Thoughts on IBM licensing🤔📝- Plan your year
The start of a new year is a great time to take stock on where you stand today and what you hope to achieve in the coming year. I’d urge you to think about how well you’ve been managing your IBM licensing and what needs to be done in the next 6-12 months.
You want to ensure you are getting the most from your investment and there are no surprises lurking in your network.
Some tasks to consider scheduling in the next 12 months:
- ILMT audit snapshot reports. Reviewed monthly and all issues cleared for quarterly
- Upgrade to ILMT. At least twice per year
- Review entitlement in PA for any changes, especially where there are several PA sites. Annually
- Products deployed that are EOS. Annually
- Update license baseline, refresh annually.
- Meeting with IT Architects on planned upgrades or migrations. Quarterly.
- Meeting with procurement on planned purchases. Quarterly.
This is not an exhaustive list, I just want to get you thinking so you are not panicking later when there are resource or budget pressures.
I’d love to hear your thought and questions related to IBM licensing. Leave a comment below or email me at questions@ibmlicensingexpert.com
📢News and IBM Announcements
- Just in case you missed it last month Price Change(s): 2023 Distributed Software Price Changes are out and they are a bit of a shock, 24% !! Details in the announcement letter. Good discussion here on LinkedIn on the topic.
- Vmware vSphere 6.5 and 6.7 are no longer a supported operating systems for IBM sub capacity licensing You need to keep an eye on this list (once every 6 months) so you can give the IT Architects plenty of notice on risky platforms and the cost of non compliance!
- HCL have updated the datasheet on BigFix Inventory. Main BigFix product page.
- HCL have also updated their HCL BigFix on Cloud data sheet. I’m curious to know
What I’ve been reading, listening or watching 📚 🎧📺
- Good post from IT Jungle, IBM “Harmonizes” Power Systems, Storage, And Software Prices Upward which summaries the recent price changes.
- Post from TIAA on mitigating 250 million in an IBM Audit Defense which might inspire or potentially terrify depending on your view.
- Origina podcast Changes In The Software World In 2022
- I’m doing a deep dive on Third Party Risk Management (TPRM) these days and I found the VenMinder Podcast. Good content on a topic that impacts every business. Touches on IBM as you should be managing them from a TPRM perspective also.
- This article from Gartner on Microsoft Begins Removing Resellers From Enterprise Agreements — Will You Be Impacted? gave me another perspective on the impact of IBM’s strategy of focusing their efforts on the top 500 companies. If you are not in the fortunate 500 are you seeing an impact ?
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.
Events / Webinars 🎬📅
Here’s a
- An old webinar but a good one from ITAMorg and ICS on IBM licensing common pitfalls and how to avoid them by one of the industries experts Torsten Feldmann.
- Recording with IBM’s Tom Rosamilia on IBM-AWS Software Agreement: Alliance Update. Interesting to see where AI is being used.
- Niche video on how to check what licenses you have access to in IBM ELM. If you Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) this is worth a look.
- On demand recording, Webinar 2022: Software Audit Defence from IntegrationWorks.
- Flexera SAM Best Practice December 2022 Webinar – Managing IBM PVU and VPC. Summary of webinar and hand outs accessible here on the community site
IBM Licensing Tips 💡
- Check your operating systems and virtualization (hyper visor) technologies still support for sub capacity license discounts. Official schedule of removed items on the IBM website
You want more?
- 🧑🤝🧑The IBM Licensing Group on LinkedIn where you can connect with others interested in IBM licensing.
- 📚 My blog at https://www.licensehawk.com/blogs for past articles and subscribe to my IBM license tips.
- 🎦 Watch IBM Licensing Expert on YouTube.
- 📅 Archive of past newsletters
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