There’s that old saying about ‘death and taxes’, most famously uttered (but not for the first time) by Benjamin Franklin in 1789: “In this world, nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”
I would propose a newer version of that statement today could read: “In this world, nothing can be said to be certain except death, taxes, and that my software company will continue to obsolesce what I’m using with confounding regularity.”
It’s a reality of the times we live in.   Software, including subsystems and middleware, like databases, web application environments, and the like are updated with sometimes annoying, and costly regularity.
This creates never ending challenges around support, as the upgrade cycle is one driven as much by internal corporate needs, as the requirement to stay compatible with systems run by, and hosted on partner firms your company needs to deal with.
Granted, cloud based solutions, and middleware ‘disintermediation’ tools like WebSphere MQ and the WebSphere Message Broker can mitigate some of this pain, but in the end, we are all forced to build in upgrade plans and policies (when, and IF to upgrade, how far back leveled is acceptable, etc) when architecting our application environments.
Inevitably, some portion of our application infrastructure is going to fall behind.  Oftentimes, it is our java workload, or specific java applications that are just going to take too long to upgrade (testing time, qa time, etc) before our web application server environment can be upgraded, forcing us to look at going off support, or paying IBM, or another vendor exorbitant fees for ‘premium’ back level support.
Do you pay these fees, or risk incurring the wrath of some corporate compliance officer and go off support?
For years, TxMQ has offered a solution to this costly and challenging proposition.  TxMQ has a managed service offering called RPM, or Remote Problem Management.  It is a solution allowing you to safely utilize us for back level support, as an alternative to costly premium support from software companies when you simply can’t make the upgrade timeline they are forcing you into.
Our teams of SME’s are available 24×7 for phone based, North American based support of all your application environments, including production and non production systems.  Pricing is flexible, and based on the environments to be covered (yes, we can carve out coverage to certain environments, or all environments), as well as the size of your environment.
Get in touch with us for a no obligation discussion of options available, and we’ll be happy to provide you with a quote that will have your compliance teams thanking you, and your finance teams, singing your praises.
– From Chuck’s Desk