• IBM Announcement Roundup: A Little Bit Of Everything

  January 13, 2025 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Welcome to 2025, everybody. Nothing too big has happened on the IBM i front as far as we know, excepting the appointment of a new vice president for product management for the Power Systems line, which we report on elsewhere in this issue. But a lot of little thing have happened in recent weeks that bear pointing out, including a whole lot of patching that you can get caught up on in the IBM i PTF Guide also elsewhere in this issue.

  Let’s go through the IBM announcements relative to the Power Systems and IBM i customer base that we …

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• IBM Boosts Prices Even Further Outside The United States

  December 9, 2024 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Back on November 4, we told you about a price increase that IBM instituted across its Power Systems, storage hardware and storage software, and Software Maintenance services. These price increases were supposedly announced on September 3, but IBM’s system did not notify us of them until October 29, and we told you about it in the subsequent edition of this newsletter. The delay didn’t matter much because the price changes are not effective until January 1, 2025.

  And now, the rest of the world is going to get an extra taste of inflation, as you will see in announcement letter …

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• Big Blue Makes The Case For IBM i P05 And P10 Subscriptions

  September 16, 2024 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  We have been chronicling the transformation of the IBM i software stack from perpetual licenses with tech support to the more modern and now more normal subscription pricing that we have for both commercial and consumer software and other services these days.

  The last program in the stack to move from perpetual to subscription for the IBM i P05 and P10 software tiers was Backup, Recovery and Media Services for i (5770-BR1), which was sunsetted on August 27 in announcement letter AD24-0665, and on January 1, 2025, you will not be able to order a perpetual license to BRMS …

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• Drilling Down Into New IBM i Perpetual And Subscription Pricing

  April 15, 2024 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  As we reported in last week’s issue, Big Blue increased pricing on its pricing for per-core perpetual software licenses, per user licensing fees, Software Maintenace, and subscription prices back on January 1. We missed the change – again, apologies for that – and let you know about the basics of these and other hardware and software price changes. This week we are going to look at the effect of these changes on the cost of the base IBM i systems software stack.

  To review: On September 9 last year, IBM announced the price increases that went into effect as …

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• IBM Hardware, Software, And Support Prices Hiked

  April 8, 2024 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Last fall/summer we caught wind of the fact that IBM was going to raise prices on hardware and software effective this year, and then we never saw the announcement letter from Big Blue on General Price Harmonization or the one on price increases relating specifically to Power Systems and IBM i.

  As it turns out, those announcements were made on September 1 last year and they went into effect on January 1 – something that was not apparent to us (or the business partners that we talk to from time to time) until we were reviewing the subscription pricing deal …

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• The Low Down On Service Extension For IBM i 7.X Releases

  March 25, 2024 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  In the wake of our discussion two weeks ago of the long-lived releases of IBM i and OS/400 and how they compare in terms of technical support and bug fix coverage to Linux and Windows Server, we got a bunch of questions about just when the service extension – what we call extended support like other operating system vendors – would end.

  We understood the very high price that customers pay for service extension – as brilliantly outlined in a piece by Steve Pitcher back in October 2023, which showed the high price that the cumulative cost stacks up …

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• Yet More Announcements On IBM i Software Subscriptions

  March 18, 2024 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  In the past two years, Big Blue has done of lot of things to repackage the IBM i software stack, and even its entry Power Systems machinery, to be consistent with the modern world of utility pricing for IT systems. Many are not thrilled by this, of course, and not just because they are resistant to change. While IBM is bundling in many features and add-ons to the stack for free as it shifts to subscriptions, the core IBM i subscriptions are without question more expensive than buying a perpetual license and paying Software Maintenance over a five, six, or …

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• IBM Cloud Storage And BRMS Get Subscription Pricing

  January 22, 2024 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  As you are well aware, Big Blue is in the middle of converting the IBM i software stack from perpetual software licensing and Software Maintenance pricing to straight-up subscription pricing. Now, subscription pricing has come to IBM Cloud Storage as well as to the venerable Backup, Recovery and Media Services for i (BRMS).

  The new pricing was revealed in announcement letter AD23-0531, and it appears to be an option, not a requirement. Remember, for IBM i 7.4 and IBM i 7.5 themselves, perpetual licensing based on IBM i software tiers will only be available through the end of March …

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• IBM Suddenly Pulls The Plug On Db2 Web Query for i

  October 11, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Well, that was a bit of a surprise, but to be fair we had a few days of forewarning about it before it happened so it really wasn’t. Yesterday, on October 10, IBM abruptly announced the end of marketing for all variations of the Db2 Web Query for i data analytics tool. You can read about it in announcement letter AD23-0691. But don’t get too excited. That announcement letter doesn’t tell you much.

  On Friday, October 6, we got a message from a director of information technology at a logistics and business services provider that his IBM business partner …

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• Power10 Upgrade Considerations You Need to be Aware Of

  October 4, 2023 Steve Pitcher

  It has been over a year since Power10 servers have been available from IBM. After many conversations, configurations, proposals, installations, and project debriefs, I wanted to use this article as a point of reflection on some of the nuances around Power10 and the End of Service dates for IBM i 7.3 and Power8 hardware.

  Let’s just jump right into it because we are all busy.

  First: A hardware change is most often used to facilitate the upgrade path to a newer version of the IBM i operating system.

  The Power8 servers top out at supporting IBM i 7.4. They’re …

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