I draw your attention to IBM U.S. announcement letter 113-027 (and the related announcements for all other countries) dated February 19, 2013. This announcement may affect your ordering process and delivery of several IBM products including zEnterprise servers. I recommend getting your license document(s) signed prior to August 1, 2013, if you haven't already. (Many have.)
Quoting from the announcement letter, "Starting August 1, 2013, IBM will require that customers sign an agreement to document their acceptance of the Machine Code (including Licensed Internal Code) license terms for orders of certain IBM Machines.... Starting August 1, 2013, the License Acceptance Agreement must be executed and returned to IBM before IBM will ship any Machine requiring express written acceptance of the License Agreement's terms." There's also an important reminder about transferring machines to other parties (e.g. machine resale). That's fine so long as you're following the law (e.g. export country restrictions). Moreover, the announcement letter includes a reminder that the recipient must also accept the IBM License Agreement directly with IBM in order for that new user to have a valid license for the Machine Code. The applicable machine types include IBM System z10 and above, various IBM Power servers, and various IBM enterprise storage products. This issue is not unique to zEnterprise machines. Since some of you have internal organizational processes which require reviewing anything, even agreements you've already agreed to via prior acceptance, as noted above I recommend getting your IBM License Agreement signed now or soon if you haven't done so yet. That'll assure that you have one less bureaucratic thing to worry about if/when you need to order more IBM stuff -- or at least protect your option to do so that much more rapidly. The Machine Code and Licensed Internal Code are already licensed, and you already legally accept the license. That doesn't change. But IBM is going to insist on a bit more paperwork. The world requires signing contracts/agreements before taking delivery of many products. I had to sign a bunch of paperwork to take delivery of the washing machine I bought a couple months ago, as one example. I had to sign even more paperwork to spend $60 renting a car for a couple days. I can't say reviewing and signing such paperwork was enjoyable, but such is life. Note that IBM does not require signing the applicable License Agreement for every delivery. Once per customer per country is fine. For example, if you've got some IBM Power servers in two countries and could be opening a data center in a third country, it would be prudent to sign three agreements from those three countries. Then you've ticked those boxes, and IBM can ship you any of the Agreement-covered products (including a new zEnterprise server) in any of those three countries. As always, I do not speak in an official capacity for IBM. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Timothy Sipples Consulting Enterprise IT Architect (Based in Singapore) E-Mail: [email protected] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
