Dean Flanders: > Thanks for the clarification. I have always heard the term "existing > customers" so originally I thought we were fine, > but this is the first time I have seen the term "existing systems". However, > it seems what I said before is mostly correct, > eventually all customers will be forced to capacity based licensing as they > life cycle hardware (even IBM customers). > In addition it seems there is a diminishing number of OEMs that can sell SS > v5, which is what happened in our case when > we wanted to go from v4 to v5 with existing hardware (in our case DDN). So I > strongly encourage organizations to be thinking > of these issues in their long term planning.
Again, this isn’t quite correct, and I really want the archive of this thread to be completely correct when people review it in the future. As an existing customer of DDN, the problem GridScaler customers in particular are facing is not Sockets vs. Capacity. It is simply that DDN is not an OEM licensee for Scale V5. So DDN cannot upgrade your GridScaler to V5, *neither on Sockets nor on Capacity*. Then if you go to another supplier for V5, you are a new customer to that supplier. (Some of you out there are, I know, multi-sourcing your Scale systems, so may be an “existing customer” of several Scale suppliers). And again, it is not correct that eventually all customers will be forced to capacity licensing. Those of you on Scale Standard and Scale Advanced software, which are not tied to specific systems or hardware, can continue on those licenses. There is no plan to require those people to migrate. By contrast, OEM licenses (and ESS licenses) were always sold as part of a system and attached to that system -- one of the things that makes those licenses cheaper than software licenses that live forever and float from system to system. It is also not true that there is a “diminishing number of OEMs” selling V5. Everybody that sold V4 has added V5 to their contract, as far as I am aware -- except DDN. And we have added a number of additional OEMs in the past couple of years (some of them quite invisibly as Scale is embedded deep in their solution and they want their own brand front and center) and a couple more big names are in development that I can’t mention until they are ready to announce themselves. We also have a more diverse OEM model: as well as storage vendors that include Scale in a storage solution, we have various embedded vertical solutions, backup solutions, and cloud-based service offerings using Scale. Even Dell is selling a Scale solution now via our OEM Arcastream. Again, DDN and IBM are working together to find a path forward for GridScaler owners to get past this problem, and once again I ask for your patience as we get the details right. Regards Carl Zetie Program Director Offering Management Spectrum Scale ---- (919) 473 3318 ][ Research Triangle Park [email protected] [signature_50537]
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