Europe : 15% increase on all IBM System Storage hardware products

I overlooked this one as it was announced last Thursday instead of the regular Tuesday announcements. Perhaps Friday 13 would've been a better date for this announcement : 'Price changes: IBM System Storage hardware products (ZA15-1104)'. It's a short one, so I can keep it short too as I have no additional information about it either.

"IBM announces a 15% increase on all IBM System Storage hardware products."

This is applicable to Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Germany, Denmark, Spain, Finland, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, Slovenia, Slovakia and effective as of February 12, 2015.
For the UK it is only 10%.

I haven't found a similar announcement for other parts of the world so I guess it has mainly to do with the dollar - euro rate.

Exit Lifecycle Extension - Enter Extended Support

In our last newsletter I already mentioned that after z/OS 1.11 there would no longer be the possibility to get Lifecycle Extension support. And you also know that z/OS 1.12 is Out of Support by the end of September. Up to now we only saw some graphs indicating that after the End of Support, you would immediately get into 'Extended Support', as you can see below.

Click on image for larger version

Now there's an announcement making this official 'IBM Software Support Services - service extension offers defect support for IBM z/OS V1.11 and V1.12 beyond the z/OS end-of-service date (ZS14-0025)'. It's a "fee-based corrective service to users who have not completed their migration to a newer z/OS release" for a period of 3 years. z/OS 1.11 is an exception as it gets only 2 years after the Lifecycle Extension period.

As for the content : "IBM Software Support Services - service extension provides corrective service (a fix, bypass, or restriction to a problem) for your z/OS V1.11 and V1.12 operating systems". The ordering pretty much resembles that of the Lifecycle Extension : "Service extension support for both V1.11 and V1.12 requires a minimum three-month purchase and offers flexibility in support of your individual migration plans, either for single machines or for machines configured within a Parallel Sysplex".

Price Change for Enterprise Cobol V3 and Enterprise PL/I V3

Despite the release date of this announcement, it looks like this is not a joke : 'Price Changes for Enterprise Cobol for z/OS full and alternate functionV3 and Enterprise PL/1 for z/OS full and alternate function V3 (ZA12-1012)'.

Before you read any further : this announcement is NOT for EWLC and AEWLC customers.

We had similar price increases for 'older' products like CICS TS V3 and DB2 V8, so now Cobol and PL/I have to follow. The arguments are the same : IBM has continuously added functionalities to these versions without significant price increases. Now it wants to level the prices with the more recent versions of the products. In the meantime the support for COBOL V3.4 and PL/I V3.9 will continue until at least December 2013.

Average percent increases are shown for 500 MSUs. For Belgian VWLC customers e.g. this means an increase of 8% for Cobol V3 Full Function, 10% for Cobol V3 Alternate Function, 14% for PL/I Full Function and 16% for PL/I Alternate function. The same percentages are given for AWLC customers except that the Cobol V3 Alternate function only increases 6% ?

Check out the announcement for your specific country to see what's valid for you.

IBM Announcement : Price Changes for Subscription and Support Software

Last year we already signaled a price raise for DB2 V8 for z/OS starting at April 1, 2011. Hey, come to think of it, no April Fools' Day joke, this one. Here's another announcement for some Subscription and Support software in order "to bring the price of the Subscription and Support offerings in line with the price of the associated product offerings" : 'Price changes on several IBM Subscription and Support Software Programs (S&S) (ZA11-1001)'.

The products with their respective S&S are :

IBM WebSphere Portal Enable for z/OS V7.0
IBM Rational Asset Analyzer for z/OS V6
IBM Tivoli Omegamon XE for DB2 PE on z/OS V5.1
IBM Tivoli Omegamon XE for DB2 PM on z/OS V5.1
IBM DB2 Utilities Suite for z/OS V10.1
IBM DB2 High Performance Unload for z/OS V4.1
IBM DB2 Administration Tool for z/OS V10.1
IBM DB2 Object Comparison Tool for z/OS V10.1
IBM DB2 Buffer Pool Analyzer for z/OS V5.1
IBM DB2 SQL Performance Analyzer for z/OS V4.1

Price increases vary per product and go from 0% up to 55% for Belgian customers. Prices also become effective April 1, 2011. Check out the announcement for more details.

General Price Action on System z

If you were wondering why I haven't been posting for almost two weeks, well, I was at home. No, not having a nice holiday nor gardening. Last Monday I could hardly sit straight because of the pain in my back, so I've been recovering mostly lying in bed, walking around a bit and doing pretty much nothing. But I'm back (pun not intended) now.

