A privately held global manufacturing group with operations across the UK, Germany, Poland, and Malaysia had been an IBM customer for 27 years. Their core ERP — a heavily customised BPCS application running on IBM i — processed purchase orders, inventory movements, production scheduling, and customer invoicing for 14 manufacturing sites and a distribution network handling £800M of annual throughput.
The IBM stack extended well beyond IBM i. The group ran Db2 for i as the integrated database, WebSphere Application Server to front a portal layer for supplier self-service and quality management, and IBM MQ for inter-system messaging between IBM i, a legacy SCADA layer, and a newer Microsoft Azure-based analytics platform. All components were supported under IBM Passport Advantage with a consolidated maintenance contract that renewed annually in January.
The relationship had worked adequately for two decades — not because IBM's support was exceptional, but because the IBM i platform's legendary stability meant support was rarely needed. The IBM i system had not required a critical P1 support call in three years. The WebSphere and MQ components generated occasional queries, typically resolved through IBM documentation rather than active support engagement. The £2.1M annual Passport Advantage fee was, as the Group IT Director noted during initial discussions with GoVendorFree, "a tax we paid for the right to not be in a crisis."
IBM's January 2025 renewal notice landed with a 14% price increase on the consolidated PA contract — taking the annual fee from £2.1M to £2.39M. No new services, no enhanced SLAs, no contract changes: a 14% inflation-only uplift applied to a support relationship the IT team characterised as largely self-service. The Group IT Director requested justification from the IBM account team. The response was a 40-minute call in which IBM cited "index-linked price adjustments and continued R&D investment in the IBM i and MQ platforms." No substantive concession was offered. The IT Director escalated to GoVendorFree three days after that call.
The manufacturing group's IBM i dependency was not negotiable. The BPCS application that ran on it had 27 years of customised RPG code encoding the group's production logic, quality control processes, and financial reporting. A migration to any alternative platform — SAP, Oracle, Microsoft — would represent a multi-year, multi-million pound transformation programme. The group had evaluated this twice in the previous decade and concluded that the risk/benefit calculus did not justify it while the platform was stable and delivering value.
The challenge for a TPS transition was therefore not whether to reduce IBM costs, but how to reduce them without creating any risk to the IBM i production environment. The IT Director identified three specific concerns that needed resolving before any TPS decision could be made:
GoVendorFree conducted a 3-week environment assessment that addressed all three concerns before any commercial discussion about TPS terms. The assessment process included:
Complete documentation of IBM i 7.3 and 7.4 installations across POWER9 hardware (2 production LPARs, 2 development/test LPARs, 1 disaster recovery LPAR). Current PTF levels, outstanding Hiper PTFs, Group PTF status, and Applied PTF history reviewed. IBM i licence processor group (P30) and LPP inventory confirmed.
Payroll legal change dependency confirmed for UK (PAYE/NI) and Germany (DATEV payroll tables). GoVendorFree confirmed coverage for both jurisdictions through a combination of statutory update delivery (UK) and a partner relationship for Germany-specific DATEV updates. The statutory update SLA was documented: 48-hour delivery from HMRC/DATEV publication for standard changes; 5-business-day delivery for complex legislative changes. This resolved the IT Director's primary concern about payroll dependency.
GoVendorFree engaged directly with the group's AMS provider to establish the TPS escalation protocol. The AMS provider confirmed that GoVendorFree's TPS coverage was equivalent to IBM's support scope for the escalation scenarios they actually encountered — primarily WebSphere fix pack advisory and MQ channel configuration queries. A formal TPS-AMS escalation path was documented and agreed before contract signature.
TPS scope, pricing, and SLAs agreed. GoVendorFree TPS pricing: £1.01M annually (versus IBM PA at £2.39M post-increase, or £2.1M at pre-increase rate). Transition timeline set at 5 weeks to align with the IBM PA renewal date. IT Director confirmed Board approval of the transition within 72 hours of receiving the GoVendorFree proposal.
The IBM Passport Advantage contract was formally terminated on its January 2025 renewal date. GoVendorFree TPS activated on the same date. The transition involved no production incidents, no service degradation, and no interruption to payroll processing for either the UK or German workforce.
| IBM Component | IBM PA Cost (Pre-Increase) | IBM PA Cost (Proposed) | GoVendorFree TPS Cost | Annual Saving |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| IBM i 7.3 / 7.4 (P30) + LPPs | £1,320,000 | £1,505,000 | £600,000 | £720,000 (55%) |
| Db2 for i (bundled with OS above) | Included | Included | Included | — |
| WebSphere Application Server (P30) | £480,000 | £547,000 | £238,000 | £242,000 (50%) |
| IBM MQ Advanced (cluster licence) | £300,000 | £342,000 | £170,000 | £130,000 (43%) |
| Total annual IBM support | £2,100,000 | £2,394,000 | £1,008,000 | £1,092,000 (52%) |
Six months after the TPS transition, the GoVendorFree IBM i team had applied three cumulative PTF packages and 14 individual security PTFs across the five LPARs. The process was identical to the pre-TPS IBM PA support model: PTF packages downloaded from IBM's Fix Central repository (to which IBM i licence holders retain access independently of support contract status), reviewed by GoVendorFree, tested in the development LPAR, and applied to production during the group's quarterly maintenance windows.
The one instance that generated a P2 support call — a Db2 for i query optimiser anomaly that appeared after a Technology Refresh update on the 7.4 LPAR — was resolved within 90 minutes by GoVendorFree's IBM i specialist team. The resolution involved a known Db2 for i optimizer parameter adjustment that is documented in IBM's support knowledge base and was applied without requiring IBM's direct involvement.
"We'd been paying IBM £2.1M a year for a platform we'd logged three P1 calls on in three years. When IBM came back with a 14% increase, I stopped asking 'can we reduce this?' and started asking 'why are we paying this at all?' GoVendorFree answered every technical question I had before I'd even agreed to a commercial conversation. The payroll legal change dependency was the sticking point — they resolved it in week two. We were live on TPS on our renewal date and I haven't thought about IBM support since."Group IT Director — Global Manufacturing Group (UK/Germany/APAC)
Twelve months into the TPS relationship, the Group IT Director engaged GoVendorFree for a broader IBM estate review. The review identified two further cost reduction opportunities that had not been part of the initial TPS scope:
The combined IBM cost reduction — software TPS, hardware TPS, and licence right-sizing — amounts to £1.37M annually against the pre-GoVendorFree baseline, and £1.67M against IBM's proposed January 2025 renewal terms.
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