IBM model of AFS support?

[Mike W Ellwood]

On Tue, 29 May 2001, Terry McCoy wrote:

> On Tue, 29 May 2001, Dr A V Le Blanc wrote:

> > In our case, we have had a spread of quotations from ukp 2,000
> > to ukp 8,000.  We are now told that despite the high price tag,
> > we won't get new versions or bug fixes, and we lose the source
> > license.  My impression is that IBM are actively trying to
> > discourage AFS customers, certainly in the UK.

> >      -- Owen
> >      LeBlanc@mcc.ac.uk

> Owen:

> I am not that surprised, we have be going through very much the
> same song and dance on this side of the pond as well, at least
> they are constant :-)
> 
> Anyone have any success dealing with the three lettered mammoth
> with respect to negotiating a support contract for AFS?  The IBM
> folks that we have had to deal with know next to nothing about
> the product and the level of support that we had before.
 


For those of you running AFS servers on AIX, are you also
being told that in order to get IBM support for AFS you
have to take out a Supportline (that may be IBM-UK-speak)
contract for AIX, and then the AFS support is an add-on to it?


However, we took a strategic decision years ago not to bother with IBM AIX
support; we could manage happily without it, and we still can.  AFS
support on the other hand, if it were at the level we got with Transarc,
and at about the same cost (plus inflation, etc), would still be worth it.  
However, we could probably manage without explicit assistance, provided we
could still download fixes, etc. It's not clear to me yet in the IBM
model, what it is we would have to purchase in order to retain the right
to download fixes.

Similarly, it is not yet clear to me what we have to pay in order to
retain the right to run the server code on our existing servers, and with
the same number of "registered entities" (still less what we'd do about
putting in new servers, adding more users, change IP addresses, whatever).

As I understand it, our old contract with Transarc
combined all of the above into one. What we have so
far been offered with IBM is just the right to call
a phone number between certain hours.

When I tried to ask about the licensing issue, 
I was told "ah, that's software subscriptions,
a whole different part of IBM. I'll see if I can find
a name for you". I still await the name, and any
information.


If I hadn't already seen all this kind of thing
before in the MVS world with CA and ABR (and probably
a whole lot of other good products from independent
s/w houses that got swallowed up by the corporate Golem.)


Mike Ellwood
 (speaking for himself)