Emulator's transfers trigger shopping fees
November 11, 2013
At the IT shop up at Boeing, Enterprise Hosting Services manager Ray Legault reports that he's getting quotes for the transfer of his MPE/iX software licenses to the Stromasys CHARON emulator. At the end of the process, the HP 3000s that have been running at Boeing in Legault's shop will have their ERP software transferred to an Intel-based server -- one which boots up and runs the 3000's OS and all subsystems.
HP's end of the process is well-defined and costs $432. The Software License Transfer request form requires information including
• Current License Owner details
• New License Owner details
• Proof of Ownership (SAID)
• List of Licenses to be transferred
• SLT fee payment information
• Current Owner signature relinquishing ownership
HP also requires the 3000 owner to sign their own SLT form, as the New License Owner. "Once the full documentation is received, we will aim to process your request within 10 business days," said the confirming email from the SLT operation. In spite of the fact that a 3000 owner already has paid for an MPE/iX license, the fee still applies.
That's the last segment of the process with certain costs for licensing. Legault has been looking into his independent software vendor list to discover what each will charge to run on the emulator.
"I think we are too late in the year to get the hardware needed," Legault told us today. "We may get the software, though." Since Cognos software runs at Boeing, Legault has contacted them about a transfer fee. Cognos, now a division of IBM, said "they wanted to know how many cores we will use," Legault added.
Cognos -- where the director of sales is Charlie Maloney -- might care about is how many HP 3000 CPUs are being emulated. The PowerHouse user license is totally independent of the machine it's running on. Maloney has offered to help out any user who is having problems getting pricing from their local [IBM] reps. There are supposed to be relatively new licensing options, which not all IBM reps might know about.
While one other vendor has already hit the highest mark for transfer fee demands, Legault added that Robelle and RAC Consulting (makers of ESPUL) "will charge zero, for being a long time customer." Maintaining relations with reasonable companies -- which might involve keeping up support contracts -- will earn a customer that kind of consideration.