Understand your IBM license metrics for full and sub-capacity
IBM Licensing Overview
IBM currently uses over 10 metrics to license its software. This alone might make keeping track of your licenses difficult enough but with the advent of Virtualisation, this can make licensing your software a full-time job.
However, the ability to keep a track of your IBM licenses is becoming increasingly important. IBM reserves the right to run a software audit and on IBM’s own figures 60% of companies have faced audits in the last 2 years – 31% one time and 29% twice or more. Generally, IBM aims to complete a software License Review (Audit) every 2 to 3 years for each account. Typically these can take 12-18 months to complete and are usually run by external auditors such as KPMG and Deloitte. Their focus will be on PVU and sub-capacity licensing (more of that later) BUT in most cases, the result of this audit is that the customer will be required to purchase new software.
Even if you think you are managing your entitlements well IBM report that only 4.5% of their customers have achieved optimised software application management. This white paper aims to help you become 1 of the 4.5%.
Orb Data Service Advantages
- We provide a clear picture as to what has been deployed in your environment
- We help you to understand each license mechanism that is associated with the IBM deployed products
- Deployed but unused applications can be removed and potentially not renewed
- Virtual hosts can be reassigned to smaller capacity servers
- If you are using full-capacity virtual hosts containing a single product can be grouped on a single physical server meaning you only pay for the product once
- And ultimately the results from an external audit will not come as a surprise
Orb Data Licensing Service
Orb Data offers a licensing service to complete an internal audit of the deployed IBM products. This can be performed as a one off prior to any IBM initiated audit, or as an annual or quarterly event to help with IBM license renewals.
The deliverables of this are the following:
- Provide information on which IBM products have been deployed and the licenses required to meet this deployment
- Specify the differences between deployed and purchased entitlements
- Offer alternatives to the current license models if appropriate
- Set up the ongoing tools needed to report on licenses such as ILMT, SCAPM, Spectrum, and Netcool Reporting
- Ensure that the IBM renewal process is as quick and painless as possible
To do this we will use the IBM License Metric Tool (ILMT) for PVU-based products and our own tools and scripts for the rest. As this paper has shown you cannot use ILMT for the complete picture of your licenses.
In some cases (for example Netcool and SCAPM) it is a case of running reports in the tool to analyse how many systems are reporting in (and/or what is being monitored) but because or in-depth knowledge of all the products we can do this without unduly taxing your own employees.
This offering is a consulting exercise however if you place any renewal through Orb Data we will offset some of the cost against this.
ILMT will:
- Ensure that you are compliant with Passport Advantage license terms for IBM PVU-based products
- Reduce time and risk for any IBM audit
- Reduce the chance of an unexpected licence purchase
- Have up-to-date license reports to ensure day-by-day usage is available for you and IBM
IBM Licensing Metric Tool
IBM® License Metric Tool (ILMT) is a free product that IBM makes available to IBM Passport Advantage® clients to help them determine the consumption of processor value units (PVU) and Resource value unit (RVU MAPC) licenses for the IBM full and sub-capacity software they acquired. The tool helps clients assess if they are compliant with licensing requirements and it provides reports that are required for IBM compliance audits.
Every Passport Advantage® client is advised to use the tool to ensure that the calculated PVU totals are complete and accurately reflect the IBM software in the client’s infrastructure. It provides great value as it helps to automate license management processes that would otherwise be very complex to manage manually.
Installation and using ILMT is a contractually mandatory requirement for IBM clients licensed for IBM sub-capacity (also called virtualization capacity) products.
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