× The internal search function is temporarily non-functional. The current search engine is no longer viable and we are researching alternatives.
As a stop gap measure, we are using Google's custom search engine service.
If you know of an easy to use, open source, search engine ... please contact support@midrange.com.



Do you see any irony in that? The people who serve and build the customer base have the most difficult time with IBM administrivia?

And really, how hard can it be? My difficulty is in dealing with the changing product ID and part numbers as the OS level changes and the product names evolve. They have a machine that can play Jeopardy but can't manage a simple date that triggers an email message?

I may be nit picking but MyEclipse is smart enough to send me a notice and even warns me from within the IDE that support will be expiring soon. I guess I hold IBM to a pretty high customer service standard and for a small company like mine, paying $532 vs $177 per seat for RDp SWMA is significant.

Pete Helgren
Value Added Software, Inc
www.asaap.com
www.opensource4i.com


On 2/10/2011 10:20 AM, Vern Hamberg wrote:
Pete

I do not know that IBM ever notifies its partners on the lease program
about SWMA expiring - I've not seen at the last couple places I've
worked. I just credit it to, IBM expects its hardware partners to handle
this. Unfortunately, OUR BP is IBM Techline, and they don't do it.

However, the re-up charge for maintenance is less than civilians pay, as
I recall.

Vern

On 2/10/2011 10:58 AM, Pete Helgren wrote:
Not to add fuel to the fire here but I have encountered an interesting
twist in just the past 2-3 years. It isn't only initial licensing that
appears to be a area where IBM has turned to recover some development
cost, it is SWMA as well. I have a developer lease so I get some pretty
substantial discounts but the past three years I haven't gotten any
notice of the SWMA lapsing and further, with the OS and *some*
individual licensing of products it has gotten more and more difficult
to figure out which products have individual SWMA and which are covered
by SWMA on the OS. Thus, IBM can charge higher prices for reinstating
SWMA (three times higher with RDp for instance). As a business partner,
I sometimes don't receive an IBM notice when my customer's SWMA is
expiring. They have to pay for reinstatement as well. Thankfully, the
distributor I work with has a better system than IBM to notify me of
customer SWMA that is expiring. But, heaven help you if you deal with
IBM directly and assume that they will notify you when your SWMA expires
because they won't.

Of course I could concoct some conspiracy theory but I think that IBM
has no economic incentive to notify of expiring SWMA because they can
charge for reinstatement. Every software license program I participate
in has some kind of notification system to alert me to expiring
support. All except IBM. Seems like the only company that isn't
"smarter" on this planet, is IBM. Don't get me wrong I LOVE this
platform and IBM support is top notch, but the systems that notify of
expiration and allow us to pay for SWMA are archaic at best and don't
reflect well on IBM.

I don't know what your experience has been, but I have never received a
notice from IBM that my SWMA was expiring. I usually discover that it
expired when I need to update something, as I just did (which triggered
the rant)

Pete Helgren
Value Added Software, Inc
www.asaap.com
www.opensource4i.com


As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.

This thread ...

Follow-Ups:
Replies:

Follow On AppleNews
Return to Archive home page | Return to MIDRANGE.COM home page

This mailing list archive is Copyright 1997-2024 by midrange.com and David Gibbs as a compilation work. Use of the archive is restricted to research of a business or technical nature. Any other uses are prohibited. Full details are available on our policy page. If you have questions about this, please contact [javascript protected email address].

Operating expenses for this site are earned using the Amazon Associate program and Google Adsense.