Please bear in mind this isn't an official answer. Check with your friendly local IBM representative.
"Withdrawn from marketing" means that IBM no longer accepts new orders for the product. This is pretty straightforward for most hardware: IBM just won't ship you a particular (new) box. Software gets interesting. Yes, IBM can quote and will charge applicable increases for your currently licensed products, even products withdrawn from marketing. You can move software from one box to another (e.g. hardware model upgrades, relocations of data centers). If your company is acquired by another the acquiring company can continue to run the software, grow the software capacity, move to "their" boxes (e.g. consolidation), and so on. (There's a very important definition of an "enterprise" in software licensing that covers such events.) I suppose it's theoretically possible for one company that wants to obtain a withdrawn product to buy another company that already has it. :-) And you can even change the licensing terms, such as moving from full capacity to subcapacity (VWLC) licensing, and keep your withdrawn products. (Most such products will probably pick up the new licensing terms.) Theoretically IBM is free to change the price of withdrawn products...but IBM honors contracts. And -- but please check me on this, too -- I believe it is even possible as a new customer to buy at least some old software that's withdrawn from marketing. I seem to recall that certain "OTC" software product licenses allow buying the new version and then running any prior version. If the product still exists and has a direct, lineal successor then I think this works. I think it also works if the whole of the old software product got merged into a new one. And it extends to past platforms when the license is cross-platform. For example, if you want to buy Personal Communications for DOS, which hasn't been marketed for a long time and is unsupported, you can buy Host Access Client Package (HACP) which includes Personal Communications for Windows: the lineage is intact. And if all that's not enough, you can try for a "special bid" and see if IBM can quote a price. They'll probably find the closest modern match and price on that. Getting media is another question. IBM may not be able to supply it, so you'll have to find it from another source. As long as you have a valid license this is apparently OK. Most IBM software doesn't have license keys, so no obstacle there. All that said, it's not usually a good idea to buy withdrawn products. - - - - - Timothy Sipples IBM Consulting Enterprise Software Architect Specializing in Software Architectures Related to System z Based in Tokyo, Serving IBM Japan and IBM Asia-Pacific E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
