Re: IBM SupportLine -- MIDRANGE-L


Hello Bale Handleman,

My company bought 30 minutes of supportline time in 1995.  So far, I think
we've used about 10 or 15 of those minutes.   

I recently priced IBM SupportLine, when we bought out new RISC box, and
set up hardware maintenance.   They no longer seem to have the option to
buy a certain number of minutes -- you have to pay for a contract for a 
period of time -- I think it was a year, but my memory is fuzzy on that
detail -- anyway the prices were just absurd, something like $1500/year
for "prime shift" and $1900/year for "full shift".  

When you consider that I've only used 15 minutes in the past 6 years,
you can see that these prices are a bit crazy.  If I continued that
trend, I'd be paying something like $200/minute. :)   If I need IBM
support, I'll just pay the hourly rate....

By contrast, I wouldn't be caught dead without the hardware maintenance.
My iSeries/400 is mission critical.  If the machine starts smoking, I want
to know that I've got a trained export I can call!


On Thu, 24 May 2001 D.BALE@handleman.com wrote:

> I'd be curious to know the mix of the MIDRANGE-L population that has an IBM
> SupportLine contract.  In the past, this was always a given in any shop I've
> worked in but, for reasons unknown to me, we supposedly have only one
> SupportLine contract for one of our boxes.  Given the fact that we're mostly
> on V3R7 around here, we may not even have a SupportLine contract anymore.
> 
> In the past, I considered SupportLine as an absolute necessity before
> embarking on any OS upgrade.  I may have treated cume PTFs in the same manner,
> although my memory is fuzzy on that.  I also seem to recall that, at one time,
> if you had SupportLine you also had IBM hardware service, and vice versa, but
> I know that's not the case now.
> 
> I see that IBM is offering a rebate for new SupportLine accounts and thought
> I'd better poll the collective mindset here before I go asking management to
> cough up the bucks for SupportLine, especially before we get going on our
> upgrades.
> 
> Are there any viable alternatives to SupportLine?
> 
> - Dan
> Dan Bale says "BAN DALE!"
> IT - AS/400
> Handleman Company
> 248-362-4400  Ext. 4952
> D.Bale@Handleman.com
>   Quiquid latine dictum sit altum viditur.
>   (Whatever is said in Latin seems profound.)

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