IBM/COGNOS Pain

[rfielden]

In general, is anyone else feeling the pain of dealing with IBM/COGNOS folks related to their support of TM1 and its future? We are having one hell of a time getting an answer what new development and enhancements we will be getting for our annual maintenance fee, especially in the area of TM1 Web and EV. How are other Applix customers feeling about this whole thing?

[rfielden]

How about no need to convert licenses as IBM stands behind the Legacy Product TM1 as a stand alone tool that they plan to continue to support with a skeletal staffed help desk in return for your support dollars.

Support Dollars for a Cognos Customer = TM1
Support Dollars for a TM1 Customer = Null

[Eric]

Support.... This board was created because support was lacking since Applix left... Some say it is getting better.
TM1... They say IBM is moving to have the TM1 engine be the backbone of a lot of their BI products
Web... No future development, it is pretty much dead and they want people to move to EV.
EV....I have heard no news on development, but that doesn't mean much. I expect EV to leave and IBM to use another one of their products to replace it in 3-5 yrs

[George Regateiro]

As a TM1 customer who does not own Cognos the silence I have received to these type of questions says alot to me. The last time our account rep came down the standard answer was we are working to better merge TM1 with the Cognos offerings. I kept trying to prod on a whole host of questions and issues (many of them are repeated on this forum) and some how every answer went back to better merging with the Cognos tools.

From a business perspective it appears the IBM does not really value TM1 as a standalone product. Though it appears it will remain standalone for the foreseeable future it seems like the real value to IBM is in bundling TM1 into anything they can.

From a support perspective I beleive that they have gotten a little quicker, but that just means they are quick to tell me that the fix is planned for an upcoming release.

[John Hobson]

that just means they are quick to tell me that the fix is planned for an upcoming release.

Well that's still an improvement on Applix slapping "transferred to engineering" on every bug you raised, then sneakily changing the status to "waiting for customer" when you'd got bored with checking it, and then closing it due to "lack of action".

That one used to really hack me off.

I no longer have access to the support site so can anyone tell me if prisoner #198564 "Undo Spread" is still alive or has he been quietly executed in the prison yard?

[David Usherwood]

Looks like he tunnelled through the wall and escaped - it's in the next release!

[Alan Kirk]

In general, is anyone else feeling the pain of dealing with IBM/COGNOS folks related to their support of TM1 and its future? We are having one hell of a time getting an answer what new development and enhancements we will be getting for our annual maintenance fee, especially in the area of TM1 Web and EV. How are other Applix customers feeling about this whole thing?

Oh I hear you, but in that regard it's really not much worse than Applix was; it just comes back to bad communication policies. You'd occasionally get roadmap glimpses from user conferences, or on the odd occasion that someone from Applix would provide some information in the Forum (from one of the two Applixians who turned up there on a semi-regular basis)... but overall you never knew what fixes or features were coming up unless someone heard from someone inside Applix, and shared that on the Forum.

That policy continues as you can see from David's posing about undo spread being in 9.5; find me an IBM Web Page (hmm, actually I could finish that sentence there and be on safe ground, but let's continue), find me an IBM Web page which gives an outline of the features and bug fixes coming up in 9.5. My bet is that there isn't one, just as there never was for Applix.

Support Dollars for a Cognos Customer = TM1
Support Dollars for a TM1 Customer = Null

I think you made a typo there. It's actually

Support Dollars for a TM1 Customer = IBM sales staff trying to convince you to upgrade to 64 bit and/or a Cognos BI front end for some ridiculously huge buckets of money, and not providing fixes on a supposedly supported version (9.0) and instead telling you to upgrade to versions which are so absurdly memory hungry (9.1 onwards) that it makes continuing on 32 bit all but impossible thereby bringing you full circle to the huge buckets of money option".

Actually upon reflection, I think yours is more succinct...

Support.... This board was created because support was lacking since Applix left...

That and the fact that the Cognos Communities site was as slow as treacle running down the side of a glacier, exposed all of your personal details to the world (while it took them an eternity to give a stuff about doing anything about that), and was prone to censorship. I suspect (with cause) that this thread, for example, would not have lived long there.

Some say it is getting better.

"Better" is a relative term. I would say "faster" to at least get an acknowledgement anyway. However it's worth bearing in mind that it's now what, 3 weeks since I submitted the query about whether they changed the behaviour of SubNm with public subsets in 9.4.1 FP2. I mean seriously, 3 weeks???
The answer has to be one of:
- "Yes, we did that on purpose, sorry we didn't tell you, we'll update the release notes."
- "Ooops. Er, yeah. Sorry, we'll fix that in FP3 and make a note of it on our Web page which contains upcoming fixes and improvements. Oh wait, we don't have one of those." or
- "We can't replicate that, can you send us the dimensions etc involved."

