Rob,
I used to be in an organization (10 years ago) that was always pushing
for the latest greatest. Vendors were doing this exact same thing back
then.
In two cases, I negotiated a reduction once I demonstrated we were
serious about jumping ship and had the ability to do so.
With the consolidation of many competing products under the same vendor,
that is getting harder to do.
That being said.. If you run that many vendor apps, may I suggest something.
Vendor products are not Magic. They have hired programmers to write
system that access available API's on the i.
At some point, would it be cheaper to invest in talent to write and
maintain your own tools to accomplish the same thing, freeing you of
the vendor Maintenance fees.
At my current organization, we have done exactly that. While not always
pretty and slick, it gets the job done and we're not paying thousands in
support/maintenance fees for basically nothing.
Gavin Inman
On 1/30/2025 9:14 AM, Rob Berendt wrote:
We do not pay maintenance money solely to fund your next merger and
acquisition.
Along with new features and compliance with security and regulation we also
expect more.
We expect that you participate in IBM's early programs and get ready for
the next release of IBM i.
We expect that you know that IBM updates IBM i every 3 years and that makes
it almost guaranteed that the next release will be out 2Q 2025.
We expect you to be ready on date of G/A.
We expect that you contact IBM and ask how to get involved with IBM i Early
Programs.
We expect that you know that IBM has announced some of the upcoming changes
at sites like
https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/node/668193
We expect that you either have appropriate hardware to run any future
release or are willing to find a cloud account to test on.
https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/node/687283
IBM has given fair warning of upcoming stuff at sites like the above and
sites like
https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/node/668157 and the updated
IBM i Roadmap at
https://www.ibm.com/products/ibm-i
I have switched vendorS, plural, because of their dragging feet on new
releases.
So when I run WRKJVMJOB and find that you are using a version of Java which
I likely won't be able to use in just a few months I'm not happy. Or, if
you list as a software requirement anything else listed on the stuff going
away after the current version of the OS, I'm not happy.
The fact that you may support some ancient version of IBM i means nothing
to me. Who spends more on product? Those who won't spend money on new
hardware or operating systems, or, those who do?
midrange.com
