What’s the largest unmarried 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 if you need it.

Don’t snigger. It’s simplest to clean for a software program that no longer has to slip through the cracks. For instance, in the beginning, you could have a few software programs that become wanted for CICS applications that have moved somewhere else. You may additionally have software licensed for all z/OS photos; however, it is only used on one.

Check you use it.

As your Mainframe workload moves 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 multiple human beings truely use. You often want to examine your software’s usage 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 your software but have two software merchandise performing equal or similar characteristics. You want to know your software program inventory and 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 ago, IBM added another alternative: Sub-Capacity Pricing. This is where your software program licensing fees are based on your CPU utilization, no longer on your LPAR length. So, a 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, meaning that the CPU sources available are artificially capped by Workload Manager (WLM). Software charged on MSU rating is run on this capped LPAR, lowering fees. Users of sub-capacity pricing might also forget to do the other thing: consolidating LPARs. This reduces CPU intake via lowering the overhead of going for walks in a z/OS photo.

Investigate comparable products.

Compare the rate of competing merchandise and consider shifting to less expensive ones. For instance, SAS users can also collect the SAS alternative product WPS through world programming. It’s true that in some cases, transferring to distinctive merchandise may be very hard and high-priced. However, it isn’t always so; 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 inventory, including 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 systems. SOA and related offerings now make Mainframe offerings and statistics less difficult to access from different platforms.