IBM Cloud to end free human support, suggests customers use enhanced AI instead IBM Cloud will update the services it provides under its Basic Support tier, which will move to a self-service model in January 2026. The Basic Support tier is free to all IBM Cloud customers. Big Blue describes it as “Basic business protection that is included with your IBM Cloud Pay-As-You-Go or Subscription account.” The …
$200 relative to what? "Cloud" pricing is so obscure to those not closely involved in the costing/pricing discussions that I've no way of telling whether that is a lot or a little.
I also wonder what that $200 buys me (or net of margin about $100 a month). Is the existing telephone response promptly answered, knowledgeable, takes ownership, fixes the problem? I'm sceptical.
At a guess, all that's changing is that a load of offshore first-liners in a call centre are being "released to pursue new opportunities", and their indifferent service will now be AIndifferent.
^ This. My experience in general with first line cloud support has been that they are poorly trained, disinterested script-readers. These can easily be replaced with AI that will be just as useless, but a lot more pleasant to deal with.
It's when AI starts to eat into the higher echelons of human support that we will really need to worry.