And here we are already with the annual price action for System z. Last year there seemed to be a larger raise for products that were End of Support, but this time the announcement does not mention any particular softwares. For most European countries - including Belgium - "the maximum reduction will be 3% or the maximum increase for the impacted MLC prices will be 5%". If we have the same trend as the last couple of years, and I'm only talking about Belgium here, the impact might very well be rather small. Last year, most customers hardly had a raise and some even had some reduction on their bill.

The price changes will be effective July 1, 2010.

General Price Action on System z

Here's the annual general price action for mainframe: 'General Price Action on System z, eServer zSeries and S/390 Software Program Products (ZA09-1001)'.Usually this announcement comes in April and becomes effective in July, so we're three months early this year. Crisis everywhere ?
It affects a range of MLC software. Some products like z/OS can have a price increase between 0% and 3%, others will have an increase between 0% and 5%. Here IBM seems to make a distinction between supported and end-of-support versions of software. E.g. DB2 9 and DB2 V8 are in the first series, DB2 V7 is in the second series. Time to move on to supported versions I'd say.
For the detailed lists, check out the announcement itself.

Getting Started Sub-capacity Pricing for z/OS IPLA software with select Websphere Products

This is quite a mouthful for an announcement title. The entire title : IBM Getting Started Sub-capacity Pricing for z/OS IPLA software provides an attractive pricing option for starting projects with select IBM WebSphere programs (ZA08-0134).
As we know some IPLA (formerly OTC) software follows sub-capacity ruling. Now for some Websphere products IBM announces 'Getting Started Sub-capacity Pricing'. This "offers entry pricing for customers with low usage on select IBM WebSphere programs and the applicable Subscription and Support annual maintenance charge (...) Getting Started Sub-capacity Pricing offers less than the full LPAR (sub-capacity) license charge for up to 10% of the LPAR utilization consumed by the workload ". I haven't seen any prices yet and I find the explanation somewhat puzzling, but it's definitely worth checking out if you're in the target group :

Getting Started Sub-capacity Pricing helps you:
* Deploy small projects on z/OS with improved price/performance
* Provide greater software licensing flexibility by improving alignment between software use and software charges
* Increase LPAR capacity without changing software charges for a constant workload
* Transition smoothly to traditional sub-capacity pricing as workload grows

All additional information on prerequisites, planned availability and eligible products can be found in the announcement.

IBM Price Actions

Here's the annual Price Action Announcement : 'General Price Action on System z, zSeries, and S/390 Software Program Products' (ZA08-0119). Just like the last years "the maximum reduction or the maximum increase for the impacted MLC prices will be 6%".
Nothing 'special', so far, but there's a second announcement : 'Price Change: IMS High Performance Fast Path Utilities for z/OS V3.2 Subscribtion and Support (S&S), DB2 Log Analysis Tool for z/OS, V3.1 Subscribtion and Support (S&S), IMS Buffer Pool Analyzer for z/OS, V1.2' (ZA08-1016). For these products "IBM is announcing price changes on recurrent license charges (monthly and annually), on reseller license charges and on On/Off Capacity on Demand (OOCoD) and OTC licenses". The price increases here go well beyond 6% ranging from 39% to 89% for '5655-E36 - IBM IMS High Performance Fast Path Utilities for z/OS V3.2 Subscription & Support (S&S)'. For Belgium a maximum price increase of 47% is indicated for this product. For the other countries, please check out the announcement.

Price Action on Websphere Products

Stepping into the supermarket a price action is usually (always) a good thing : prices are going down. IBM learns us that 'price action' must have a neutral connotation as this price action actually means an increase in price. It's almost exactly the same range of products that were affected last year :

• 5655-P27 IBM WebSphere Process Server for z/OS V6 (S&S)
• 5655-L86 IBM WebSphere Business Server Foundation for z/OS V5 (S&S)
• 5655-I59 IBM WebSphere Message Broker z/OS V6 (S&S)
• 5655-K58 IBM WebSphere Event Broker z/OS V6 (S&S)
• 5655-G98 IBM WebSphere Message Broker Rules & Formatter extension for z/OS V6(S&S)
• 5655-R16 IBM WebSphere Enterprise Server for z/OS V6(S&S)
• 5698-S37 IBM Tivoli Business Systems for z/OS (S&S)
• 5655-K13 IBM WebSphere Portal Enable z/OS (S&S)

The new prices are effective January l, 2008.
For Belgium (and most European countries) there's a price increase of 3%.
You can check out the announcement letter for other countries.

