> 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.
I understnd about upgrade support. It's an option and I don't have that price
yet. But given the future of AFS at IBM it might not matter. They may never
release a new version. The open source may be the only new AFS code coming
out. Again its based on the server complex only. They don't charge by or for
clients. Gary said there is no per seat cost. You get charged support based on
your server complex.
> So, if you do not plan to have anyone accessing your AFS space, then the
> supportline agreement for your servers should be fine.
Come on ,why would you have AFS and no users?
>
> 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?
The answer I got from Gary is yes. They are only charging based on your
servers. He said you can use any of the clients. There is no charge for the
client part only the server part.
>
> 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?
The answer is yes. Gary said that IBM will not charge for what they call
defects. As a supported site you can download from the IBM site. I already
have. The only cloudy area is if the update is considered a new release. They
might charge for that.
>
> 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.
Gary knows Renee and all the folks at Transarc. Gary is IBM's contrat person
and knows how IBM is going to support AFS.
>
> 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?
I said the same thing. If you have servers that are special like AIX, Linux,
NT you have more charges. DEC was not one of them. I have DEC here and it was
included in my first cut of the contract, there was no special charge. They
thought all our machines where servers at first and charged based on that. So
they did not charge for DEC even though they thought DEC was a server and not
a client.
>
> 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.
Gary said there was no charge for client and that we would have support. Its
based on the server complex.
>
> 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 t
he
> > contracts people don't know about AFS, you already know that. I got the nam
e
> > 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 softwar
e
> > 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. N
ow
> > 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 ar
e
> > running servers on Linux or Nt the price starts going up. Linux is the mos
t
> > expensive. Funny when you think that Linux is suppose to be cheap or free t
o
> > 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 clien
t.
> > 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 conti
nue
> > 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 pric
e
> > went down not up.
> >
> > Well thats all from me.
> >
> > Stan Naymola
> > Fermi Lab
> >
>
