Hi all - I'm quoting a FS7300 for a customer for a December PO and they have come back asking what support statements IBM provide on the number of years support they should receive.  I recall some time ago, IBM Storage used to give a guarantee of 7 years' support but I'm not able to find that statement on the IBM page any longer.  Does anybody have anything formal that you could provide?

Thanks again

Nick

Hi all - I'm quoting a FS7300 for a customer for a December PO and they have come back asking what support statements IBM provide on the number of years support they should receive.  I recall some time ago, IBM Storage used to give a guarantee of 7 years' support but I'm not able to find that statement on the IBM page any longer.  Does anybody have anything formal that you could provide?

Thanks again

Nick

Hi Nick,

Not sure I understood the issue but you can quote your customer up to 6 years of upfront Expert Care. It is also possible to provide a quote for more than 6 years upfront but that is a TLS offering and usually takes longer to quote.

If your question is regarding how long the the box will be supported by IBM you can reassure your customer that IBM tends to support their machines for some time after they have been withdrawn. I encourage you to read this recent statement regarding IBM's transition from "EOS - End of Service" to  "Change of Support Level" model. What this will mean is that it will be possible to maintain these systems for longer. Change of service support level and select service withdrawals: Declaration of plan to change maintenance service levels for select machines - Some new technology or replacement products available - IBM Documentation. As an example you can see that some older Flashsystems are on this list like the Flashsystem 5100 has a change of service date of  is 31 December 2026. When you consider that it was withdrawn from marketing in September of 2021 it has received 5 more years of updates after being withdrawn.  After this date it can continue to be supported by IBM with remote and break/fix onsite support it will no longer benefit from development of any new machine code updates, patches, or fixes. 

Hope this helps.

Hi all - I'm quoting a FS7300 for a customer for a December PO and they have come back asking what support statements IBM provide on the number of years support they should receive.  I recall some time ago, IBM Storage used to give a guarantee of 7 years' support but I'm not able to find that statement on the IBM page any longer.  Does anybody have anything formal that you could provide?

Thanks again

Nick

Hi all - I'm quoting a FS7300 for a customer for a December PO and they have come back asking what support statements IBM provide on the number of years support they should receive.  I recall some time ago, IBM Storage used to give a guarantee of 7 years' support but I'm not able to find that statement on the IBM page any longer.  Does anybody have anything formal that you could provide?

Thanks again

Nick