Ed Gould writes: >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.
I agree with this general principle, although my specific frustration was related to a specific situation. That is, you're buying (or upgrading to, or leasing) a new machine, ergo you can confidently predict you're going to run it at *some* baseline level for years. (Otherwise, why are you getting the machine?) Just tell IBM *Software* that, and seriously investigate an ELA (or other agreement which incorporates ELA-type terms) so you can quite probably get some cool new OTC for your System z. An ELA certainly doesn't have to coincide with a hardware purchase to make sense, but the situation I describe is *generally* a particularly easy case. (ISV machines like Mikos's are special cases, of course.) - - - - - 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
