I absolutely agree with Timothy. CMP is one of the nicest things IBM had done for its customers. There were reasons in the past to force sysplex aggregation, but IBM's over that. Shamplexes are simply a disaster waiting to happen. Frank Kyne and I have been teaching CMP, along with the other IBM pricing options, and we think that it's a great option that can save a lot of heartaches.
It's important to realize, however, that CMP isn't going to drop your prices, but it IS going to make it easier to grow your current workloads. And it will DEFINITELY make it less expense to add new work to your current system. In addition to teaching z/OS Software Pricing, we've also be doing consulting with companies that are having problems with their ISV contracts. IBM contracts are a breeze compared to what some software companies inflict on their customers. Thanks, Timothy - I've enjoyed your recent posts. Cheryl Cheryl Watson Watson & Walker, Inc. 100 Central Ave, Suite 1013 Sarasota, FL 34236 P-941-924-6565, F-941-924-4892 www.watsonwalker.com -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Timothy Sipples Sent: Sunday, September 13, 2015 10:57 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: z/OS pricing question (and Single Version Charge) Shane Ginnane wrote: >What a bloody schmozzle. Wait a minute. Let me make it simple then, because it is. Get Country Multiple Pricing (CMP) and: (a) There are no Single Version Charge periods; (b) There are no Sysplex aggregation rules. There's a whole IBM redbook devoted just to part (b) -- an excellent one, as it happens -- so I'd say a fair amount of complexity is gone with CMP. With respect to Linux, everybody in the Linux support business has rules, even complex ones, concerning how you pay for your support, what that support entails (its limits and processes -- for example, what components are supported at level X, which ones at level Y, and so on), hours and escalation processes, how you renew (or don't), dispute resolution, and various other permutations. The trend over time has been for progressively greater complexity in those Linux support arrangements. Red Hat, for example, used to have one "vanilla" option many years ago. Now they have chocolate, chocolate with chocolate sauce, vanilla with chocolate chunks, tutti frutti, tutti frutti with whippped cream and a cherry on top.... In addition, you've typically got separate licensing and support agreements with the various software vendors (including with IBM, I hope) on top of your Linux agreement(s). And each component even within your Linux distribution has a different license: GPL2, GPL3, LGPL, Apache, MIT, etc., etc., and those individual component licenses can change even with the next patch. They should all be OSI compliant, but they are still different, and somebody probably has to review them and periodically re-review them. I'm not necessarily criticizing any of that. No, I'm not criticizing it at all. It is what it is. The complexity is real and is probably increasing. If CMP for z/OS (and the IBM software products on z/OS) is/are a "bloody schmozzle," then so are other operating systems and their products that I also like -- and they might even be medium sized war bloody. As it happens, with CMP IBM mopped up some blood. [What a metaphor you picked, Shane. Lovely. :-)] Let's applaud IBM for a few seconds here when the company does something good, for it has done so, I would argue. I think IBM absolutely did the right thing in simplifying the rules amidst a software industry (including Linux) that's getting more complex over time. You just have to switch to the new, slimmer, simpler CMP rule set, that's all. I merely provided a fuller answer to be helpful to those who haven't yet adopted CMP and perhaps to drive home the point that CMP is good. I recommend CMP. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------- Timothy Sipples IT Architect Executive, Industry Solutions, IBM z Systems, AP/GCG/MEA E-Mail: [email protected] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
