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Folks, I am sorry for your pain, and I wish I could do more to fix it. Let me see if I can provide some insight that might help.
There is a huge division in IBM between marketing and development. Passport Advantage is owned by marketing and no one in development nor technical support has access to it. Marketing jealously guards all customer information, just as if they were medical records. No one in support or development can find out what you are licensed for, what you paid, what discounts you have gotten, anything like that, unless a market person gives them access or there is a special prior agreement in place. So when we in development send a product to Passport Advantage , it's like throwing it over a wall. We cannot alter what happens after that -- only request that someone on the marketing side of the house make changes when they are required.
The reason those of you who cannot current find or see NetView 7.1.5 in PA is NOT because it doesn't exist or has been withdrawn but because according to the IBM database that PA uses, you aren't licensed for it. What you are licensed for is TEC, and until the current TEC package is updated (and the target date for that is this Friday, November 10) PA will not show you NetView 7.1.5, because it thinks you are not entitled to it. You know better, I know better, but PA does not. To put it another way, this is not like ordering a movie from Amazon.com. You can't just search and click on whatever you want. You can only see what you have been licensed for already. I hope this makes it clear what is going on.
So Jane, Jeff, and Ray, that's why you cannot download NetView 7.1.5 from PA yet, while others can. Their customer records must be showing a separate NetView license while yours does not. But as a technical person I am only guessing about that. I have no access to those records, nor does anyone else in support.
And Ray, that's why opening a PMR did not help. PMR's are for technical issues. The Level 2 guys have no direct access to marketing records either, and they never have. I was an IBM customer for nine years before joining the company, and back in the day, even before there was a Support Center, way back in 1979, when everything was done by phone and through SE's, you could not get a marketing issue resolved by calling technical support. They would just tell you that you had to speak to your marketing representative. And that's why Level 2 told you that you should talk to the Customer Care folks. They are on the marketing side of the house, while Level 2 is not. Basically, that's the very same answer you would have received almost 30 years ago.
I don't want to start a debate on the quality of IBM support. I only want to point out that there are some kinds of issues which they cannot resolve because the subject is not within their purview. Anyone may hold the opinion that IBM Support has gone downhill in recent years, if they think they have reason to do so, but this incident isn't proof of that. It's only proof that marketing issues take longer to fix than technical ones. The only good news is that this issue is currently being addressed by the right people and should be resolved soon.
Hope this helps,
James Shanks
Level 3 Support for Tivoli NetView for UNIX and Windows
Network Availability Management
Network Management - Development
Tivoli Software, IBM Corp _______________________________________________
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