A Letter to the FLEX-ES User Community:

An unfortunate set of circumstances has recently arisen that, unless addressed by IBM immediately, will result in the abrupt termination of the very successful 6 year-old Partnerworld for Developers FLEX-ES delivery program.

To provide some history for background purposes, T3 Technologies, Inc. is a long time IBM Premier Business Partner, specializing in FLEX-ES technology. In 2000, shortly after the IBM P/390 product program ended, members of the IBM PWD community had no affordable hardware options for development platforms. I personally approached Jeff Magdahl, then manager of the S/390 PWD program, with an idea to again offer PWD members a very low cost mainframe development platform, this time based on FLEX-ES technology. The concept I brought to Jeff was fully in synch with his mission for PWD—to incent developers to continue developing mainframe applications, thereby maintaining a healthy environment for IBM mainframe sales.

The result was a family of products offered by T3, ranging from a "Mainframe on a Thinkpad" to our more robust 100 MIPS+ x-Series based servers. To date, T3 has delivered over 600 tServer units in 28 countries, a majority to the approximately 1,400-member worldwide mainframe PWD community.

Unfortunately, a S/390 licensing dispute between IBM and Fundamental Software (FSI) is now underway and the collateral damage will likely mean the end to this PWD delivery program. It seems FSI has a patent license with IBM for certain S/390 rights that expire on October 31, 2006. Without renewal of that licensing program, FSI can no longer provide FLEX-ES licenses to this PWD program. And, incredibly, it seems IBM is not currently entertaining a renegotiation of that license agreement with FSI. It is entirely likely that the IBM'ers responsible for this (lack of) negotiation are not even aware of the impact this may have, and the potential ripple effect through the mainframe developer's community. With no similar low cost options available, many developers will have no choice but to cease their mainframe development and support of literally hundreds if not thousands of mainframe software applications.

Strategically, this does not make much business sense for IBM, obviously has an impact to T3's business, and likely has significant ramifications to ALL PWD businesses. I am therefore asking all of our customers, indeed all PWD members to join me in a letter/emailing campaign to the relevant IBM managers in zSeries and in the Partnerworld for Developers Program. My hope is to shed some light on the situation to the decision makers and force a restoration of this very important mainframe developer's incentive program.

Without your collective help, this very beneficial PWD program will end in just 26 days!!! Please be specific and direct in your emails. Pull no punches, and let IBM know how you feel about this, and how it impacts your plans to continue delivering zArchitecture products.

Existing PWD FLEX licenses are valid through the end dates of your current IBM agreements. No action can be taken to prematurely cancel those agreements. T3 and FSI will continue to provide the highest levels of support to all FLEX users through those expiration dates. New orders can be filled through October 31.

This situation has no effect on current production users of tServers or other FLEX-based systems. FLEX-ES production licenses are, essentially, lifetime licenses. T3 and FSI will continue to provide support to our production customers for as long as you request it.

Let us not sit back and hope that saner minds prevail. Join me in taking some action to protect our collective business futures.

Sincerely
Steven Friedman
President, T3 Technologies Inc.