What’s the unmarried largest fee you have as a Mainframe manager? Software licensing expenses are the regular costs required to run a software program and get assistance if it breaks. This article offers ten methods to bring these expenses down to earth.
Check you actually need it.
Don’t snigger. This sounds obvious, but it’s simplest too clean for a software program this is no longer had to slip via the cracks. For instance, you could have a few software programs that become, in the beginning, wanted for CICS applications that have because moved somewhere else. You may additionally have software licensed for all z/OS photos, however only used on one.
Check you actually use it.
As your Mainframe workload modifications through the years, it is the handiest too clean for the use of a software product to decline without Mainframe managers noticing quietly. You can be paying thousands of dollars for a product that simplest multiple human beings are truely using. You want to examine often the usage of your software and agenda to remove any software program no longer needed.
Check you do not have products doing the same aspect.
You might also use all of your software but have two software merchandise performing equal or similar characteristics. You want to completely know-how your software program inventory and exactly how each product is used.
Investigate sub-ability pricing.
Most software program licensing prices are primarily based on the scale of each LPAR running that software program – the MSU rating. You can find this fee from the IBM Internet site or a program to call IBM’s IWMQVS carrier. A few years in the past, IBM added any other alternative: Sub-Capacity Pricing. This is in which your software program licensing fees are based on your CPU utilization, no longer on your LPAR length. So software program walking on a lesser-used LPAR will be less expensive. It also makes enhancements easier to justify as you do not get hit by accelerated software program charges with the bigger processor. IBM is not the simplest vendor offering Sub-Capacity Pricing. Other providers, which include BMC and CA, also are jumping on the bandwagon.
Reorganize your LPARs.
Many websites now run as a minimum one ‘capped’ LPAR, which means that the CPU sources available to it are artificially capped by Workload Manager (WLM). Software that is charged on MSU rating is run on this capped LPAR, lowering fees. Users of Sub-Capacity pricing might also don’t forget doing the other: consolidating LPARs. This reduces CPU intake via lowering the overhead of going for walks a z/OS photo.
Investigate comparable products.
Compare the rate of competing merchandise, and take into account shifting to less expensive ones. For instance, SAS users can also recollect the SAS alternative product WPS by way of World Programming. It’s true that in some instances, transferring to distinctive merchandise may be very hard and high-priced. However, it isn’t always so, and plenty of providers offer migration tools to ease this pain.
Tune your systems.
Tuning your structures reduces CPU usage (precise for Sub-Capacity pricing customers) and delays enhancements to large processors. Software merchandise together with Tachyon Assembler Workbench and Microfocus Mainframe Express can help you carry out Mainframe software program development on Windows and UNIX systems. Some merchandise inclusive of Websphere Enterprise Service Bus and CICS Transaction Gateway daemon runs on z/OS and different structures. Some workloads may additionally, without problems, be moved to other structures. SOA and related offerings now make Mainframe offerings and statistics less difficult to access from different platforms.