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IBM is Pushing Early-Gen Netezza Users to Refresh—Know Your Options
IBM recently announced the End-of-Support (EOS) date for the first three generations of Netezza products as June 30th, 2019. With this announcement, organizations using Skimmer (version N100-1), TwinFin (all N1001 versions), and Striper (all N2001 versions) are being pushed to begin the refresh process for hardware that still provides value. But companies have more options than spending massive amounts of CAPEX to refresh their data storage and analytics environments.
IBM’s latest announcement is indicative of the typical OEM philosophy to force companies into a refresh, even organizations that aren’t ready to make the transition. With mission critical systems and complicated legacy applications still running on IBM Netezza EOS hardware, companies are now faced with an expedited refresh or loss of support.
EOS Shouldn’t Cause Panic
A recent statistic put out by IBM itself indicates that, on average, 70% of a company’s IT budget is spent on IT maintenance. Many organizations currently pay for OEM maintenance based on brand equity alone, but there’s no cause to scramble to plan a technology refresh just because the OEM has declared EOS.
As an IT decision maker, you know how critical downtime is for your infrastructure hardware. You still need expertise readily available to get you back up and running should your early-gen Netezza EOS hardware experience an issue. But that doesn’t mean you need to pull your engineers off of strategic tasks when to handle routine support or find spares. Third-party maintenance enables companies to maintain support on their EOS, EOL, and EOSL equipment, taking back control of their refresh schedule from the OEMs.
Recommended by Gartner for IT cost optimization, third-party maintenance (TPM) offers clients 40-70% off OEM support prices. So, why wait until the EOS date to make the transition from OEM support to TPM?
A Better Way to Maintain Your Netezza Data Warehouse Solution
Whether you only switch your Netezza equipment reaching EOS or your entire infrastructure to TPM, you benefit from the following:
- Cost-Savings
- Increased Flexibility
- Customer Service Excellence
- Global Resources & Service Capability
Third-party maintenance enables you to take back control of your refresh cycle from the OEMs like IBM without sacrificing support quality. Most TPM providers work on the same 24x4x7 SLAs as the OEMs, and companies that make the switch to TPM often see an improvement in SLA delivery time.
We’ve Got You Covered 24x7x365 Worldwide
Identified by Gartner as a top TPM solution provider for cost optimization, CentricsIT is uniquely positioned as one of the only multi-vendor IT hardware and support suppliers with global reach. Our global TPM services support everything from EOS equipment like Netezza’s Skimmer, TwinFin, and Striper to the latest and greatest models just released by OEMs.
At CentricsIT, we don’t offer cookie-cutter maintenance plans. Our SLAs are customized to the client’s unique needs. Our team works closely with yours to identify infrastructure components best suited for TPM, design SLAs that optimize cost without increasing risk, determine where necessary spares will be securely stocked in one of our 155+ global secure stocking locations, and assess whether an onsite engineer is necessary for your environment.
The CentricsIT international network of engineers enables us to deliver world-class support for our clients, no matter where they operate. While we fundamentally operate on the same 24x7x4 model as the OEMs, we define our SLAs to be more client-friendly than the competition. Because we understand how critical your Netezza data warehouse downtime can be, our four-hour response window includes Help Desk ticket submission, call back, and deployment.
Don’t Let an EOS Announcement from Your OEMs Catch You by Surprise
Download this free comprehensive guide to EOL and EOSL best practices and deadlines.
