IBM Discounts Support for Lotus Wares, Sunsets Older Domino Releases

August 17, 2009 Timothy Prickett Morgan

IBM knows times are tough out there for every company (excepting possibly Big Blue and Google these days), and to that end it is offering some discounts on Software Subscription and Support contracts for Lotus and WebSphere Portal software.

The discounts came out last week in announcement letter 209-327, and here’s the deal with the Lock In With Lotus software offer. (You’d think software companies would be allergic to the words “lock in,” but what do I know?) If customers buy new licenses for a slew of Lotus or WebSphere Portal products and they agree to pony up the cash for two years of extra Software Subscription and Support services beyond the one year already tacked on to the license fee as an additional item, then IBM will cut the cost of the Lotus or WebSphere Portal product software license by 15 percent and also cut the cost for all three years of the support contract by 15 percent.

Don’t think IBM is leaving its existing customers out in the cold. Customers with existing Lotus and WebSphere Portal products who are on maintenance and support contracts are able to buy an additional two years of support with a 10 percent discount.

These discounts seem pretty skinny to me, either way. I bet you could push them a little harder, maybe get 25 percent for new licenses and support and 15 percent for support contracts for existing licenses.

The list of Lotus and WebSphere Portal products eligible for these discounts is available here. IBM will update this file as it adds and subtracts from the deal.

In a separate announcement IBM also said that it would stop selling Lotus Notes/Domino 7.0.0, 7.0.1, and 7.0.2 on October 15 of this year, and will stop peddling Notes/Domino 7.0.3 and 7.0.4 on April 14, 2011. The related Lotus Enterprise Integrator releases (with the same release numbers) for these Notes/Domino releases will sunset at the same time. IBM says that it will withdraw support for Notes/Domino releases 7.0.0 through 7.0.4 and the related Enterprise Integrator tool on April 30, 2011. So those 7.0.3 and 7.0.4 licenses will have a pretty short practical life next year.

If you haven’t got the message, IBM wants you to upgrade to a Notes/Domino 8.5 release, or at least get into the pattern for the future 8.6 release.

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