IBM Cuts Cord on Old Hardware

If you have old hardware under IBM maintenance, now is a good time to see whether it's on a list of servers IBM will not be supporting after December 2011. Among the hardware being dropped is the Advanced 36 server running SSP, most commonly known as by its model number, 9402-236.

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IBM last week announced it was cutting support for several legacy systems. Customers have a year a half before they are left in a lurch.

At some point in every piece of hardware's life, enough is enough. It long since might not have made any economic sense to keep a piece of gear in use, but it worked and a vendor was willing to support, so even if it probably was expensive to buy the support contract, the vendor made out like a bandit and customers could avoid change and risk, which has its own economic benefits.

Eventually, even the vendor can't make money offering support. There are just too few customers and it takes too much time to scrounge for parts and train someone to maintain some obsolete piece of technology. And so it is with a whole slew of products that are under maintenance support from IBM, including a wide variety of older non-IBM gear that Global Services was perfectly willing all these years to babysit for a fee.

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