Stan,
What you have to look out for is that your IBM support agreement only
covers technical support. And, if thats all you are looking for, great.
But, that $6200 does not cover "upgrade protection" on your software. So,
you will not be eligible to get software upgrades with only a supportline
agreement. Oh, and it does not cover what we all know as "Registered
Entities." I don't know if they are still going to refer to it as
registered entities, but there will be some sort of user-access cost.
So, if you do not plan to have anyone accessing your AFS space, then the
supportline agreement for your servers should be fine.
Once you order upgrade protection on your products (servers and clients)
and user-access licenses, you will see the price creep right back up to,
or even pass you old costs. My guess is that it will surpass the old
costs.
This is my understanding of the whole ordeal. Please, someone out there
correct me if I am wrong. Here are the questions I asked about our
supportline agreement, and the responses I received back:
Question:
Does this also include support for the AFS client software?
Answer:
Yes, you would still be able to receive client support as long as the
problem or question is related to AFS running on one of the Solaris
servers specified in the agreement.
Question:
I know you mentioned this support contract also included software
updates to be shipped to us. Do we also get updates for the AFS client
software?
Answer:
Software updates and license information is a separate entity from
support. Renee Ramfos, who has in-depth knowledge of AFS subscriptions
and user-access information, has asked that all questions be referred to
her. She can be reached at [EMAIL PROTECTED] or at (412) 667-3544.
Question:
What is the breakdown of the pricing for AFS support? For example, if
we have support for 15 servers, and wanted to increase our server count
to 17, first of all what would the initial price of the 2 additional
servers be, and what would the annual support cost increase to?
Answer:
The price set in our tool for AFS running on Solaris is a flat fee for
all servers, regardless of the number. Solaris is only the exception
because it is considered Multivendor/No Operating System. For other
platforms running AFS (ex. Linux, DEC or AIX) our tool charges support
based on the number of servers.
Question:
Does this support contract cover ALL of our AFS users? You said that
would show up on the quote, but I did not see where it said anything
about the number of users we could have.
Answer:
User-access licensing is separate from the support agreement. I
spoke to Renee Ramfos today and she is putting together some information
to send out to previous Transarc/ AFS customers in the next couple of weeks.
On Wed, 24 Jan 2001, Stanley Naymola wrote:
> Hi all,
> I have just finished talking to IBM about my support agreement. First the
> contracts people don't know about AFS, you already know that. I got the name
> and number of an IBM person who does know all about AFS, not just a little but
> everything. He did tell me that if you are renewing , as most of are, that
> depending on your servers the price will vary. For instance, I have all Sun
> servers and all different clients. Nt, Sgi, Sun, Linux, and Dec. My software
> support for 7x24 and 6 callers is 6220.80 for a year. The clients are free. No
> cost. The Sun servers are the only cost and I can have as many as I want. Now
> if you run server on Nt, Linux or AIX there is a higher cost. Maybe. If you
> are an AIX shop you probably will have support already and the AFS is part of
> the Com & Network group. So there the price may drop a whole lot. If you are
> running servers on Linux or Nt the price starts going up. Linux is the most
> expensive. Funny when you think that Linux is suppose to be cheap or free to
> use. I think the reason people are starting to see very high prices is that
> the contract people do not know the difference between a server and a client.
> So when you say "I have 300 Linux and 200 Nt's and 5 SGI's, they think its all
> servers and charge you that way. My contract started at 22 grand and went
> down to 6200. So the person's name is:
>
> Gary Gerchak 512-838-2715 or 1-800-426-4968
>
> Gary knows are people in Pittsburg. He talks to them all the time, so he is
> very in tune to whats going on. He also told me that 3.6 support will continue
> until Dec 31, 2002 yes 2002. He said you will still end up talking to the
> same people we a use to in Pittsburg as well. He also said that every AFS
> customer can get AFS 3.6 free from there site during this transition period. I
> though this was good news for all , I know I was pretty happy that the price
> went down not up.
>
> Well thats all from me.
>
> Stan Naymola
> Fermi Lab
>
