IBM Offers Tech Support Try-and-Buy Services
October 10, 2011 Timothy Prickett Morgan
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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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