How hard is that? Instead it's "off in engineering-land somewhere".

TM1... They say IBM is moving to have the TM1 engine be the backbone of a lot of their BI products
Web... No future development, it is pretty much dead and they want people to move to EV.

With due respect to Marge Gunderson, "I'm not sure I agree with you a hundred percent on your police work, there, Eric." I haven't seen any great evidence that they're trying to push people into EV. Sure, when you bitch enough about Web's limitations the response is often "You should try EV!" but I think that's mainly because they know that it's going to take the user a while to get up to speed with EV and discover its own shortcomings, and it'll at least just shut 'em up for the duration.

I think that the real push is to get TM1 users into Cognos BI rather than EV, of which Cognos Express is stage 1 of the fiendish plan.

They've promised at least one bug fix for Web in 9.5 but I think you're right in your assessment; I doubt that the full weight of IBM resources will be thrown into Web to make it what it should be.

Nor even a slice of that weight.

EV....I have heard no news on development, but that doesn't mean much. I expect EV to leave and IBM to use another one of their products to replace it in 3-5 yrs

I doubt it'll leave; it's a sunken cost. But I don't doubt that its carcass will be stripped to the bone and the nutritious parts (such as they are) will be Borged into Cognos BI.

As a TM1 customer who does not own Cognos the silence I have received to these type of questions says alot to me. The last time our account rep came down the standard answer was we are working to better merge TM1 with the Cognos offerings. I kept trying to prod on a whole host of questions and issues (many of them are repeated on this forum) and some how every answer went back to better merging with the Cognos tools.

It depends on who the rep is. If it's an ex-Applix person then it's a bit of a worry, but I'd have to say that in my experience the Applix sales staff still often don't know the product as well as you might expect them to. Their skill is sales rather than software, and getting you to buy Cognos is where their commissions are if they can persuade you to part with the aforementioned buckets of money. If it's an ex-Cognos person, then they probably barely know TM1 at all and are doing that to get the discussion back to a subject where they'll be able to avoid embarrassing themselves. (In addition to the buckets of money / commission motivation, of course.) If it's someone who was originally from neither Applix nor Cognos, chances are that they're doing it because the level of their TM1 product knowledge is about the same as that of my pencil and they're just chanting from the company mantra book. ("Cognos + TM1, Cognos + TM1...") Oh yeah, and the buckets of money thing.

From a business perspective it appears the IBM does not really value TM1 as a standalone product. Though it appears it will remain standalone for the foreseeable future it seems like the real value to IBM is in bundling TM1 into anything they can.

The nail, I believe that you have hit it quite firmly on the head.

that just means they are quick to tell me that the fix is planned for an upcoming release.

Well that's still an improvement on Applix slapping "transferred to engineering" on every bug you raised, then sneakily changing the status to "waiting for customer" when you'd got bored with checking it, and then closing it due to "lack of action".

That one used to really hack me off.

Not as much as being lied to about the ElIsAnc worksheet function hacked me off. (Yes, I know that that post should probably have been in "enhancements" rather than "bugs" but to my mind (a) Failing to deliver on a promised feature is a "bug", and if it's not then (b) Failure to make the user interface consistent across all methodologies (same function names with same arguments (as far as is possible) across Excel, TI, Web, API) is certainly a bug.)

[Alan Kirk]

I don't frappin' believe this. Since I made my post this morning I got a further e-mail about the ElIsAnc worksheet function, and more precisely the correct procedure for making an enhancement request. Read and weep:

The customer needs to follow up with his account manager to provide business reasons for Product management and discuss situation to clarify if and when an ER can be implemented. For any new release the customer can see the implemented enhancement in 'New Features List' come with the product.

I know that Applix's apparent "planning on the back of an envelope" approach (which is presumably how we ended up with ridiculous situations like "SubSiz" vs "SubsetGetSize") could be frustrating on occasion, but cheezes... compared to hidebound, blue pin-striped, buttoned down, red-tape infested, tie-wearing bureaucracy, I think I prefer the cowboy approach. Especially when you're expected to put it through your account manager who is a salesperson, not a gorram system admin / user (and therefore unlikely to be able to parse the issues involved) as per my comments this morning!

Carl H. Sagan on a popsicle stick, what would you like Big Blue? How about I do a time and motion study to present to your salesperson and hope that they'll be able to see why it would be a good idea to ADD A NAFFING PIECE OF THE INTERFACE THAT IS BLATANTLY AND OBVIOUSLY MISSING, WOULD THAT WORK FOR YOU????

