A brief history of Software Pricing

General Introduction

It was about 13 years ago that they asked me if I was interested in doing the presales for mainframe business. I came from the ‘other’ side since I’d always been engaged in application development as a programmer, an analyst and a DB2 admin. So, at that moment I’d never seen any mainframe hardware whatsoever.  But we had an experienced mainframe sales person at the time who learned me everything there was to learn about ESCON, CHPIDs, OSA-Express cards, CECs etc. etc. And then there was this other part as well : if you wanted (and this hasn’t really changed) to work out a business case, you had to know something about software pricing too.

I still vividly remember my first steps in ‘Software Pricing’ on mainframe or should I rather say my first stumbles. I just looked up the word in a dictionary.

Stumble [stuhm buh l]

1. the act of stumbling (to strike the foot against something, as in walking or running, so as to stagger or fall)

2. a slip or blunder

I can assure you, both meanings were very appropriate at the time.

Just one year later, our experienced sales person took on another opportunity and, just as that, I was no longer the rookie but I was the most experienced mainframe (pre)sales guy in the company. A new sales was appointed for mainframe and of course I was the one introducing him to all this magnificent stuff. Don’t worry, he pulled through with flying colours and we’re still working together.

Still, it’s a bit of a crazy story but we first met just a couple of hours before the official announcement of the z890 in April 2004 (yes, the 40^th anniversary of the mainframe). There was a large IBM and BP event in Paris and he picked me up at my home for a 3-hour drive to Paris. Of course we started talking about the mainframe, comparing with the AS400 (now System i) he knew from his background. And, actually, we never stopped talking for the next three days. After each session new questions popped up and were, as good as possible, answered. Until finally we came to the subject of ‘software pricing’.  What could I say ? The only thing there was to say : “Well, you know, here’s where it gets a bit complicated”. Talking about a euphemism.

And this remained a constant during the years to come. Talking to customers, the questions I most often heard about software pricing were : “Could you freshen up my memory about that, I’m a bit confused ?” usually followed by “Could you explain that once again, I don’t think I’m still following ?”

I really would like to say, luckily things have gotten a lot less complicated over the years, but they haven’t.

So, why am I telling you all this. On November 15, we hosted a meeting for the GSE Young professionals Working Group at our HQ. These are all young mainframers we desperately want to get or to keep aboard of the mainframe ship. And I thought it was a good opportunity to write them a 'short' article on the evolutions we’ve seen over the years in software pricing on the mainframe.

General tendency

To put things into perspective of what we are talking about. We, as a business partner, are often engaged into negotiations on the hardware price of a new system. Mainframe is expensive, remember ? But when the customer starts working out his business case, it’s always played on the software part. Usually software represents 70% or more of the cost when e.g. mapped out on a four year basis. So any decrease in software cost when going to a new generation of mainframe might already make up for the hardware cost.

And this is the general tendency we have seen over the past years. Or should I say : tendencies. On the one hand IBM has always put effort into making the mainframe a competitive platform as compared to other, distributed environments. For a moment now, we’re ignoring all the benefits you get from the platform as is, but we’re purely focusing on the price, let’s say, on the CFO part of the business. You can make it competitive by making sure that the customer is only paying for what he is really using. On the other hand, IBM has made sure that with every new generation of the mainframe, prices were more attractive on the new system. This meant investing in new hardware paid off in the long run with economically more interesting software prices.

And there’s one more tendency, that is predominantly directing software pricing : it is IBM’s intention that you will pay less for new workloads that you introduce to the mainframe rather than installing them on the ‘cheaper’ distributed systems. This is a key factor in remaining competitive with the distributed systems.

Starting off with machine based pricing

When browsing through my (old) documentation, I keep lingering at a document from 2004, the year of the introduction of the z890 : ‘z890 and z800 Software Pricing P-Guide’. One of the first pages headlines ‘What is Sub-Capacity Pricing ?’.  In 2004 sub-capacity pricing is a new term for a pricing mechanism that was introduced for the z900. I know I’m more than generalising throughout this summary in order to give you a clear view of the bigger picture.

Up to then, software pricing was machine based. This meant there was a flat monthly pricing amount according to the model of e.g. your z800 box. But that was always a problem. You don’t buy a mainframe every year and so customers made a three or four year projection of what they needed in the next years and bought their systems accordingly. So, the first years, they only used e.g. 60% of what they had bought but they still had to pay for the entire machine.

But before I continue with this I should give you some more terminology. Software pricing is/was mainly divided into two categories : MLC (Monthly License Charge) and OTC (One Time Charge) pricing.

