Software Support Handbook

Software Subscription & Support Coverage

Please consider the following:

• When you renew Software Subscription & Support for a product at a site, you should renew Software Subscription & Support for all copies/licenses of that program at that site, no matter how you acquired those copies, and you must renew Software Subscription & Support for all copies/licenses of that program for which you want technical support. (Note: To be authorized to upgrade you licenses or contact Technical Support with questions or issues, the license must be covered with current Software Subscription & Support.) Where applicable, Software Subscription & Support for both the host and the workstation licenses should be renewed.
• You are entitled to Software Subscription & Support only on the licenses covered.
• If you need technical support coverage or want to install a new version/release on one of the licenses with lapsed Software Subscription & Support coverage, you will need to acquire "Software Subscription & Support Reinstatement". This is the only way you will be able to reinstate your licenses in Software Subscription & Support.
• Support may be accessed by your technical support personnel who may or may not reside at your site depending on the authorization your Site Technical Contact defined for them.

IBM Software Secure Support via U.S. Citizens

IBM Software Secure Support via U.S. Citizens complements the prerequisite IBM Passport Advantage Subscription and Support by providing standard IBM software support exclusively by U.S. citizens who are located in the United States. Data analysis and call data will be contained in an isolated network within a facility that meets U.S. Government security specifications. In this offering:

• IBM provides U.S. Citizen support via telephone, only to your information systems (IS) technical support personnel during the hours of 8 AM Eastern to 8 PM Eastern, Monday through Friday, excluding national or statutory holidays.
• A Service Request will be created and placed in an incoming queue which is managed and handled by a U.S. citizen.
• IBM provides assistance for your 1) routine, short duration installation and usage (how-to) questions; and 2) code-related questions ("Support").
• Information systems (IS) technical support personnel can open an unlimited number of technical support incidents.
• Response time objective of two hours during prime shift for voice problem submissions. .

For more information contact the sales specialist for your region.  There is a corresponding offering for AIX and Storage described in the Support Foundation / Software Maintenance section of Support Portfolio.

(support-only offering for designated IBM no-charge and non-IBM products)

Remote Technical Support

IBM has implemented a tiered approach for the Selected Support offering. On a product by product basis, up to 3 tiers may be made available: IBM Entry Support, IBM Enhanced Support and IBM Elite Support. Support is delivered remotely via IBM's support teams, and includes:

• General usage and installation questions
• Product compatibility and interoperability questions
• Interpretation of product documentation
• Review of diagnostic information to help isolate the cause of a problem
• Basic configuration assistance and samples understanding
• IBM will make available to you Selected Program defect corrections, if any, that it develops. (non-IBM product fixes, if any, are provided by the third party provider)

For all tiers of support, there is no limit to the number of technical support incidents that can be reported through remote assistance.

Remote technical support problems are reported to IBM by phone (not available for IBM Entry Support) or by using the IBM Service Request (SR) tool, located at www.ibm.com/support Refer to the Contacting IBM section of this Handbook for more information.

The Selected Support offerings are purchased via an annual subscription and are available for purchase through Passport Advantage or Passport Advantage Express.

Developer Assistance

IBM Selected Support offerings may also include remote Developer Assistance Incidents. This assistance goes beyond the support provided through traditional remote technical support. Under this feature, developers may receive assistance with finding answers to specific programming questions, best practice usage of the product (i.e., the Application Programming Interface), etc. Developer Assistance Incidents are intended to cover specific and short duration questions. Professional services offerings should be used for questions that are best resolved with an extended program design review.

Developer Assistance Incident coverage includes:

• Expert Development Assistance
• Application Design and Architecture Assistance
• Configuration Assistance
• Performance & Tuning Assistance

Unlike traditional remote technical support where the number of requests is unlimited, the number of Developer Assistance incidents that can be reported to IBM is fixed, determined by the Selected Support offering purchased and varies by supported product. Developer Assistance Incidents are reported to IBM in the same way as general product usage questions or problems: by phone or using the IBM Service Request (SR) tool, located at http://www.ibm.com/software/support. Each time you use one of your Developer Assistance Incidents, your available incident count will be decremented.

To gain maximum benefit from your Developer Assistance Incidents:

• Developer Assistance Incidents must be specifically requested during the initial call or electronic submission for support assistance
• If you access IBM Support via the phone, advise the IBM Representative that Developer Assistance is being requested
• If you access IBM support via SR, ensure that the Developer Assistance Incident component is selected
• Your technical contact should understand that available Developer Assistance Incidents will be decremented by one incident

Designated Programs eligible for Selected Support are listed at: http://www.ibm.com/software/lotus/passportadvantage/paselectedsupportprograms.html.