General Price Action for MLC software

"As a result of currency fluctuations over the past few years, the prices of some Program Products have become unaligned when compared between EMEA countries, and IBM is adjusting the prices accordingly. Moreover during the Euro introduction IBM committed not to change local prices during the conversion period from local currencies to the Euro. Now IBM's aim is to better harmonize these prices across the Euro countries, the National currency countries and the Dollar currency countries within EMEA.
IBM is therefore announcing price decreases and increases in the Monthly License Charges for selected zSeries and S/390 Program Products and their features."

Oops, that was the 2006 announcement, here's the 2007 announcement :

"As a result of currency fluctuations over the past few years, the prices of some Program Products have become unaligned when compared between countries in Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA). In order to better harmonize pricing structures across Euro, National, and Dollar currency countries within EMEA, IBM decided to adjust prices accordingly.
IBM is therefore announcing price decreases and increases in the Monthly License Charges for selected System z, zSeries, and S/390 Program Products and their features."

"The maximum reduction will be 6% in the MLC prices and the maximum increase will be 6% in the MLC prices of selected products."
Effective date : July 1, 2007.

Software pricing : zNALC and z/VSE MWLC

Yesterday two new pricing models were introduced. The first one is zNALC pricing on the z/OS platform. zNALC pricing is due to become the only pricing matrix for new workload replacing NALC ànd z/OS.e. There are some differences as compared to NALC and z/OS.e pricing :

• As opposed to NALC and z/OS.e it runs on all zArchitecture machines (z900,z800,z990,z890,z9 EC enz9 BC).
• You only have one product i.e. z/OS (without the limitations that were posed to z/OS.e as e.g. number of TSO sessions limited).
• zNALC can be implemented on LPAR level and sysplex aggregation is possible.
• It comes in two flavours : full-capacity ànd sub-capacity pricing.
• The interpretation of the 'New Workload' definition seems to be more lenient than before.
  

Along with the announcement of the new z/VSE Version 4 there's a complete new pricing matrix for VSE : Z/VSE MWLC (Midrange Workload Licence Charge). The full-capacity version of MWLC is already more interesting than TWLC pricing as more levels are introduced. But what's more : for the first time sub-capacity pricing is introduced to the VSE environment. The formula can very well be compared to that on z/OS. z/VSE V4 (and only z/VSE V4) can generate SCRT89 records. An SCRT report will be sent to IBM and will be used to bill the customer. Exciting news for VSE customers, I'd say.
This pricing model can be set up on an LPAR level too. This creates the possibility to consolidate a smaller VSE machine onto an LPAR of a larger z/OS machine - without having the penalty of paying full-capacity. Bear in mind that you have to have z/VSE V4 running on a z9 machine.

As you can see, I'm only touching the surface of these matters. A comprehensive explanation can be found in the announcements I already mentioned and IBM added two pages to the IBM System z software pricing page : zNALC and MWLC.

Last remark : as type 89 records must be gathered for the sub-capacity matrixes and general availability is March 16th, 2007, the earliest billing date for these sub-capacity formulas is June 1st, 2007.

A couple more software price changes

Before getting too euphoric about low mainframe costs, here's some counterweight, as IBM announced some price 'changes' on Subscription and Support (S&S) for certain products. Those affecting EMEA customers are :

• IBM Debug Tool Utilities and Advanced Functions for z/OS V7.1 S&S
  (5655-R45 - 5655-J19)
• IBM IMS Command Control Facility for z/OS, V2.1 S&S
  (5655-R58 - 5655-F41)

As always IBM links the price changes to functional improvements added to the products.
The one that stands out is 'IBM Debug Tool Utilities and Advanced Functions for z/OS V7.1' with an increase of maximum 25% for most European countries. Further details can be found in the announcement itself.

Price change for some Websphere Products

I didn't have much time last week but there was one announcement letter I still want to mention : "Price Action on System z and zSeries Software Program Products". It concerns a price raise on mostly websphere products, more specific :

• 5655-F81 IBM WS Application Server for z/OS (S&S)
• 5655-L86 IBM WS Business Integration Server Foundation for z/OS (S&S)
• 5655-P27 IBM WS Process Server for z/OS (S&S)
• 5655-R16 IBM WS Enterprise Server Bus for z/OS (S&S)
• 5655-K13 IBM WS Portal Enable for z/OS (S&S)
• 5655-I19 IBM WS Message Broker for z/OS (S&S)
• 5655-K58 IBM WS Event Broker for z/OS (S&S)
• 5655-G98 IBM WS Message Broker with Rules & Formatter for z/OS (S&S)
• 5655-P29 IBM WS Extended Deployment for z/OS (S&S)
• 5698-S37 IBM Tivoli Business System Manager or z/OS (S&S)

The new prices are effective on April, 1 2007.
For Belgium it means a price increase of 4%.
You can check out the announcement letter for other countries.