Passport Advantage (PA)

Passport Advantage is the most flexible and cost-effective way for organizations to aquire new releases of the latest technology and technical support. Passport Advantage is focused on larger enterprises that may have multiple sites.

PA Benefits:

• Better pricing for your volume purchases over time and is based on your Relationship Suggested Volume Price (RSVP) level, which you receive based on your initial purchase of licenses and software maintenance.
• 500 point minimum - RSVP Level D
• Focused on larger enterprises
• Multi-Site, Multi-National
• 12 full months of Software Maintenance with each license
• Prorated renewals to your organizations established anniversary date.
• RSVP is recalculated after every transaction, and improved if applicable
• All sites, all PA transactions aggregate point values

CEO (Complete Enterprise Option) Product Categories

CEO Product Categories are collections of closely associated products, which together, create an enterprise infrastructure solution. These CEO Product Categories are offered on a per user basis and are subject to specific acquisition rules including a minimum initial user quantity requirement (minimum varies by CEO Product Category). CEO Product Category customers must acquire their first (primary) CEO Product Category on an enterprise-wide basis and subject to that category's minimum initial user quantity. CEO Product Customers may then acquire additional (secondary) Product Categories for the same number or less users than the primary category, but subject to each secondary category's minimum initial user quantity.

Pricing includes the usage of all products in the category, with Software Maintenance included. Software Maintenance ensures that customers always have the most up-to-date eligible versions of IBM distributed software—Lotus, WebSphere, Tivoli and DB2 Information Management Software, and have software technical support to ensure their success in using the software.

Passport Advantage Express (PAX)

Passport Advantage Express is designed for single-site, smaller enterprises. This offering combines the full Passport Advantage product list with the simplicity of transaction-based acquisition.

PAX Benefits:

• No relationship agreement required - terms and conditions are transactional
• Customer data registration required before or with first acquisition
• Single price point - Suggested Retail Price (SRP)
• No minimum purchase required, just acquire one license
• 12 full months of Software Maintenance with each license
• Single site program - PAX Site number will be assigned at time of registration
• No proration of transactional Software Maintenance Anniversaries - each transaction has, and keeps, its own Anniversary
• Renew maintenance 12 months from when each purchase is made. If a PAX customer purchases licenses every month of a year, they will also have a renewal every month of a year.

Software Maintenance Features and Benefits:

• Includes a full twelve months of software maintenance with each license.
• Provides comprehensive and flexible upgrade coverage.
• Protects technology investments
• Simplifies and improves software asset management.
• Reduces acquisition and administration costs.
• Streamlines budgeting for software upgrade and migration costs.
• Provides immediate support coverage on newly acquired products during installation phase and for life cycle of product.
• Incorporates flexible, easy-to-access, responsive, cross-platform customer support from IBM, worldwide.
• Provides access to IBM software technical support for all of a customer's designated IT staff.
• Simplifies acquisition and renewal of cross-platform customer support.
• Enhances overall expected response time of two hours or less during normal business hours.
• Provides 24x7 access to support resources for business-critical outages.
• Increases self help via the Internet.

Subscription – ensures that all customers have access to the latest software updates.

• Provides authorization to use all new product releases, versions
• Access to Passport Advantage Software Maintenance download site for immediate product updates as soon as they are available
• Periodic media delivery of new releases/versions

Technical Support – provides normal business hour coverage, 24x7 for business-critical outages (Severity 1).

• Access to IBM software technical support by anyone within customer's IT organization (not end users)
• Customer specifies an individual at each site to manage access authorization to IBM voice support
• Web-accessible registration database to enable IT technical staff to be authorized by the customer for each site (self-service)
• Access to enhanced self-help databases, online (Web, mail) problem submission, etc. 24x7

Volume Licensing Program Comparison Chart