IT Jungle: Planning to Stay on i5/OS V5R4 Past September 2013 and Rely on Extended Support? It’ll Cost Ya

Every time IBM cancels support for an operating system, it usually offers extended support for customers who can’t move to the new OS by the end of support date. Extended Support is a service extension on IBM support for customers on unsupported operating systems. For a price, IBM will usually cover usage support (no PTFs for new issues) on an extended basis past the operating system’s end of life.

IBM is already offering Extended Support for customers still using i5/OS V5R3 and it is assumed that it’s also going to offered Extended Support for V5R4 customers past September 30, 2013, although it hasn’t been announced yet.

But it’s going to cost ya.

In an article on the Abacus’s IBM i test drive service, Timothy Prickett-Morgan dropped this piece of info about IBM’s V5R4 Extended Support program.

IBM told The Four Hundred that the extended support option for V5R4 would probably cost on the order of 1.7 times the cost of standard support for that release, so if you are thinking of stretching your use of that venerable release, you really need to start taking a look at IBM i 7.1.

So it’s look like IBM has dropped a big hint about staying on V5R4 past September 30, 2013: move to i 6.1 or i 7.1 or be prepared to pay 1.7 times the usual cost of support (or is it i.7 times?) for the privilege.

BTW, this article discusses Abacus’s IBM i test drive service where you can load your libraries to Abacus’s servers, have them create a roadmap for object conversion for you, and then test out your converted object changes on their servers, and even assist with having you apply the changes to your servers. Doesn’t sound like a bad deal at a reasonable price.

To read more about Abacus’s virtual test drive service, read Tim’s article.

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