HP has changed its policy on how it provides firmware updates and server service packs for its entire ProLiant server line effective February 19 – customers will have to pay for these updates.
In a blog post Mary McCoy Vice President, HP Servers – Support, has declared that customers will have to either have a valid warranty or a support agreement or Care Pack Service in order to receive firmware updates for their servers.
McCoy claimed that HP’s decision reinforces company’s goal of providing valuable intellectual property to its “customers who have chosen to maximize and protect their IT investments.”
“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”, said McCoy.
Customers whose systems are already under warranty or a support pack won’t have to pay for the firmware updates and McCoy claims that HP isn’t “trying to force customers into purchasing extended coverage.”
Large business and enterprise customers are normally accustomed to opt for extended coverage and the change isn’t likely to affect them. This change in firmware update policy will hit the low-end and SMB segment the hardest as for a $300 microserver (discounted price at multiple online retailers) these users will have to pay anywhere between $120 and $200 for an HP Care Pack that entitles them to firmware updates. This averages out at half the cost of the hardware, which may be a lot for many customers.
One thing that Ed Bott rightly points out in his coverage on ZDNet is that dubbing this policy change as an alignment “with industry best practices” is inaccurate. Dell for example doesn’t charge its customers for BIOS and software updates and IBM also has “entitlement validation” only for a select few software products and updates.
