My 2 cents ...
As a small IBM BP we strongly recommend a 5 year package which includes
both HW and SW maintenance for the full 5 years.
Purchasing up front includes the significant discount provided on a new
box purchase.
After 5 years the customer has the choice of new machine or maintenance at
the then current cost.
As the smallest IBMi suits almost all of our clients they generally get a
new machine when the latest OS will not run on the current one.
Cheers
Don
From: "John Yeung" <gallium.arsenide@xxxxxxxxx>
To: "Midrange Systems Technical Discussion"
<midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: 25/02/2020 03:10 AM
Subject: Re: Getting ready for the (far?) future
Sent by: "MIDRANGE-L" <midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
On Mon, Feb 24, 2020 at 11:11 AM B Stone <bvstone@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
So, they shell out big $$ for new hardware to get lower ? yearly
maintenance?
Yes, the maintenance cost was so high on our old machine that the new
machine paid for itself in three years.
I guess since I'm mainly a programmer I don't follow the hardware things
that much.
I don't really follow hardware either, but we're a small shop and the
ones who do look after the system explained what they were doing and
why. The old machine wouldn't have run an OS beyond 6.1, so hardware
and software are always intertwined to some extent.
I will say that I *guess* some very small or cash-strapped outfits
might actually just not pay maintenance, and then simply accept that
if something goes wrong, they don't have IBM support. The systems are
reliable enough that maybe some businesses can operate this way, and
thus save a huge amount of cost for as long as there are no
catastrophic failures. I dunno.
John Y.
midrange.com