Maybe I'll dress it up with about 50 charts with corresponding tables, put them on a Websheet, then publish it. Should only take them a week to load it. Just as a further act of b*****dary, I might stick it in a .pdf, load that into an application, and then put a link to it on the web sheet (which will of course go nowhere because they left out that functionality too). That should have 'em chasing their tails in frustration for the better part of a week.

Sorry, what were we discussing in this thread?

Oh yeah, that's right, I remember now.

Good call Rick, good call.

[John Hobson]

[Steve Rowe]

hahahahaha nice one John! A "I pity the fool" would have been good to squeeze in too!

On the support/development issue, I agree it's a bit of mystery what the plan for TM1 is. In the UK at least we used to get at least one conference a year where the road map was laid out, I think these still happen, though I don't remember going to one for a while.

My big concern with the state of the current releases of TM1 at the moment is that the basic engine seems to be (IMO) partially broken and that in trying to move towards multi-threading they have thrown the baby out with the bath water. Here I'm talking about the memory spike that Alan mentions and the worsening performance of "old" style multi cube ruled designs. If IBM regard 9.4 as their base line system then they won't see the need for improvement and the dev time/money will be spent on bells and whistles (named hierarchies, undo spread (sorry John), integration with Cognos) instead of getting the basic engine working more effectively.

As a side thought is there anything in the legals of the maintenance contract that means the money paid to IBM most be spent on TM1? Obviously not a problem when it was Applix since they only had 1 product but with IBM the money could just disappear and be spent on anything. Mind you getting to pay your maintenace seems to be a challenge in itself, I'm not sure myself if we have had to sign new maintenace contracts following the move to IBM.
Cheers,

[Alan Kirk]

I'll post a proper response when I stop peeing myself laughing.

But I have to agree with Steve; a ", fool!" at the end of that would have not only been appropriate, but said in a deep and heartfelt fashion.

[Jeroen Eynikel]

Hrm, I am not so doom and gloom as most posters here apparently are.

From what I can see in my country TM1 really is a huge focus for Cognos. I.e. the sales team makes an evaluation which product is most suited for the job (planning or TM1), and most of the time TM1 wins. (Reason: problems planning has with large datavolumes)

There are things that are seriously disturbing like the inability to get any new versions from the IBM website in a straightforward way, or the fact that there is little information on the roadmap.( As far as I know one of the main features of 9.5 will be workflow as in cognos planning. Which basically means that TM1 will probably be the choice for 90% of their sales as the only really big advantage planning has over TM1 is that it has a decent workflow mechanism.) but a giant corporation like IBM moves slowly.. you just have to accept that.

And let us be honest: Applix support or roadmaps was always more a question of knowing the right people. If you had to deal with unknown helpdesk person X it was a nightmare as well.

[Steve Rowe]

Never has such a serious thread got so badly side tracked by something so silly, but I couldn't help myself.

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[dkleist]

From what I can see in my country TM1 really is a huge focus for Cognos. I.e. the sales team makes an evaluation which product is most suited for the job (planning or TM1), and most of the time TM1 wins. (Reason: problems planning has with large datavolumes)

There are things that are seriously disturbing like the inability to get any new versions from the IBM website in a straightforward way, or the fact that there is little information on the roadmap.( As far as I know one of the main features of 9.5 will be workflow as in cognos planning. Which basically means that TM1 will probably be the choice for 90% of their sales as the only really big advantage planning has over TM1 is that it has a decent workflow mechanism.) but a giant corporation like IBM moves slowly.. you just have to accept that.

In my country, the sales reps are not allowed to sell Planning, only TM1.
Off-hand, the other big Planning advantage is the ability to easily have 1000s of users, but neither here nor there

IBM will do what benefits IBM (e.g., shoddy support, new features to promote marketing over stability, website) and IBM is mostly IBM Global Business Services. The products will go in the direction that will have the most benefit to the GBS side of the business. 'Tis folly to hope for anything else.

(If you want history on how well IBM does with commercial software, you may want to consider Lotus Notes as an example)

[bihints.com]

As a side thought is there anything in the legals of the maintenance contract that means the money paid to IBM most be spent on TM1? Obviously not a problem when it was Applix since they only had 1 product but with IBM the money could just disappear and be spent on anything. Mind you getting to pay your maintenance seems to be a challenge in itself, I'm not sure myself if we have had to sign new maintenance contracts following the move to IBM.
Cheers,

And that is for the privilege to be forced to upgrade to 9.4. We are still on 9.0.3, so we have to skip directly to 9.4, as 9.0 support ends in December 2009 and 9.1 support ends in December 2010.
Moving to 9.1 would just land us in the current situation where we fork a load of cash to be told to upgrade to a newer version as 9.1 probably won't get anymore fixpacks next year.

