If you’re running an old HP Server and you haven’t patched the firmware in a while, you might want to do so before 19 February. After that date, HP will block general access to ProLiant updates, making them only available to paying support customers.
The shift in policy was announced in a blog post late last week. “This decision reinforces our goal to provide access to the latest HP firmware, which is valuable intellectual property, for our customers who have chosen to maximize and protect their IT investments,” HP vice president for servers and support Mary McCoy wrote. “We know this is a change from how we’ve done business in the past; however, this aligns with industry best practices and is the right decision for our customers and partners.”
The cynical interpretation would be that HP wants to force more customers to sign up for extended service. That said, if that old server is running OK, you might be happy to avoid firmware updates anyway. The challenge will come if a major update is required for security purposes.
Comments
6 responses to “HP Will Only Provide Server Firmware Updates For Paying Support Customers”
I’ll be with the cynics. I have no issue with this if you know about it when you buy, but changing once people have bought is very poor.
I don’t see any way, shape or form for this to be in the customers interests. If HP are releasing firmware updates, they should be made available to ALL owners of products, not just those who continue to pay HP for support. It costs HP nothing extra to make these available to every customer, it’s simply a way to squeeze more money out of former customers.
Well… looks like they just shot themselves in the foot where non professional customers are concerned, no doubt they will vote with their feet too…! Way to lose legitimate customers stupid… 🙂
Nice one HP. I have a Microserver N40L, and because it’s Proliant-branded it’s included in this. There’s no way home users are going to pay for hefty support contracts… if they have a support package that’s proportional to the cost of the device, maybe. So given that the Microservers are a couple of hundred dollars, $20 a year should cover it…
This was announced weeks ago, not just last week. It’s nothing new either; Cisco, Sun and IBM have done this for years.
4 HP servers here, and a few are nearly due for replacement. If this policy is in place then, I wont be looking at HP products.
HP has a habit of announcing things that’ll increase short term profit, and then back-pedalling when it becomes obvious what a bad idea it is. Remember when they decided to sell off their entire PC division?
Have you bothered to check Carepaq pricing ? I’m an employee and going to buy a 3 year Carepaq for $350 to cover my home ML server, thats CHEAP !..with that I get hardware replaced and access to HP’s ongoing R&D……HP is not a “whitegood” product, if you want cheap then definitely buy from another vendor and may the force be with you…