The purpose of this blog is to stress the importance of monitoring the renewal of your support agreements. Often, IT departments are so swamped that these renewals can get overlooked. Ideally, your Business Partner gives you 90-120 day advance notice so you have plenty of time to get them renewed.
Disclaimer: iSeries and AS400 are IBM servers. IBM i is an operating system. I use them interchangeably to make it easy for folks to find related information on the web.
If you are like most of my IBM i clients, there are lots of demands on the IT Manager.
Consequently, some things can get overlooked. Like support renewals for your IBM i server.
That’s why as a courtesy we track all of the support agreements and expiration dates that affect our clients to give them 90-120 day advance notice to renew support.
Several support types make clear sense.
The IBM Hardware Maintenance Agreement (HWMA) and the Software Maintenance Agreement (SWMA) often come to mind. In most cases, these get renewed annually. There are other options to renew every 2-5 years.
Some clients have Passport Advantage Software, such as MQSeries, which may require annual renewal.
HA Disaster Recovery And CBU Support Requires Expertise
Some renewals are easy to overlook unless you have an IBM Business Partner with expertise with High Availability Disaster Recovery and CBU’s.
Let me explain.
When an IBM i user wants to make a mirror copy of his system to a target server as backup for unexpected downtime, IBM permits this user to have a duplicate copy of this IBM Licensed Program Products (LPPs) on the CBU (Capacity Backup Unit) or target server without extra licensing fees provided that:
1) The CBU has an active SWMA agreement AND
2) The CBU LPPs are renewed every 2 years.
CBU LLPs Unique Software Keys
Lots of clients and Business Partners forget to renew the CBU LPPs. This is a unique process to get new software keys so the CBU LLPs will operate for another 2 years.
What happens if you fail to renew the CBU LLPs? The IBM LPPs stop working on the CBU. This means your backup is not operative. You need the IBM LPPs on the CBU to work to support your backup system.
That is why it is so important to work with an IBM Business Partner that is familiar with:
1) Tracking your renewals, and
2) The process to renew your IBM support (with the many variations that exist).
Custom Application Tracks Complicated Variables
I will confess, decades ago we used to track this information on spreadsheets. What a mistake that was. As you know, spreadsheets are “fragile” and critical data can get written over or deleted.
So, we created a custom application to manage all the moving parts.
It turns out that support agreements are WAY more complicated than meets the eye. There are many variables depending on the nature of the support, term, support provider, service level and other characteristics.
Customer Renewal Database Grows
Over the decades, our customer renewal database has grown significantly. Even so, we can still easily notify our clients with plenty of lead time when their support agreements need renewal.
I am stunned how many new customers we get where their Business Partner – even really BIG Business Partners – failed to notify them of support expiration.
My message is simple.
Please know when your support agreements need renewing. If you are not sure, check with your Business Partner. If you have a good Business Partner, you should expect a prompt response – perhaps in a matter of minutes. If not, start researching your options … especially if you have a CBU.
Need Support?
Call me at (714) 593-0387 or email me at blosey@source-data.com.
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