On Jan 22, 16:51 Mitch Collinsworth ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
> Has anyone actually gotten an answer to the question "What is the new
> model for licensing AFS, and what are the costs?"
Trying to find AFS-aware sales people at IBM feels like Diogenes searching for
that one honest man... (and its almost as fruitful <g>).
I have managed to find one person from their Toronto sales division with some
wits about him who, with lots of prodding from me, at least now knows what
you're talking about when you mention "AFS". I've gone over a number of
pricing schedules with him from their "Passport Advantage" program trying to
license a new AFS cell in our company. FWIW, his contact information is:
Joe DiBattista/Toronto/IBM
Software Account Manager
ibm.com, Americas
Phone (416) 383-3463
1-800-426-4968 ext. 33463
T/L 883-3463
Fax (416) 383-8398
Email [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> I've been trying all month to "renew" our AFS support contract. This
> was one of the questions I asked along the way, but nobody seems to
> know the answer. Well nobody that will come to the phone at least. :-(
In my experience, there's only one thing worse than trying to get AFS sales
information from IBM, and thats trying to get AFS -support- information from
IBM. What I have found is not encouraging, and from what I understand, AFS
support -does not- include software upgrades, as it used to from Transarc.
Also, if your cell happens to include Linux boxes the support costs go through
the roof.
Under their Passport Advantage software program, there is a pricing level
that's based on a "point" system, where you accumulate points for all the
software your organization buys from IBM in a given period. Pricing level "C"
includes support with all software purchases. Since I committed (promised,
actually) to buy enough software from IBM to get the "C"-level pricing, my
support solution was to purchase their software subscription service to cover
upgrades for our existing cell. This gave me upgrades plus support for a
little more than what they would have charged me for support alone through
their support operations.
If anyone is interested in the particulars I could dig them up.
--
Norman Joseph, UNIX Systems Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED] IC|XC
Concurrent Technologies Corporation 814/269.2633 --+--
NI|KA
ftp://ftp.ctc.com/pub/PGP-keys/joseph.asc
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