional. We saved the muckety-mucks in
"management" the $3,000 they were planning to spend on after hours

support

when the card finally arrived.

And yes, several of these techs are actual contractors, not retired

IBM'ers.

This latest young lady has joined the ranks of the persona non grata who
will no longer touch anything except the Wintel boxes.

Paul Nelson
Cell 708-670-6978
Office 409-267-4027
nelsonp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx


-----Original Message-----
From: MIDRANGE-L [mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of

Jim

Oberholtzer
Sent: Wednesday, January 10, 2018 7:31 AM
To: 'Midrange Systems Technical Discussion'
Subject: RE: Just curious

As the older CEs retire the quality has gone down, and you may in fact

have

had a CE that was not trained in the system except by watching on line
videos and taking an open book on line test. I doubt he was a

contractor,

at least there are not any up here (that were not IBM employees in the

first

place that retired and were brought back as contractors) but I would not

be

overly surprised.


--
Jim Oberholtzer
Agile Technology Architects


-----Original Message-----
From: MIDRANGE-L [mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of

Paul

Nelson
Sent: Tuesday, January 09, 2018 2:36 PM
To: 'Midrange Systems Technical Discussion' <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Just curious

Is anybody else experiencing issues with the skill level of the IBM

hardware

service techs? It seems the Austin area CE's are getting worse by the

month.

We needed a power supply changed out, and were told it was hot

swappable,

but when the tech showed up, all 5 partitions on the frame had to be

killed.

Now, there's a code that won't go away until a card is replaced. We're

not

even sure if this tech is a real IBM employee or a subcontractor.

Paul Nelson
Cell 708-670-6978
Office 409-267-4027
nelsonp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx



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