MLC pricing is a monthly charge you are paying in order to use IBM software. Examples of this is the operating system z/OS (OS/390 at the time) and lots of others like e.g. DB2, CICS, Cobol, IMS . . .  MLC software is paid in terms of numbers of MSUs (Million Service Units). It’s a measurement of the amount of processing work a computer can perform in one hour. This stands in close relationship to the MIPS (Million Instructions Per Second).

OTC, now better known as IPLA (International Program License Agreement), stands for a One Time Charge. You actually buy the software and you can pay an additional Subscription & Support (S&S) fee that also gives you the right to implement future versions at no extra cost. Examples are the operating system z/VM and lots of ‘tools’ like TSM, DB2 Utilities . . .

Enters Sub-capacity pricing

With VWLC (Variable Workload License Charge) IBM introduced the sub-capacity pricing for MLC. This meant that you closely came to pay what you were really using at that moment. Let me elaborate a bit on this, since this hasn’t fundamentally changed since then.

In order to detect what you are actually using, you need a reporting tool. That is SCRT (Sub Capacity Reporting Tool). It registers your usage for an entire month based on SMF records. Some softwares like e.g. z/OS and DB2 generate their own SMF records for this. Others take on the same level as e.g. z/OS. Out of that it will, per software, determine where your peak is for that software during that particular month. Now, you may argue, one test in acceptance that goes completely out of the roof might cause an enormous peak and then I’m penalized for that one moment during that month. Well, IBM took care of that.

The SCRT report determines the peak on a 4 hour rolling average. This means that it always takes an average of the past four hours to determine the height of the workload, so extreme peaks are levelled out. This is illustrated on the graph below for two LPARs. And if you want to make sure, you’re not going above a certain level you can use a mechanism that is known as capping. You can indicate that a certain LPAR (or group of LPARs) must not go beyond a defined level.

In this illustration, partition A’s peak rolling four-hour average is shown to peak at 73 MSUs, during the month. Let’s take z/OS as an example. When it would be running solely in partition A it would have its sub-capacity charges based on that 73 MSU value, although the machine capacity is at 100MSU.  Likewise, partition B’s peak rolling four-hour average is recorded at 52 MSUs. A product running solely in partition B would have its sub-capacity charges based on that 52 MSU value. But since z/OS is running in both LPARs, it will be charged at the combined peak for those LPARs i.e. 98 MSUs. Here we can also illustrate the capping mechanism again : if LPAR B is e.g. a test LPAR you might put up a capping of 45 MSUs and perhaps your combined peak might be lowered to 95 MSUs.

As you can see, the reporting and therefore also the billing is based on MSU’s.

The graph above, also shows you the pricing levels for the MSUs. It indicates that you pay a high price for the first MSU’s. This is an example for VWLC pricing when it was first introduced. The more MSUs you are reporting, the less you pay per MSU for the higher MSUs. As a matter of fact, there’s such a graph for every system and the steps for the smaller systems (z890, z114, zBC9 through z13s) tend to be much smaller. You have expensive 1-3 MSUs and from there on MSUs get less expensive in far smaller steps.

IPLA softwares also have sub-capacity pricing although there are still some softwares that are machine based.  These softwares are usually related to the reporting of some MLC software. If you have a machine of 200 MSU and you report only 150 MSU for DB2, then it’s sufficient to have bought the equivalent of that 150 MSU for the DB2 Cloning Tools or for the DB2 Utilities. 

General price decreases – Technology dividend

So, the stage is set for the following evolutions. The first action taken by IBM is a general one and I already mentioned it before. Customers want to be on a current system, but on the other hand they often postpone buying new systems since there’s no real reason for that. So, with the z990, IBM introduced what is now commonly referred to as the technology dividend. In fact it’s a very simple maneuver that stimulates every customer to at least make the calculation whether it’s beneficial for them to go to the next generation.

When I put ‘price decrease’ in the title, this is not entirely correct. For a specific generation, there’s a correlation between the number of MIPS on that machine and the number of MSUs. This used to be very static, not really changing over the generations. But for the last ten years, we started to call MSUs, software MSUs and the relation with MIPS became less evident. Let me just give you a small table and it will immediately be clear what we mean.

System	Pricing	MIPS	MSU
Z890	EWLC	200	32
Z9 BC	EWLC	200	30
Z10 BC	EWLC	200	25
Z114	AEWLC	200	25
zBC12	AEWLC	200	25
Z13s	AEWLC	200	25

For the first three generations from z890 to z10 BC, for the same amount of processing power, less MSUs were needed to cover it. So, when you had to pay for 32MSUs on a z890, this went down to 25MSs on a z10BC. And I can assure you, for a mainframe customer, this was a huge benefit on their software cost, well worth the investment in the new hardware. This technology dividend was more or less every time a 5% decrease.

