IBM mainframe customers looking to pick up a good deal from software vendors over the next six weeks should read the small print very carefully.

The fourth financial quarter is traditionally seen as a good time to negotiate favourable deals, with suppliers keen to hit year-end targets.

This year, however, analyst Meta Group warns that users locked into long-term deals could miss out on future pricing benefits to come from IBM's switch to a workload-based pricing model for its z900 (formerly S/390 system).

"S/390 users should be on the lookout for a higher-than-normal ratio of poor enterprise licence agreements [ELA] in Q4 2000. Although most ELA offers will be legitimate attempts to win year-end business, many ELAs will be poor, and all deals should be examined carefully," Meta said in its report Beware 4Q ISV deals.

"It's down to the third-party software suppliers as to how they manage their support for workload-based pricing, and to what detail and level," confirmed Doug Neilson, systems consultant for IBM UK.

While IBM says users will benefit from workload-based pricing as soon as they move over to the new machines, they will in fact have to wait until IBM ships its Licence Manager software sometime next year."It's the same old story; it will take a couple of years for the benefits to filter through," said Julie Williams, chairwoman of user group Guideshare.

First published in Computing