Late last month, IBM announced some new, cloud-oriented software pricing. Here's the announcement letter:
http://www.ibm.com/common/ssi/rep_ca/9/897/ENUS216-319/ENUS216-319.PDF This announcement is what I'd describe as an evolution, or extension, of the previously announced (2014) Mobile Workload Pricing (MWP). If you understand MWP, then you can easily understand zWPC. If you don't understand either yet, then it's worth spending at least a few minutes learning about these new, optional pricing options. I'll provide the "Cliff Notes" (brief summary) version here. 1. Both of these pricing options are exactly that, options. You are not required to take advantage of them. I hope you do, and you really should if they provide benefit. But your mainframe will keep chugging along whether or not you take advantage of these financial benefits. You "contact your friendly IBM representative" to sign up for either or both pricing options. If you're eligible (and most mainframe shops already are), you should at least get the minor amount of paperwork out of the way to get signed up. 2. Both of these options are beneficial when you are (or can be) enjoying IBM's sub-capacity software licensing AND when your four hour rolling average peak is "online," driven by peak transactions. If you are "batch peak" (at least at the present), then these pricing options won't be too interesting. (But if you are "batch peak" then adding mobile- and cloud-originated transactions to your mainframe -- or any other transactions for that matter -- won't cost you anything at least in terms of IBM software licensing. Utilizing unused sub-peak capacity is free, or at least as free as anything is. You should do that! Fill those valleys!) 3. In both cases you need *some* way to "tag and track" transactions by source. There are many, many possible ways to do that. If you cannot do that, or if you're struggling to do that, then I would ask you some basic security-related questions. For example, "Is your mainframe environment secure if you don't know who your users are, or even where they're coming from?" ("Probably not" is a reasonable answer to that question.) In the case of MWP, you tag and track eligible transactions originating from mobile devices: iOS and Android. Likewise, in the case of zWPC, you tag and track eligible transactions originating from public cloud offerings that connect to your mainframe via RESTful interfaces and/or SOAP Web services -- via z/OS Connect, as a preeminent example. Public cloud offerings include IBM Bluemix, Amazon Web Services, and Microsoft Azure, as examples. In both cases IBM reviews and approves (or doesn't approve) your particular transaction use cases, to determine if they are eligible for MWP or zWPC. 4. You run the latest version of SCRT and send reports to IBM, per normal. Those reports also include the mobile and/or public cloud tracking data (in suitable form agreed with IBM). 5. IBM uses that sub-capacity report, including the new mobile and/or public cloud tracking data, to calculate your MSUs for sub-capacity eligible products. If the mobile and/or public cloud tracking data indicate that mobile and/or public cloud originated transactions contributed to your monthly peak, then IBM will adjust those *particular* MSUs downward by 60% (!) before determining the final billed MSU values. (I'm oversimplifying slightly here. Actually what happens is that IBM makes this 60% adjustment at every interval then finds the new, adjusted peak MSUs for the month. Conceivably your new, adjusted peak will end up being an interval when mobile/cloud transactions are zero. But if that happens those mobile/cloud transactions would end up free for the whole month, or as close to free as anything is. That's still very nice!) MWP and zWPC adjustments apply to most releases (including the latest releases) of the major, core IBM software products: CICS Transaction Server, DB2, IMS, MQ, and WebSphere Application Server for z/OS. That's a triple discount on those products for those of you paying close attention (and you should). Your peak, incremental MSUs are always your lowest priced MSUs, then IBM reduces any peak incremental MSUs attributable to eligible mobile and/or public cloud transactions by 60%. And, on top of all that, the mobile/cloud connectivity -- z/OS Connect as a major example -- is extremely highly zIIP eligible. Win-win-win. So let's suppose, for example, that you are indeed an "online peak" shop (on at least one machine, anyway), and your SCRT report typically shows that you peak at 100 MSUs of CICS Transaction Server and 150 MSUs of DB2 for z/OS. Today the minimum contribution of your mobile-originated transactions is 10%, and there's another minimum 5% coming in from a partner portal application that you deployed to IBM Bluemix. (But both are growing fast.) Both are connected to CICS and DB2 via z/OS Connect. In this example, before MWP and zWPC, you would be billed 100 MSUs for CICS and 150 MSUs for DB2. After signing up for MWP and zWPC (and otherwise arranging matters with IBM) the top 15% of your MSUs would be reduced by 60%. So instead of 100 MSUs for CICS you would be billed 91 MSUs (85 "normal" MSUs plus only 40% of the mobile/cloud 15 MSUs). And instead of 150 MSUs of DB2 you would be billed 137 MSUs. OK, now let's suppose those mobile/cloud figures double, and eligible mobile/cloud transactions grow to represent a minimum of 30% at adjusted peak. Before MWP and zWPC that'd mean 115 MSUs for CICS and 173 MSUs of DB2. After MWP and zWPC the final billed MSUs are only 95 for CICS and 143 for DB2 -- still better than the status quo ante, and mobile/cloud transactions have doubled. (It can be even better than this, actually, if the mobile/cloud transactions do not peak when the remaining transactions do.) Conceptually it's rather simple, and technically it's almost as simple. Of course, IBM is encouraging you (shouting at you?) to extend your mainframe-hosted services most directly into mobile and public cloud channels, aggressively and comprehensively. That's the whole point. It's in your and IBM's mutual interest to do that, for a variety of reasons. But the financial motivations are nice, too. Enjoy. As a reminder, my views are my own and not necessarily those of my employer or of any other organization. Any errors are my own, too. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