The following table describes the features of Selected Support in more detail.

*Times listed are for the customer’s time zone. Support is not available on public holidays for IBM Entry Support and IBM Enhanced Support.   Severity 1 support is available on public holidays for Elite Support.

**Response target is IBM's objective to respond to your high severity support request. In some cases the initial response could result in a resolution of your request, or it will form the basis for determining what additional actions are required to achieve technical resolution of your request

***The Technical Contact is the individual designated by the client as the person to contact IBM for support. All communication with IBM related to the IBM Selected Support offering must be performed by the authorized Technical contact. The number of Technical contacts permitted depends on the specific Selected Support offering purchased.

**** The number of Developer Assistance Incidents will vary by supported product. Refer to the announcement letter for the number of Developer Assistant Incidents included. (on a product-by-product basis, IBM Enhanced Support will offer 0, 1, 2, 3 or 5 Developer Assistance Incidents and IBM Elite Support will offer 0, 1, 2, 3, 5 or 10 incidents)

Additional Information

In addition to traditional remote support and Developer assistance, the following online support may also be available.

• Online documentation
• Access to technical articles on IBM Software Support web sites
• Access to technical forums on IBM developerWorks
• Access to relevant IBM DeveloperWorks Newsletters and Articles
• Access to technical webcasts and events
• Professional services offerings (additional charge)

IBM Selected Support Offering Terms

Consistent with the Selected Support tier purchased, IBM will provide support only for the copies of software covered under your agreement.

Independent Software Vendor (ISV), Systems Integrator (SI) or Solution Providers: consistent with the Selected Support tier purchased, IBM will provide support only for the copies of software covered under you agreement during the internal development and maintenance phases of your solutions. You are restricted from contacting IBM with support issues that may arise from your end customers' usage of the product unless you have an OEM contract with IBM.

ETS offers several enhanced priority support capabilities on top of the standard basic support offerings such as HW & SW Maintenance, Support Line, and Passport Advantage.

The following items may be optional or part of ETS, depending on your geography:

• CustomPac: Delivery of customized package of program components to facilitate program installation, program upgrade and application of fixes on System z servers.
• Customized preventive maintenance: The priority support team will provide on a monthly basis reports documenting the analysis of problems occurring on a worldwide basis in the System i, System p and z/OS area, when they may impact your environment, and the information on the program fixes which potentially will avoid these critical problems.
• Performance Management Services: Performance Management services provide you with a set of performance analysis reports, including periodic charts and graphs identifying your system's performance and capacity trends.
• ALERT: The Alert service offering proactively provides you with notification of and information about the most critical and potentially harmful program problems. By using the information provided by Alert, you can save time and avoid lost resources due to system outages. Depending on the platform, Alert provides the information by mail, by fax or electronically using IBMLink or AS/400 Electronic Customer Support (ECS). Alert is a very effective resource for customers who want to take an aggressive, proactive approach to preventing known problems and ensuring system stability.
• On site support for critical SW problems: In the event of a software problem that cannot be analyzed remotely in an effective way, the priority support team may involve an appropriate technical person to your site.
• Availability Manager option: On site assignment of a priority support team member, to provide proactive advices and service status via regular review meetings, building a closer working relationship with clients so that they can get most from their IBM support.
• ETS for Networking: Enhanced support and preventive maintenance on your entire network environment, for Hardware & Software IBM products and major IBM Vendor Partners (such as CISCO, Nokia, Nortel, and CheckPoint).
• GDPS option: Assistance and maintenance for "Geographically Dispersed Parallel Sysplex" IBM solution

For more information on ETS and additional support services visit
EMEA http://www-5.ibm.com/services/europe/maintenance/tech_support.html
US & Canada: http://www-935.ibm.com/services/us/index.wss/offering/its/a1009019

Advanced Support for System i and System p software provides customers with an additional specialized proactive support, enhanced problem management and performance reports, and an assigned Technical Solutions Manager on AIX and i5/OS Operation Systems.

This offering is available in the U.S. and in Europe.

• Appendix A

  Additional support offerings

• Appendix B

  Site Technical Contact information for Passport Advantage

The handbook is also available as a PDF-formatted document. The current version is dated November, 2012.

• Software Support Handbook (1.1MB)
• Get Adobe Reader

The handbook has been translated into the following languages.

• Japanese (HTML)
• French (1.2MB)
• Portuguese (3.1MB)