Shops really need to pay attention to the licensing of this product. It is an IPLA product with a One time Charge to get started and then annual S&S payments. It is licensed not just based on where you use the product to optimize COBOL. From the announcement letter provided earlier (in the US 215-407) it is "z/OS-based". This means it is charged based on the z/OS billable MSUs in the PricingPlex if you are sub-capacity IPLA; or all your installed z/OS MSUs if you are not sub-capacity for IPLA. You may be able to negotiate a discount.
Once you do move to COBOL V5 and/or COBOL V6 and you do recompile your programs then there is very little need for ABO unless you want it to handled the architectural of various hardware levels. If you are moving to COBOL soon then you're paying a lot of money for a short period of time when you're using ABO. Be sure to read Martin Packer's post on this thread about how much COBOL is really being used in CICS transaction. There is a lot of wisdom in Martin's post. Do you have a lot of JAVA and WebSphere in your shop? ABO will be licensed based on those MSUs too. Before you start the trial, you might as well have IBM or some friendly consultant run the numbers for you to see what licensing it will cost in dollars (or you local currency). You'll undoubtedly save CPU resources with ABO. But you only reduce your software charges if it truly contributes to lowering the Simultaneous 4HRA of your sub-capacity software products. Al Sherkow, I/S Management Strategies, Ltd. Consulting Expertise on IBM Workload License Charges (WLC), LPARs and LCS Software Seminars on IBM Mainframe Software Pricing since 2003! +1 414 332-3062 www.sherkow.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
