Immediate or Extended Entitlement to Migrate from Rules for .NET to WebSphere Operational Decision Management

Content

WebSphere Operation Decision Management V8.0 announcement:

• WODM V8 announcement letter

WebSphere ILOG Rules for .NET withdrawal of marketing and support announcement:

• .NET withdrawal announcement

IBM plans to protect customers' past investments in IBM WebSphere ILOG .NET software. While WebSphere ODM V8.0 does not offer a full replacement for functionality supported in WebSphere ILOG JRules for .NET, it does offer enhanced .NET execution and provides migration tools to help Rules for .NET customers migrate to WebSphere ODM in 2012. With these product enhancements and tools, customers are able to preserve their rule assets and their investment in the product, and are able to benefit from the more comprehensive feature set of our Operational Decision Management platform (Testing & Simulation, Business Event Processing, enhanced capabilities for Business users, etc.).

Rules for .NET customers are eligible to entitlement to the corresponding WebSphere ODM product (WebSphere Decision Server for Rules), at their convenience, upon request. Given the task to shift from .NET to Java, IBM does not expect current customers to migrate immediately so to facilitate the extended migration period some customers may also elect the complimentary "extended entitlement" to the replacement product until they fully migrate from their original entitled product. Of course, customers can always decide to take advantage of the entitlement options immediately if that is desired.

Extended entitlement helps customers get access to and support for both their currently entitled product and the newly entitled product, while paying support and subscription fees only for one of the products (runtime and tooling) until one of the following occurs, whichever comes first:

• A customer completes migration to newly entitled product and converts all current entitlements to the new products; or
• A customer reaches the end of support for their currently entitled product(s). At this point, a customer must renew to the newly entitled products as well as purchase a support extension contract, if desired, to continue receiving support for their currently entitled products.

Customers do not have to activate extended entitlement immediately. The authorization to extended entitlement will remain in effect until the currently entitled eligible products reach their respective "end of support" dates (see withdrawal announcement).

A list of eligible products and their equivalent entitlement are defined in the Entitlement Mappings sections below.

These products are eligible for extended entitlement which can be used to cover the migration of current deployments to the new product. These extended entitlements are not to be used for new deployments or to provide additional capacity for current deployments.

How to Activate Immediate or Extended Entitlement for Multiplatform Products
Effective April 24, 2012, customers with active subscription and support to the eligible multiplatform products (see Entitlement Mappings section below) can activate immediate or extended entitlement to the newly entitled products.

After activation of extended entitlement for multiplatform product, customers get access to and support for both their currently entitled product and the newly entitled product while continuing to maintain active subscription to their currently entitled product. At renewal, customers may opt to convert all, some, or none of their entitlements for the current product to the new entitlement. For converted entitlements, customers pay maintenance for the newly entitled product.

The process for customers to activate entitlement is as follows:

• Have available the company information, the applicable currently entitled eligible WebSphere Product with subscription ID's (see Entitlement Mappings section below), and number of licenses.
• Decide if you want to immediately convert your entitlements or if you want to leverage the extended entitlement options.

Work with your WebSphere sales and S&S renewal representatives to submit a request by filling out the ‘EntitlementExchange’ and ‘ExtendedEntitlement’ forms (available in EntitlementExchangeRequestForms.XLS file).
Once the customer’s request is reviewed and submitted, the entitlement request will be processed as quickly as possible. Then the customer will be notified that they have access to the newly entitled products and will be able to obtain the product code from their Passport Advantage download web site. Customers who require physical media can order media packs for these newly entitled products starting June 22, 2012.

Dual entitlement can be requested for the period of time up until the next renewal. An extension can be requested if the migration is not finished at that point.

Support and subscription records for the currently entitled products need to be canceled explicitly when migration is complete, unless the End-of-Service (EOS) date has already been reached. Submit the ‘Terminate Support’ form (available in EntitlementExchangeRequestForms.XLS file)
to request cancellation of dual entitlement. Otherwise, when the requested dual, extended time period has expired and if neither the EOS date has been reached nor a “migration complete” notice has been given to IBM, then regular support and subscription for the currently entitled products will apply again.

Entitlement Mappings
The following is a list of eligible products and their equivalent entitlement products under the extended entitlement program:

Entitlement Exchange Request Forms:

EntitlementExchangeRequestForms.xls