Yup. And I am NOT a compliance officer. I'll do best effort, but if IBM
wants accuracy, the software needs to handle it. 

And I agree with Dirk ... the curent maintenance/support/licensing
startegy is (and has been since back in the 3.x days) stupid to the
point of incompetence.

Let me propose this, and see how many of you think it's viable:

Server licensing based on the old 2.x model -- 
        1 drive manual
        2 to 4 drive manual or autochanger
        4 to 8 drives, up to 100 slots for tape
        Single library larger than 8 drives or 100 slots
        Additional charge for each additional library

Client licenses -- something around but under $100 per client (any kind
of client) for the backup/archive/api client.

Current pricing model for the TDP products.

Maintenance:
        Server -- 20 percent of list.
        Client -- cost of 1 client license, plus $1 per client licensed.
        TDP products -- 15% of list

The problem I see is this probably won't come anywhere near close to the
revenue stream IBM/Tivoli is trying to get from the product.

OTOH, I can count the number of support calls I've made for TSM issues
since 1997 on the fingers of my hands -- and have a couple of fingers
left . . . 

And I can flat-out guarantee that I won't be able to fill out this kind
of survey next year on the new pricing model -- I won't have access to
the information.

Tom Kauffman
NIBCO, Inc

-----Original Message-----
From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU] On Behalf Of
Richard Sims
Sent: Wednesday, May 23, 2007 7:02 AM
To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
Subject: Re: Question for you

On May 22, 2007, at 5:51 PM, Schneider, John wrote:

>       Is IBM listening, I hope?  IBM's licensing strategy should be
> greatly simplified, or based on something that the TSM client itself
> could track and report.

It absolutely should!
Here is a major technology company, telling its customers to go
conduct a manual audit of hundreds of client systems throughout every
customer establishment, as though it's 1975 again.  For a company
doing things like Autonomic Computing, this is a *major* failure in
technology deployment, for which IBM should be dragged over the coals
by the management of the victim customer sites being subjected to
this astounding nonsense.

    Richard Sims
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