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Delivery times from a variety of manufacturers

9. October, 2007

Currently, i’m still waiting for my copy of 5722-QU2, aka Web Query. We’ve ordered it over a month ago, and have received the keys in the meanwhile, but no media. While IBM does theoretically offer media download, it does not do so for 5722-QU2 (Wondering where you can download i5/OS media? IBM ESS).

The fact that i haven’t got any interesting project running right now, and IBM isn’t shipping me new toys i just decided to complain about delivery times. This might not actually be interesting.

When it comes to delivery times, my experience with IBM has always been abysmal. The local swiss distributors (Avnet, TechData, Also) are usually low on stock, don’t have any System i stock (automatically giving you 2-8 weeks, depending on IBM’s mood). Software orders also take ages, especially additional software on new Systems (we usually buy 5722-IP1 for our customers to generate PDF). These software orders usually take 2+ weeks after the system was shipped.

Even System x servers are rather hard to come by. While there are usually a few (less than 5) models on stock, additional parts (like disks, memory) are sometimes out of stock too. Out of stock articles usually take up to three weeks.

The situation is even worse with IBM printers – no stock anywhere, and delivery times are 4+ weeks.

Other manufacturers understand their supply chain even for smaller countries like Switzerland. One of the good examples here is HP. You usually have many servers plus parts available on stock – every reasonable printer model (less than 10k) is also available on stock. Microsoft doesn’t have any problem shipping their licenses (one or two days for electronic licenses), and shipping time for media kits is a simple next business day thing.

Why can’t IBM get their act straight and have their (expensive) stuff available on a simple next business day basis?

It’s hard to sell a customer an IBM printer if you have to tell him that it takes several weeks until he gets it. Most smaller businesses don’t buy maintenance contracts for their printers, and just buy a new one when the old one dies – this doesn’t work when you have 4 weeks of lead time for a simple InfoPrint 1532.

One thing i would be interested in: Is this better in the USA? Or in Germany?

Category: Hardware, POWER, Servers  |  Comment (RSS)  |  Trackback

4 Comments

  1. Ihsan Dogan:

    Does this apply also for spare parts?

    9. October, 2007, 22:01

  2. Lukas Beeler:

    No. Spare parts were never a problem with proper maintenance contracts. This is for new orders.

    9. October, 2007, 22:06

  3. Ihsan Dogan:

    Sun is different in this case. If you order something new, you will get it quickly. But spareparts, even if you have a contract, are in 40% of the cases not delivered in time.

    10. October, 2007, 08:32

  4. System i delivery times left wanting — The iSeries blog:

    [...] Lukas Beeler waits for some wanted software to be delivered, he decided to write about IBM’s poor delivery times, both on the software and hardware side: When it comes to delivery times, my experience with IBM [...]

    10. October, 2007, 16:06

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