On Nov 25, 2007, at 8:25 PM, Timothy Sipples wrote:
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As a slight digression, one of my personal ongoing frustrations is
that a
lot of customers buying a new mainframe (or upgrading to a new
model) don't
also pause briefly to (re)consider software contracts. Yes, you
can (and
do) pay for IBM software month-to-month (z/OS, z/VSE, DB2, etc.)
But if
you know you're going to pay for at least a certain amount of DB2,
IMS,
CICS, z/OS, MQ, etc. for two years, or three years, or whatever,
then tell
IBM (Software) that! If you're buying the machine, you're probably
not
buying to run it only one month. If you tell IBM about your
probable MLC,
then IBM can offer you an Enterprise License Agreement (ELA) or
similar.
And an ELA could get you access to "cool" new one-time charge (OTC)
software for your System z. If anyone needs suggestions about what OTC
products to pick in their particular situation, I'm full of
suggestions.
The rough analogy here is flying a particular airline regularly but
refusing to give the airline your frequent flyer number. I don't
know why
anyone would do fail to do that, yet some people do.
Another possible consideration is what to do with the z800. You can
upgrade
the z800 to the z9 BC and keep the serial number if you like. If
it's your
only machine -- no Parallel Sysplex -- then you will need to take a
scheduled outage to do that, but many, many customers take that path.
(Sounds like you might have Parallel Sysplex, though, although maybe
logically within a single frame?) You can also get a brand new
machine (new
serial number) and sell the old one (or return it if the lease has
ended).
Or send the old one to my home, freight pre-paid, as a
donation.... :-)
Yet another possible option that may make sense is to move the z800
to a
second location, put it on "cold standby" (no software charges),
and use it
as a disaster recovery machine. Then, whenever the next model comes
out,
get that model (within a reasonable period of time) and move the z9
BC over
to replace the z800. From that point on you maintain an "N-1 Cold
Standby"
disaster recovery strategy. Whether this strategy makes sense or not
depends on a number of factors, financial and otherwise. You may
already
have a disaster recovery strategy in place -- maybe even a better
one. But
I thought I'd mention it as it can often be a very good strategy.
Timothy,
Reasonable advice. One thing I would like to toss in before you
consider multi year contracts. *KNOW* your past usage and have a
reasonable idea of anything coming down the pipe line (new
applications) *BEFORE* getting into a multi year contract (with
anyone). I have seen at least twice in my life time a company that
did the multi year contract and really getting burned money wise
because they were stuck in a contract. They did not want to hear
about items that either the SEC was mandating or new applications
coming down the pipeline that were really cpu intensive applications.
The management was not talking to the other side of the house. I
would suggest that you be careful about entering into long term
contracts (we saw the cost of CPU's) tumbling as well as DASD cost
tumbling. Sometime it makes sense to enter into long terms contracts,
more often maybe not, IMO.
Ed
- - - - -
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]
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