If you’re running IBM i 7.4 today, you probably already know that standard support ends September 30, 2026. Well I hope you do, as I have been shouting it from the rooftops for the last 8 months.
What may be a little less clear is what happens if you aren’t ready to upgrade by then. The short answer is that you don’t have to upgrade. IBM offers Service Extension, or what most people would just call extended support, for customers who need to stay on an older release. IBM i 7.4 will have Service Extension available for three years, through September 30, 2029.
What does this look like in $$$?
The part I think customers need to pay closer attention to is the cost. Extended support isn’t simply a continuation of what you’re paying today. It’s an additional charge on top of your normal Software Maintenance (SWMA), and that additional charge increases each year.
Here’s how the pricing works for IBM i 7.4:
| Service Extension Year | Additional Service Extension Cost | Total Cost Including Base SWMA |
|---|---|---|
| Year 1 | 1.5× base SWMA | 2.5× base SWMA |
| Year 2 | 2.0× base SWMA | 3.0× base SWMA |
| Year 3 | 2.5× base SWMA | 3.5× base SWMA |
I think the easiest way to understand this is to put some actual dollars behind it.
Let’s say you’re paying $10,000 per year today for the IBM i software maintenance that would be subject to Service Extension. Once 7.4 moves into extended support, you would continue paying that $10,000, but you would also have the Service Extension charge on top of it.
In the first year, that additional charge would be $15,000, bringing your total to $25,000.
In year two, the additional charge increases to $20,000, bringing the total to $30,000.
By year three, you’re looking at $25,000 for Service Extension on top of your $10,000 in normal SWMA, for a total of $35,000.
If you stayed on IBM i 7.4 for all three years, you’d spend about $90,000 in this example. Without the Service Extension charges, three years at $10,000 per year would have been $30,000.
So you’re talking about an additional $60,000 over three years to stay on 7.4.
Here’s the same math at a few different SWMA amounts:
| Annual Base SWMA | Year 1 Total | Year 2 Total | Year 3 Total | 3-Year Total | Added Cost vs. Normal SWMA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| $5,000 | $12,500 | $15,000 | $17,500 | $45,000 | $30,000 |
| $10,000 | $25,000 | $30,000 | $35,000 | $90,000 | $60,000 |
| $20,000 | $50,000 | $60,000 | $70,000 | $180,000 | $120,000 |
| $25,000 | $62,500 | $75,000 | $87,500 | $225,000 | $150,000 |
These are obviously just examples. Your actual IBM costs are going to depend on your environment, processor group, licensed cores, products under maintenance, contracts and a number of other factors. But the examples give you a pretty good idea of why it’s worth looking at this ahead of time.
If you’re paying $20,000 a year today and staying on 7.4 for three years could potentially add another $120,000 in support costs, that’s a number I would want to know before deciding what to do.
What Are You Getting for the Additional Cost?
Service Extension is still IBM support. You’re not simply paying IBM for permission to continue running 7.4. Actually, that is really the big difference between standard support and having IBM i 7.4 Service Extension.
Here is a breakdown of what you get with just Standard Support and what you get by adding 7.4 Service Extension:
| Base SWMA / Standard Support | IBM i 7.4 Service Extension ADD-ON |
|---|---|
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Here is a good question to ask yourself…
If something breaks or is no longer functioning like it was, for whatever reason, do you want/need an option where you can call IBM and have them help you through a fix or create a custom fix for a new issue that surfaced?
If your answer was YES or your compliance requirements require it, then you need Service Extension.
If you truly believe your 7.4 environment is stable and you’re willing to assume the risk of not being able to call IBM with a problem, then staying with standard support maintains your right to pull down OS images and upgrade to a current and supported version of the OS.
If you need help getting your 7.4 environment upgrades to 7.5 or 7.6, reach out. We can review your situation and put together a plan that will assure your upgrade is successful.
Is Extended Support a Bad Option?
Not necessarily. There are plenty of situations where I would tell a customer that paying for extended support makes sense. Maybe you have a third-party application that isn’t ready for the release you want to move to. Maybe you’ve already got too many projects on the calendar and adding an IBM i upgrade before September just isn’t realistic. Maybe your current Power Server won’t run anything beyond 7.4. In that situation, paying for a year of extended support and giving yourself some breathing room may be the right decision.
What I wouldn’t recommend is paying for extended support year after year simply because there isn’t a plan.
That’s where the numbers can get away from you.
I’ve seen plenty of environments where the operating system upgrade keeps getting pushed because everything is working fine. And I understand why. If the applications are running, backups are good and users aren’t complaining, an OS upgrade doesn’t always make it to the top of the priority list. But once you’re paying two or three times your normal maintenance cost, it becomes a different conversation. You’re eventually going to have to address the upgrade anyway. The question is how much you want to spend before you get there.
Look at it this way. If you are on a P10 processor tier machine with a single core of IBM i and one stand alone IBM i environment, in rough numbers (not exact) you could be paying an additional $12,450 for extended support just for the first year. We could get you upgraded to a current version of the OS for 1/3 of that.
Start With the Math
If you’re on IBM i 7.4, I wouldn’t look at September 30 as a deadline that says you absolutely have to upgrade. I’d look at it as a point where the economics start to change.
Figure out what you’re paying for SWMA today. Find out what Service Extension is actually going to cost for your environment. Then compare that against the cost and effort required to upgrade. If extended support buys you a year to get through an application project or line up a hardware refresh, great. There’s nothing wrong with that.
But if you’re about to spend $30,000, $60,000 or $100,000+ over the next few years just to stay where you are, it’s probably worth having the conversation now.
This is something we’re happy to help customers work through at Relion. We can look at the current Power environment, IBM i release, software maintenance, application dependencies and what you’re trying to accomplish over the next few years.
Sometimes the answer is to upgrade now. Sometimes it’s to use extended support for a while. Sometimes it makes more sense to tie everything into a hardware refresh.
The important thing is knowing what the options actually cost before making the decision.