IBM have announced an increase of 5% on IBM Maintenance from 1st April on most IBM hardware. As there have not been any price increases since 2008 this is going to hit customers harder than ever!
For customers that already have an IBM Maintenance Support Agreement in place get another 3 months respite as the increase doesn’t take effect until 1st July 2012. For customers with contracts that have price protection this increase will not take effect until the beginning of the next charging period. With the cost of support increasing it is no wonder that customers are looking at moving away from older generation equipment and moving to IBM Power7 machines.
I believe by managing IT spend with existing licensing and support agreements this will help the short and long term budget issues facing customers.