Re: Upgrade fee for cisam from IRIX 405 to IRIX 5.2

Hi Ray, > I take Jim's comments as valid and worthy Kind of you to say so!! > BUT we have been paying NZ$120 Well I did say that you might not like the cost!! > per month and have received 3 free upgrades to the product through IRIX 3.3 > to IRIX 405. Hence our surprise. The fee of NZ$580 is trivial compared > with the maintenance cost. Communication between our local vendor and > Informix seems to have crashed and with it the original agreement. It's difficult for me to comment directly as New Zealand Informix policies may not be the same as those in the US. But to give you some help it is my understanding that it is Informix's practice normally detailed in their contracts to: 1) Provide upgrades under the maintenance contract for minor and bug fix releases. For example from any N.??.??? to any other N.??.??? Ie. 4.10.UC1 to 4.12.UC1 2) Charge an upgrade fee for any major release. For example from any N.??.??? to any other N+.??.??? Ie. 4.10.UC1 to 5.01.UC1 As for your comment on facilities made available in each release. The new capabilities in a minor or bug fix release are normally very limited in scope. I can't comment for cisam as we don't use the product directly but normally a major release will have major new capabilities which Informix expect to receive an upgrade fee for. For example with the Online engines Informix sells, the jump from 4 to 5 brought Stored Procedures, Triggers and Referential Integrity + a quantity of other more minor facilities. 5 to 6 brings an entirely new threaded engine with Parallel capability and an extensive new archiving and restore capability. Basically after three maintenance upgrades as you changed OS levels you have fallen into the problem that Informix has finally decided not to port the old version to the new OS. They then expect you to pay an upgrade fee to move up. They "presumably" make a judgement call for the cost of porting/manufacturing old versions based on whether they have enough customers on that platform still paying maintenance who are likely to be unwilling to upgrade. This call can sometimes be made by the hardware manufacturer who may be paying Informix to do the ports. >From your point of view you have to weigh the costs of staying where you are with reducing levels of support as the product you have is phased out or upgrading so as to remain in a supportable condition (possibly after negotiating a reduced upgrade fee) or moving to another supplier. It's a shame you don't have a better relationship with your supplier as this info should have come from them. They definitely should be aware of it if NZ uses the standard policies. I hope this has been a useful explanation though it probably doesn't help you that much. This issue is an old problem in any industry and the new technology is no closer to solving it :-)) Cheers - Jim My opinions are my own. They may vary with time but they remain MINE! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Name: Jim Gordon Internet: jgordon@ssf-sys.DHL.COM Company: DHL Systems Inc Phone: (415) 375-5222 Address: 700 Airport Blvd. #300 Fax: (415) 375-5019 Burlingame, CA 94010-1937 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > -- > Ray Martin Unix Administrator/Analyst > Computer Centre, Auckland University > mail address rw.martin@auckland.ac.nz > phone 09 3737599 ext 8948; fax 09 3737425 I need that 6.5% now. >