IBM Licensing Newsletter September 2022

Thoughts on IBM licensing🤔

The rate of change in organisations is amazing when compared to previous years. Historically changes to the deployment of IBM products was very predictable. An upgrade every 18 months at most. That is changing with digital transformation and the impact to licensing is significant.

The problem I’m seeing over and over again is that digital transformation projects are not modelling out the impact of the changes on license costs in advance. They are “surprise” when a license baseline, done after the changes have been made, returns a large unbudgeted license bill.

As sure as night follows day, a significant change to your IT infrastructure will generate a license compliance risk for your IBM products.

📢News and IBM Announcements

IBM License Metric Tool application update 9.2.29 is now available. For more detail I find the ILMT Whats’ New page more useful.
In parallel the ILMT Upgrading to the latest version page has also been updated. This is a really good explanation of the upgrade process so worth a read.
The latest IBM Public Cloud IBM’s ‘Bring Your Own Software License’ policy has been updated. The scenarios on page 8 are particularly useful as it explains the impact of no ILMT monitoring and hyper threading.
The policy covering Eligible Virtualization Technology has been updated. It’s important to check the list of operating systems and hypervisor that are no longer supported in case you have products running on unsupported technology.
Another important site that was updated in August was the IBM License Metric Tool 9.2 – supported operating systems. Pick your operating system and you can check when it is due to be dropped from supported. Some thing to pass to your ILMT administrator.

What I’ve been reading, listening or watching 📚 🎧📺

Good video from Rory in SAM Charter (the ITAM process experts) about Vendor Audit Defence Process. Some great tips like “have you an audit playbook?”. Rory is worth following for useful advice on SAM processes in general.
This podcast on Leveraging your IP from The Business of Authority is an introduction to the topic. IP and licensing are similar concepts and this cast explained the differences
A post from Christopher Barnett raised an interesting question – What If I Discover Unlicensed IBM Software on My Servers?. The IPLA makes it clear what the official position, anything else is a concession by IBM.
The recent post from Heather L. Cole – Help I Inherited IBM Cognos and IBM Planning Analytics, Now What? will be useful to anyone who juts inherited support for an IBM product and what they need to do to manage the licenses.
Found this IBM z/VM Frequently Asked Questions for z/VM 7.3, z/VM 7.2, and z/VM 7.1 updated for 2022. Lots of detail if you have z/VM. There are some common themes but a few specific to z/VM also so if you have these products worth a read.

I encourage you to use the hashtag #ibmlicensing when you find a post this audience might be interested in so it can be found more easily.

Writing 📝

There were some interesting question on the Group this month relating to UVU licensing and moving to public cloud (links below). When ever I’m asked a question I try to reply with a general post on the topic also. If one person asks I assume there are many more who’d be interested

I haven’t a post on my blog this month. A new project supporting a client in IT Compliance (SOx) has taken most of my extra time. Lots of new stuff to learn. A different perspective, in this case internal audit, is great for generating ideas and understanding what other teams need from a SAM professional. So make the time to chat to your colleagues in other areas of the business.

Is there anything you’d like to hear about from the world of IBM licensing? Leave a comment or email me at questions@ibmlicensingexpert.com

Events / Webinars 🎬📅

A little lean this month but here’s a few webinars I found interesting:

I found an series of webinars from License Works presented by Camelia Balan, IBM license expert from NZ. Easy access and no email wall.
Webinar recording on the SAM Beast YouTube channel on the changes by IBM to licensing PVU to VPC. Make sure the ILMT admins watch this one also.
It’s not IBM licensing but may still interest some. ITAMOrg, of which I’m a Chapter Lead in Ireland, are running a webinar Escaping the Oracle Eco-System.

IBM Licensing Tips 💡

Make your quarterly upgrade of ILMT a BAU task. Take the time to document and get the approvals in advance for the year.

You need to plan to upgrade ILMT every quarter. There are simply too many changes occurring to ILMT, licensing rules, supported platforms and technologies. Gone are the days you could leave it for 12 months and you

You want more?

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📅 Archive of past newsletters