Passport Advantage, yet again

Folks, Many may remember the Passport Advantage difficulties that Gold Program Informix customers experienced, recently. There were several threads starting about Mar. 8, 2005. (Some had PA in the subject, at least one was about Client SDK 2.90, I think.) The problem was that Gold Bundle customers were not able to access IDS 10 from their PA customer site. IBM admitted in this newsgroup that there were problems. IBM/Informix at first indicated they would not honor their licensing commitments, but, a few days later, then announced they would. As far as our agency is concerned, our license terms are clear: we paid our annual maintenance and are entitled to upgrades (including IDS 10). During the period of the March postings, IBM/Informix explicitly promised that the difficulties with the Passport Advantage site would be resolved, and that IDS 10 would become available to Gold Bundle customers. IDS 10 is still not available on our customer site. The good Informix folk aided our agency by making IDS 10 available via FTP. So, we got the code, and we considered the matter resolved. It is not. The problem is that IBM doesn't know we have (properly, lawfully) installed IDS 10. The result is that when we attempted to access tech support yesterday, we were denied. The Informix engineer said we were not authorized to be running IDS 10 because PA records do not show we have it. He said he had no choice in the matter. Now this becomes a serious issue again. We are cut off from tech support to which we are entitled by virtue of paying IBM our annual $30K. Has any other Gold Bundle customer yet been able to access IDS 10 from their Passport Advantage Customer Site? Are any other Gold Bundle customers being cut-off from tech support? Why is this issue continuing to be a problem? Why won't IBM fix it? Why can't we get the support we are paying for? Are others experiencing the same problem? If not, what did you do to get IBM to honor their committments? We don't really have anyone to turn to. No IBM rep has darkened our doorway for over 3 years. We don't even know to whom to turn for resolution. Dealing with them over the phone, by website, and by email has been absolutely useless. "What we've got here, is failure to communicate." Regards, DG -- David Grove

I just spoke with the helpful folks at IBM/Informix customer service. The engineer that declined tech support was misinterpreting information available to him. Customer service, who saved the day that last time, again has solved the issue. Thank you, IBM/Informix customer support. DG P.S. Of course, current products continue to be absent from our IBM PA site. I despair of PA ever working properly.

I checked into this with some of the folks that work internally on these things at IBM. The issue is like you said, the entitlement for Gold Bundle is only updated every so often. When the new update comes along with the build inside of PPA, it specifies what versions of IDS and DB2 are supported as part of the customer's entitlement. The problem is, as it shows here, that new versions of IDS and DB2 come out from time to time and those new versions are not mentioned specifically in the Gold Bundle's most recent entitlement build. I haven't heard when the next version of the Gold Bundle will be out or if there will be The only way currently known to change this is to change your entitlement to strictly IDS or DB2. Regards, Jack Dotson The Kazer Corporation 888-886-7722 x103 jdotson@kazer.com David E. Grove wrote: > I just spoke with the helpful folks at IBM/Informix customer service. > > The engineer that declined tech support was misinterpreting information > available to him. Customer service, who saved the day that last time, again > has solved the issue. > > Thank you, IBM/Informix customer support. > > DG > > P.S. Of course, current products continue to be absent from our IBM PA > site. I despair of PA ever working properly.

Thank you for the information, Jack. I think I understand (a little) what is (not) happening. But, "why?" I don't think I'll ever figure out. > The issue is like you said, the entitlement for > Gold Bundle is only updated every so often. When the new update comes > along with the build inside of PPA, it specifies what versions of IDS > and DB2 are supported as part of the customer's entitlement. The > problem is, as it shows here, that new versions of IDS and DB2 come out > from time to time and those new versions are not mentioned specifically > in the Gold Bundle's most recent entitlement build. I haven't heard > when the next version of the Gold Bundle will be out or if there will > be In our opinion, this state of affairs is not really acceptable. Especially the apaprent doubt by IBM: " ...or IF there will be." Why can't IBM update the Gold Bundle entitlements when the components which are included in the Gold Bundle change? Sort of sounds like just a matter of referential integrity, no? Just try to imagine a database without it. (I know... the old days.) When IBM solicited us to buy the Gold Bundle, our rep at the time (long since disappeared from IBM) assured us (in fact it was his main pitch) that there was absolutely no downside. We would be getting everything we currently had, PLUS the right, at our option and timeframe, to convert to DB2, should we choose to do so. It is now almost 3 months into the IDS 10 release, and, there is no official Passport Advantage availablility of the product. Informix Customer Support (thank you, Jason) has been of great assistance, but they are, in effect, working against their own larger organization. They charged into the breech, and delivered on the product. But, it would appear that other parts of IBM (specifically PA) can't/don't know that. Talk about an impedance mismatch! > The only way currently known to change this is to change your > entitlement to strictly IDS or DB2. Sort of a de facto abrogation of the Gold Bundle product, no? Thanks again for the info, Jack. DG

The good news: The folks at Informix recognize us as a valid customer, and let us know that they will honor our tech support contract. The bad news: No one can say when the Passport Advantage Customer sites will be fixed. IBM/Informix may officially be a single entity. Nevertheless, Informix folks help us; IBM folks hurt us. DG