IBM renewal coming up? Time for action!

Since your active IBM Subscription & Support (S&S) may expire at the end of 2020, now is the time to act and start preparing right away. Careful planning and thorough preparation will probably save you significant expenses on a yearly basis.

In many cases however, organisations plan their renewal activities too late, which means they are forced to renew the same numbers and products as valid for the current year. This way a renewal might be unnecessarily expensive and for some products even unnecessary at all.

Prepare your upcoming IBM S&S renewal!

While preparing your upcoming IBM S&S renewal, pay attention to the following topics:

1. Consider to stop paying for your yearly S&S. Validate whether further S&S is still needed for each product running within a specific environment. Maybe no significant soft- or hardware changes have been made and the environment is already frozen for a (long)period of time. Why continue paying for the yearly S&S for such a environment?;
2. With a break-even period of 2 years, stopping your renewal and re-instating it at a later date for a specific product can be a cost-saving opportunity;
3. The PassPort Advantage (PA) Band discount level for a new term may not be lowered by more than one level below your current PA Band level;
4. Consider Third Party Support (e.g. Origina.com), which may save you a significant amount of money;
5. The IBM yearly S&S price increase on regular products will be much higher than the normal general price index %. Products bought in the past with an additional discount will have a much higher price increase percentagewise, and IBM might try to revoke discounts yo negotiated in the past;
6. The all or nothing clause “If Client elects to continue IBM S&S for an IBM Program at a designated Client Site, Client must maintain IBM S&S for all uses and installations of the IBM Program at that Site”. When you plan to partially renew, compliance verification is needed. “If Client requests to renew expiring IBM S&S Support at a lesser quantity of IBM Program uses and installations than the expiring quantity, Client must provide a report that verifies current IBM Program usage and installation, and may be required to provide other compliance verification information”. We strongly recommend to prepare your partial renewals in time.

For many reasons, you may be able to save a lot on your expenses by planning and preparing an upcoming renewal. A recent case study shows that Softline Solutions has been able to assist a customer in reducing their yearly IBM software expenses by at least 42%.