What am I entitled to if I purchase an annual software maintenance contract for OBTAIN?

Software maintenance entitles the site to unlimited free support via telephone or e-mail during normal business hours and entitles the site to free software upgrades.  The software upgrades guarantee that your site will always have the newest most up-to-date software with the latest improvements and new features.

How often does OBTAIN have new software releases?

Approximately every three months there will be a new release of OBTAIN.  In between these releases, if a customer has a specific problem an interim release to resolve that problem would be made available for that customer and any other customer experiencing in the same problem.

When does my OBTAIN software license run out?

OBTAIN is a perpetual license that does not have an expiration.  Furthermore, if you subscribe to software maintenance, your OBTAIN software will be continuously upgraded at no additional cost to you, so that you will always have the benefit of improvements, new features, and enhancements without having to buy a new software license.

Can I "move" an OBTAIN license from one site location to another?

Yes, a site license may be moved from one site to another to accommodate things such as data center moves.  The only requirement, since the license was originally issued for a specific location, is to inform knowledge flow which old location is to be removed and a new location that is to be substituted in its place.

How long has OBTAIN been around, and how many sites are using it?

OBTAIN has been providing users with a tool for planning and documentation information since 1993.  There are hundreds of sites currently using OBTAIN.  The customer base is worldwide with a wide range of users from the very large multisite operations to the more moderate single site data center configuration.

Does OBTAIN support documentation of desktop PCs?

Yes, OBTAIN can support documentation of PCs that are in an office environment to show their location, data connectivity, asset tracking information, etc.

Why does OBTAIN have so many data fields and do I need to use them?

OBTAIN contains a large number of data fields to accommodate different customers requirements.  Most of the fields in the OBTAIN software were added at the request of a customer.  The majority of customers use a subset of the fields that are of interest to them and/or required in their IT environment in order to tailor the OBTAIN software for their specific needs.  It should also be noted that many customers found that a field they originally thought they would never need, suddenly became important to have.  So, one way to look at unused fields is as if they are an ‘insurance policy’ to provide for new requirements in the future.

Does OBTAIN record "real" or "Manufacturers" AC power requirements?

OBTAIN provides the user with the ability to record three different power requirements: startup, actual, and Manufacturers (usually the maximum).  OBTAIN provides the user with a choice of recording these values in kVA or kilowatts.

Is OBTAIN symbol based and if I need a new symbol, how long does it take for the factory to generate one?

OBTAIN is not symbol based, instead of symbols it uses device models.  OBTAIN provides a free library of device models with the software.  If the user should encounter a device that does not have an existing OBTAIN model, OBTAIN provides all the tools necessary for the user to make a model.  The process to make a new model is quite simple and can be completed in a few minutes without any help from the factory.

What is the difference between a Visio drawing and an OBTAIN drawing?

The difference between Visio and OBTAIN is not in the drawing itself, but rather in the way to drawing is created. 
Visio is very much like a CAD package where the user operates the software as a sort of an "electronic blackboard" with the added feature of the copy/paste with an available library of drawings and symbols that were previously made by someone else.  With Visio, everything on the drawing was created by hand or copied.  If you wanted to make rack diagrams of a hundred racks each containing 10 servers, you would have to do each one by hand (hopefully using copy as much as possible).  If each device in the rack is to have its serial number on it, this is a manual entry process where the information must be entered 1000 times.  If there are any changes, each change must be manually entered.
OBTAIN automatically generates drawings directly from the information about the equipment stored in its database, the user does not have to do any drawing.  If you wanted to make rack diagrams of a hundred racks each containing 10 servers, you tell OBTAIN to generate the drawing.  If there are any changes in the database, the drawings are updated automatically.  Also, you can "point" to either a cabinet or a server in a cabinet on the drawing and drill down to display information stored about that object (Visio can not do this because it has no linkage to a database containing information about the objects).

OBTAIN talks about "tight coupling", what is this?

OBTAIN contains a single repository of information about the data center where each piece of information is linked to all other pieces of information in the database that it has a relationship with.  For instance, a server in the database would have its other relationships linked such as; cabinet, floor location, data cable connections, power strip information, etc.  Because of this coupling, when you are looking at this server, all of these other pieces of information are available to allow the user to "jump" from a device view, to a cabinet view, to a floor view, and so on.  This allows the OBTAIN user to "drill down" as well as "drill up" from where he is at in the information stream.

Does my OBTAIN license allow me to have a backup server?

Yes, the basic OBTAIN software license permits a second copy of OBTAIN to be placed on another server to act as a backup.

Can I add an option later that I did not initially purchase, and how does this affect my database?

You can always add additional options to OBTAIN at any time.  Adding an option will not interfere with anything you have previously entered into your database.  The new option will simply link to what you already have and give you the new fields necessary to enter additional information to utilize the new feature.