Excellent list, Timothy! One other "minor" point that may not be valid anymore (it has been 13 years since I was last a s/390 Client Rep):
If you happen to be negotiating with IBM in late 4th quarter, you may be able to get them to be a little more accommodating if they are trying to hit certain revenue quotas. <smile> Bob -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Timothy Sipples Sent: Thursday, December 30, 2010 8:25 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: IBM MLC discount policies I'll run through the list, in no particular order: 1. An IBM Enterprise License Agreement (ELA), and other IBM agreements which incorporate ELA terms and conditions, is/are a way to get some additional value from your MLC. In very simple terms, if you can reasonably forecast your MLC and make a financial commitment to some particular MSU growth path, IBM provides some "coupons" (or credits) which can be used to acquire IBM "One-Time Charge" (OTC/IPLA) software licenses. The more the growth commitment, the more the credits. (Note that the credits must be spent immediately, upon contract execution, so perhaps credits isn't the right word.) In my personal opinion those credits should be treated as reductions in the MLC, especially if you're calculating chargebacks and such. I strongly recommend exploring this sort of licensing with your friendly IBM representative. It's good for you, it's good for IBM, and it's very easy to do considering that you almost certainly already have capacity forecasts. 2. If you are a qualified business partner (such as a qualified software developer for z/OS, z/VSE, etc.) or academic institution, you are likely eligible for sharp reductions in MLC through such programs as PartnerWorld and the System z Academic Initiative. 3. If you would like to run a new workload that qualifies for zNALC licensing, you can receive a major reduction in z/OS MLC. DB2 Value Unit Edition licensing may also be available for that workload. 4. If you would like to run a qualifying new System z Solution Edition workload, you would receive a single price quotation for all hardware ("MIPS"), hardware maintenance, software licensing, and software subscription/support for up to 5 years. Obviously there is an MLC reduction incorporated into that quotation. 5. Standard MLC terms and conditions already include a number of discounts, and more seem to get invented. A few examples: a. MLC pricing is strongly "curved." The more you use, the lower the price for each incremental MSU. (And recently IBM added more tiers to maintain that basic principle.) b. It's variable under VWLC, MWLC, and AWLC. If you have a "quiet" month, you automatically get a discount. c. Likewise, it's subcapacity. If you only run MQ in one LPAR, then you only pay for that LPAR (under VWLC, MWLC, AWLC, zNALC, or Solution Edition). d. You're always in control, through defined capacity settings ("softcaps") for individual LPARs and for groups of LPARs. As long as you know how to twist the softcap "knobs," surprises are never possible. e. It applies only to real work (dev/test/prod). For example, there's no additional charge for a real disaster, or for cold or warm standby, or for a proscribed number of disaster rehearsals (CBU), or for such events as relocating machines between data centers (CPE). f. For the past 10 years there have been "technology dividends." Sometimes these dividends have been in the form of MSU reductions on new machine models. Other times they've been in the form of new licensing (e.g. VWLC in 2000 and AWLC in 2010). g. Specialty engines (zAAPs, zIIPs, ICFs) do not incur IBM software license charges. Software vendors, including IBM, continue to make more of their products eligible to run on specialty engines. h. Specialty accelerators, notably the new Smart Analytics Optimizer, can end up effectively reducing MLC, at least on an equal performance comparison. i. IBM is doing a very good job reducing path length in many MLC products with new releases, notably z/OS, DB2 10, IMS, and (especially if you exploit threadsafe) CICS. 6. IBM tries to be reasonable. For example, if you're migrating from one machine to another (such as a machine upgrade), and you need a short period when you're running MLC on both machines but are still supporting the same workloads (same number of users, same transaction volumes, etc.), you can request a short-term waiver on one of the machines (generally the smaller one). IBM does not promise to honor such requests but will consider them in good faith. As always, I do not speak for IBM. Which means I might be more entertaining. - - - - - Timothy Sipples Resident Enterprise Architect STG Value Creation & Complex Deals Team IBM Growth Markets (Based in Singapore) E-Mail: [email protected] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
