News of IBMs recent hardware maintenance hike shouldn’t come as a surprise to end users, who have not seen an increase in over two years. Metrics (as they say) drives behaviours; so the quick witted among us will see this form announcement as a move to stimulate new hardware procurement enquires. But they’re not unique in this move. Oracle have a reputation for influencing new hardware sales by control of maintenance costs, along with many other vendors.
So what can end users do to avoid the maintenance and TCO uplift? We asked our head of support to give his top 4 strategies that end users should consider adopting.
Bite the bullet – Migrate to new hardware.
Any hardware migration attracts short term implementation costs but this should be viewed in the context of total ownership costs over 5 years. This approach usually yields a business case for new kit adoption given the traditional high costs often associated with maintaining potentially out of warranty hardware and the incentivised maintenance deals that can be found for existing customers?.
Seek support from an IBM Partner.
If you’re currently gaining support direct from IBM it may be worth speaking to an IBM partner with suitable accreditation . I hear their overheads are lower!
Experienced support specialists will have your best interests at heart and use proven methodologies and introduce options not normally offered directly from a vendor, so make sure you find a partner with accreditation in these areas.
Evaluate current architecture
Hardware technology changes as a rapid rate, so if you’re looking to drive performance and cost efficiency it’s always worth looking at your incumbent environments to see where improvements or consolidation using new technologies can be made.
Adopt Converged control
When calculating your TCO apply management costs. Most IT environments have a mixture of hardware vendors which makes management of everyday tasks, such as provisioning, a time consuming task. Converged and hyper converged systems reduces admin costs and gives sys admins greater performance control.
IBM’s most recent announcement of maintenance increase is likely to take place at some point in July. If you would like to talk to a consultant about your maintenance cost forecast and how we might be able to help reduce your TCO please get in touch.