Let me start this off on a slightly off topic note. I don’t come to the forums much anymore. It seems as though since the move the community just isn’t as active. Maybe it’s just me. But I couldn’t think of another place to vent - last time I vented was to a certain BigFix CTO on his blog and he responded not too kindly.
But let’s get to the point. We are in discussions with IBM for the 1st time since the acquisition, for our renewal of TEM. Let me just say there are not enough adjectives to describe how we feel about IBM at this point. Our worst fears (relayed to a certain CTO) have come true. I won’t go into specifics but will say that IBM raising the pricing 3x what BigFix charged is most likely the last straw.
I’m sure others have experienced this sticker shock but what surprises me is that no one seems to be complaining. Why that really surprises us is that we were assured (ok, we didn’t really believe them but) that this acquisition would speed development and allow BigFix to bring new features to the table at a pace just not feasible when they were standalone.
Well, quite frankly we haven’t seen this happen and quite honestly it seems to have gone the other way. So rather than continue this rant, I’d just like to know, from IBM, what we are getting for 3x the price? And from the community, what are some of the products you are evaluating to replace TEM when your maintenance comes up?
we had the same problem when our renewal came up. additionally we were going through an IBM license audit when they happened to mention the change in licensing. Surprise!
As far as replacements, I hear good things about Altiris but have not used it. Patchlink was terrible but again, havent used it since they became Lumension.
That’s interesting. We’ve had the exact opposite experience. When our renewal came up, I provided the original invoice and IBM matched it. In fact, they quoted lower than our previous BigFix VAR. Absolutely no hassle.
As for support, I feel like they have been more responsive since the acquisition. I’ve opened a number of tickets, and have had excellent tier 1 support, something that was lacking before the acquisition.
So to answer you inquiry, I considered evaluating different products. BigFix/TEM is certainly lacking in some areas. But I was treated very good by the IBM team, and BigFix is working well enough for us. So we decided to stick it out for at least one more year. We’ll see if things stay positive.
Let me just add some thoughts for whatever they are worth:
There are definitely good and bad things about IBM, I could rant on both from my view for many hours.
The pricing questions are always a challenge and I don’t have too much helpful to say here other than we have simplified the different offerings to be “suites” rather than “a la carte” and if you used to only have one or two sites, you might see a change (which is hopefully justified by all the new functionality)… Not sure if this is what happened to you, but I have seen this before…
Since the acquisition, we definitely have been well-resourced (and stably resourced for the most part) and IBM has treated BigFix (including the people, product, and plans for the future) very well.
I think a lot of the lack of activity on the forum is due to the fact that the two top contributors (Jesse and me) don’t regularly get to the forum today… Jesse has moved on to a different role at another company and I have been focusing on the IBM Endpoint Manager for Mobile Devices (which is one of those new resourcing initiatives). Hopefully when the frantic mobile pace dies down, I will try to return to daily responding and in the meantime we will see if we can get more attention from other team members.
Not sure if any of that helps at all, but just wanted to add some thoughts to the thread…