[Jeroen Eynikel]

As a side thought is there anything in the legals of the maintenance contract that means the money paid to IBM most be spent on TM1? Obviously not a problem when it was Applix since they only had 1 product but with IBM the money could just disappear and be spent on anything. Mind you getting to pay your maintenance seems to be a challenge in itself, I'm not sure myself if we have had to sign new maintenance contracts following the move to IBM.
Cheers,

We recently received the yearly quote for support fees, these increased by 26.50% vs last year, without any additional products or licenses.
And that is for the privilege to be forced to upgrade to 9.4. We are still on 9.0.3, so we have to skip directly to 9.4, as 9.0 support ends in December 2009 and 9.1 support ends in December 2010.
Moving to 9.1 would just land us in the current situation where we fork a load of cash to be told to upgrade to a newer version as 9.1 probably won't get anymore fixpacks next year.

So is it just us, or are you seeing a similar hike in the yearly support fees?

Not that bad, but still. 10% year on year increase in maintenance seems to be the standard over here. A lower maintenance increase is possible in some specific cases though, but far from guaranteed. Lowest I have seen so far was 5% year on year increase but that was the exception rather than the rule. (i.e. they really really wanted to get the deal and the client made a very big issue of the standard 10% increase (i.e. dealbreaker)).

Btw: it will be interesting to see how IBM deals with licensing agreements that date back from the applix period. Over here my previous employer was the exclusive distributor for TM1. They paid Applix a lump sum and could then sell the software as they wanted. I.e. there are a lot of deals made over here that do not fit at all in the new licensing model, they didn't even fit the old applix model.

[Jeroen Eynikel]

We are still on 9.0.3, so we have to skip directly to 9.4, as 9.0 support ends in December 2009 and 9.1 support ends in December 2010.

I never upgrade because a version is out of support. I only upgrade if there is a must have feature / a critical bug or other reasons (for instance windows 2007 support). Why would you upgrade just because it isn't officially supported anymore?

[Steve Rowe]

I think we are getting a bit sidetracked on Cognos Planning vs TM1from a sales point of view, a different topic to the maintenance cost of TM1 and it's ROI. If they are able to sell lots of TM1 then it must already be perfect right, or maybe it's an indication of the gap (in some directions) between Cognos Planning and TM1.

I think a 26% jump in maintenance is a huge leap unless this is the second year of purchase and you were getting discounted in the first year from the deal you made when you purchased. I'm pretty sure that ours did not go up by that much BUT I don't believe it's been fully invoiced yet. I'm sure if it was increased that much then it would be commented upon by the powers that be. If I had to write a business case for paying the maintenance invoice given the possible future benefits of development, how they apply to our application of TM1 and the level of support that is recieved, well I'm not sure where I would start....

The decision of how and if to upgrade is pretty challenging at the moment to say the least.

Also just to caution anyone posting on this thread, consider that there is probably something in your contracts with Applix / Cognos / IBM that puts a restriction on you discussing the commercial aspect of your relationship with them, so please don't put anything too detailed up here. No idea if any of the contracts with Applix are still in force since Applix does not exists any more....Anyway take care I'm sure Martin and the rest of the admins don't want to have to deal with the IBM legal team!

I never upgrade because a version is out of support. I only upgrade if there is a must have feature / a critical bug or other reasons (for instance windows 2007 support). Why would you upgrade just because it isn't officially supported anymore?

Two reasons, IT policy and IBM not being obliged to help you with any issues. IT policy is often a big driver for this.
Cheers

[George Regateiro]

Two reasons, IT policy and IBM not being obliged to help you with any issues. IT policy is often a big driver for this.

For my company it takes an approval from the pope to run any version of software that is no longer supported. No matter how insignificant the software or minimal the risk, you have to prove that there is no other supported alternative before you can run any software that is not actively under support. That is why we bit the bullet on 9.4 when we had the time to upgrade this year rather then next. Even if the upgrade required a rewrite of our model for me it is not a question of if but when.

[Jeroen Eynikel]

Steve - you are right about legal aspects but I do not think we need to worry about this.

Afaik the prices are way more standardized than they used to be before. I.e. I have seen price quotes from different partners in different countries that matched eachother to the euro and I am certain that these people did not talk to one another. As such I was pretty surprised by a 26.5% maintenance increase year on year.