Alex Daniloff
Why do I and our other engineers need 5 years maintenance?
Because you need major and security bugs being fixed and non-SLES distributions are only maintained for two years?
What is a maintenance? Blow dust from our boxes?
http://www.suse.com/us/business/services/maintenance/index.html and follow the links.
Why do we need all these certifications if we know what we're doing?
If you have to ask, you either don't need them or don't know what you're doing. Tip: look for instance at the requirements for getting official support for Oracle.
What is "mission critical"? A nuclear plant or a ballistic missile?
How much would it cost your company if a main server is unreachable (i.e. salary for people that can do nothing)? What if accounting looses all its data? What if your central mail server goers offline for a day?
Why reinstall every two years instead of simply upgrading systems to the next version?
You can also upgrade SLES, so that argument is moot.
What kind of bull shit is this?
No bullshit at all. It just depends on your needs. Like for instance getting support that covers much more then just installation. Philipp