CCR2 interviewed Richard S. Szulewski, Product Marketing for IBM WebSphere solutions on IBM System z, for this article
IBM has introduced lower pricing for selected z/OS middleware that use less than 10 percent of a logical partition’s capacity, so you can more easily cost-justify new workloads on z/OS. This pricing option, called “Getting Started Sub-capacity Pricing for z/OS IPLA Software,” scales linearly up to the traditional Sub-capacity price until usage gets to 10 percent of the logical partition.
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Many z/OS professionals face a repeated challenge: We have a new project, where do we put it? They are often frustrated when a new, small workload that is likely to grow larger is started on a distributed platform primarily due to software costs. As the workload grows, the importance of z/OS qualities of service – scalability, availability, security and performance – and co-location with business data also grows. Unfortunately, once a workload is on another platform, it usually stays there – resulting in potential long-term service level challenges that z/OS would address better.
Getting Started Sub-capacity Pricing for z/OS International Program License Agreement (IPLA) Software helps you start a project small and scale up, while taking advantage of the qualities of service on the z/OS platform.
Instead of requiring a new logical partition (LPAR) to contain the software costs using traditional Sub-capacity pricing, Getting Started Sub-capacity Pricing for z/OS IPLA Software lets you add a small workload to an existing partition, while minimizing software charges produced by the workload for up to 10 percent of the partition.
This approach uses the same SMF 89 record-based reporting mechanism as traditional Sub-capacity pricing and scales smoothly as your workload grows. If you are using 5.5 percent of an LPAR’s utilization for the new workload, for example, the linear Getting Started scaling results in software charges that are only 55 percent of the traditional Sub-capacity price.
IBM has initially focused the Getting Started pricing option on a set of IBM middleware that support a significant source of today’s creative, new mainframe workloads – those that support Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) using technologies such as Java, Web services and other Web-facing applications.
Multiple ways to reduce z/OS software charges
There are several ways to save on software charges on the z/OS platform. The IBM System z Application Assist Processor (zAAP) and the IBM System z Integrated Information Processor (zIIP) offer significant cost relief, because workloads offloaded to these engines don’t contribute to software costs, which are based on general purpose engines.
Sub-capacity pricing is another way to contain software costs – by deriving license charges from the four-hour rolling average utilization of the LPAR in which the eligible products run, instead of basing the license charge on the capacity of the entire machine. Sub-capacity pricing lets you scale your hardware as needed.
How it works: Getting Started pricing
IBM adapted the traditional sub-capacity pricing process, including its Sub-capacity Reporting Tool (SCRT), to identify and compute the utilization for products eligible for Getting Started Sub-capacity Pricing for z/OS IPLA Software.
Eligible products produce a variation of the SMF 89 record, which the SCRT uses to determine the product’s four-hour rolling average utilization. The SCRT then multiplies the utilization by a fixed scaling factor (limited to utilizations up to 10 percent of the LPAR). At 10 percent utilization and higher, the tool automatically uses traditional sub-capacity MSU computations.
For eligible products whose four-hour rolling average utilization – based on millions of service units (MSUs) – is less than 10 percent of the four-hour rolling average utilization of the LPAR in which they are running, the Getting Started sub-capacity calculation scales linearly from zero to 100 percent of the traditional Sub-capacity license price for substantial cost savings.
Eligible z/OS IPLA software products
Getting Started sub-capacity pricing is limited to z/OS IPLA software products that provide the required variation of SMF 89 records. At the time of the pricing option’s April 22 announcement, eligible products included the following:
In addition, Statements of Directions for Getting Started Sub-capacity Pricing support were issued for the following products:
This cooperative pricing effort between IBM Systems and Technology Group and the IBM Software Group is designed not to be limited to WebSphere products. A current list of eligible products is available on the IBM Web site.
Take advantage of Getting Started pricing today
Getting Started Sub-capacity Pricing for z/OS IPLA may be just what you need to get that workload on z/OS where it really belongs while avoiding LPAR proliferation. Take the opportunity to discuss the option with your IBM representative and start saving. If the Getting Started pricing approach results in lower capacity requirements than your current IBM license, you can apply the savings to future use.
Get connected with someone who can help: call 1-800-426-2255 (800-IBM-CALL) or your IBM z/OS software representative.
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