IBM Offers Tech Support Try-and-Buy Services

October 10, 2011 Timothy Prickett Morgan

IBM‘s Global Services unit down in Australia and New Zealand is trying to coax customers who have been off maintenance to come back in to the Big Blue fold.

In announcement letter ZA11-1049, IBM is offering customers who have been off Enhanced Technology Support contracts since October 2010 a chance to come back, and is willing to give them three-months of service under a try-and-buy program if they sign up between October 6 and December 31. The tech support contract is administered through tier 1 and tier 2 channel partners and can be canceled at any time during the three months with no penalty. IBM says that the aim of the try-and-buy program is to create awareness of the ETS coverage for both SMBs and the channel partners that serve them.

The Enhanced Technical Support services, which have more hand-holding than Software Maintenance or SupportLine, are available for IBM i, AIX, and Linux running on Power Systems as well as for Linux and Windows on X86 systems and VMware’s ESXi hypervisor and vSphere add-ons for X86 servers. IBM is not giving away freebie enhanced services for mainframes.

The try-and-buy promotion for the beefier tech support services is available in Croatia, Egypt, Morocco, Pakistan, Russia, Serbia, South Africa, Tunisia, Turkey, and Ukraine. No word on when North America, the rest of Europe, or Australia and New Zealand might get a similar deal. Maybe, informally, through a business partner, after reading this very story. . . .

It can’t hurt to ask if you want a little extra help from Big Blue and its partners and want to give ETS a spin on IBM’s nickel.

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Do the Math When Looking at IBM i Hosting for Cost Savings

COVID-19 has accelerated certain business trends that were already gaining strength prior to the start of the pandemic. E-commerce, telehealth, and video conferencing are some of the most obvious examples. One example that may not be as obvious to the general public but has a profound impact on business is the shift in strategy of IBM i infrastructure from traditional, on-premises environments to some form of remote configuration. These remote configurations and all of their variations are broadly referred to in the community as IBM i hosting.

“Hosting” in this context can mean different things to different people, and in general, hosting refers to one of two scenarios. In the first scenario, hosting can refer to a client owned machine that is housed in a co-location facility (commonly called a co-lo for short) where the data center provides traditional system administrator services, relieving the client of administrative and operational responsibilities. In the second scenario, hosting can refer to an MSP owned machine in which partition resources are provided to the client in an on-demand capacity. This scenario allows the client to completely outsource all aspects of Power Systems hardware and the IBM i operating system and database.

The scenario that is best for each business depends on a number of factors and is largely up for debate. In most cases, pursuing hosting purely as a cost saving strategy is a dead end. Furthermore, when you consider all of the costs associated with maintaining and IBM i environment, it is typically not a cost-effective option for the small to midsize market. The most cost-effective approach for these organizations is often a combination of a client owned and maintained system (either on-prem or in a co-lo) with cloud backup and disaster-recovery-as-a-service. Only in some cases of larger enterprise companies can a hosting strategy start to become a potentially cost-effective option.

However, cost savings is just one part of the story. As IBM i expertise becomes scarce and IT resources run tight, the only option for some firms may be to pursue hosting in some capacity. Whatever the driving force for pursing hosting may be, the key point is that it is not just simply an option for running your workload in a different location. There are many details to consider and it is to the best interest of the client to work with an experienced MSP in weighing the benefits and drawbacks of each option. As COVID-19 rolls on, time will tell if IBM i hosting strategies will follow the other strong business trends of the pandemic.

When we say do the math in the title above, it literally means that you need to do the math for your particular scenario. It is not about us doing the math for you, making a case for either staying on premises or for moving to the cloud. There is not one answer, but just different levels of cost to be reckoned which yield different answers. Most IBM i shops have fairly static workloads, at least measured against the larger mix of stuff on the public clouds of the world. How do you measure the value of controlling your own IT fate? That will only be fully recognized at the moment when it is sorely missed the most.

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