From then on, we see that the correlation between MSUs and MIPS stayed the same. But with the z114 a new pricing was introduced. With AEWLC pricing you payed less per MSU as compared to the EWLC pricing on the z10 BC. Another technology dividend but implemented in a different way. And for the last two generations, we saw the same pricing mechanism, but an extra reduction was given per technology step. So, if you look up the official price for 3 MSU for z/OS, it hasn’t changed since the introduction of the z114. But, for the z13s you will have approximately a price reduction on it of about 10%.

General price decreases – New Workloads

The above are pricing decreases every customer could/can enjoy when moving on to the next technology. But, as I already said, IBM is particularly keen on getting new workloads on the mainframe and has gone into great effort doing so.

For those who are familiar with the terms, this started of with zOS.e and zNALC. zNALC is the best known of the two and is still in use nowadays. Let’s focus on that one. zNALC is a pricing mechanism for New Workloads that run on separate machines or in separate LPARs. The benefit is realized very simply : if you can prove that it’s a new workload on your mainframe, answering all the right criteria, your z/OS is only priced at a tenth of the normal pricing. This gives the customer a huge benefit on the software cost since z/OS is one of the most expensive softwares in MLC pricing.

The major drawback of this, is that it has to be a completely isolated workload in a separate environment. Well, now, that was always a bit the weak point of this solution. Say, you have all your data on the mainframe, as so many customers do, and you develop, let’s go modern, an app for your customers who can consult their accounts. What about all the other applications, running in another LPAR, that also have access to that information. This is often very difficult to integrate into your existing environment.

New Workloads – from separated to integrated

That’s why, over the years, IBM has made a lot of efforts to give you the best of both worlds : a better pricing for new workloads, but integrated into the existing environment. One of those efforts was e.g. to bring out a new pricing option for certain softwares like e.g. CICS and DB2. It’s called the Value Unit Edition and it’s basically an equivalent of IPLA software for that product. You buy it once and you pay a Subscription and Support fee for the ‘maintenance’ and the upgrades of the product. This is something every customer has to investigate whether this is beneficial for them or not. The advantage of this, is that the workload remains integrated into your existing environment.

Another initiative that could have impact on your software cost was the introduction of specialty engines. Here we can particularly focus on the zIIP. The zIIP (z Systems Integrated Information Processor) is an additional processor that is added to your system. Specific workloads are offloaded from z/OS to the zIIP. This can be specific DB2 workloads, Java, encryption or XML workloads (you can find a more extensive list over here). Here’s the illustration that is often used to illustrate how the zIIP is working

As you can see, the workload on the general processor is reduced as part of it is now executed on the zIIP. There’s an important caveat to be made here : this will only have an influence on your software cost if this happens during your peak period of the month. If so, here’s another example of how the software cost can go down due to a hardware investment.

New workloads today

Let’s finish off by having a look at the enhancements we recently saw in sub-capacity pricing. The first one was announced about two years ago, the third about two months ago. They have in common that they, again, focus on New Workloads like Mobile or Cloud.

-       Mobile Workload Pricing (MWP)
Used when IBM programs such as CICS, DB2, IMS, MQ, or WebSphere Application Server are processing mobile transactions from phones or tablets,

-       z Systems Collocated Application Pricing (zCAP)
Used when net new instances of IBM programs such as CICS, DB2, IMS, MQ, or WebSphere Application Server are added in support of a new application not previously running on a mainframe server

-       z Systems Workload Pricing for Cloud (zWPC)
Used when IBM programs such as CICS, DB2, IMS, MQ, or WebSphere Application Server are processing transactions from net new public cloud applications

The three have in common that they may reduce the cost of growth for these target applications by potentially reducing the reported peak capacity values for sub-capacity charges. This remains a constant throughout : it must have an impact on year peak reporting, otherwise you’ll see no benefit for your software cost.

Integration of new workloads into your existing environment is one thing, distinguishing which of the workload is new (e.g. mobile “coming from phones or tablets”) is another thing. So, just in case you started to think that I exaggerated at the beginning and you think software pricing isn’t all that complicated, let me explain how Mobile Workload Pricing can influence your reported peak and how the workload is recognized as ‘mobile’ workload. This gives me the opportunity to illustrate all the mechanisms I talked about earlier.

Here’s an illustration on MWP

Click on image for larger version

1. Let’s assume that we are talking about the 4hr rolling average peak for this LPAR. Normally your SCRT tool would report a peak 4hr rolling average of 1.500 MSU. That is, 1.500 for z/OS and 300 for CICS. Maybe this customer is using a zIIP which could already have an influence on the reported peak that would otherwise perhaps have been 1.800 MSUs.
2. For CICS, as we already indicated, 300MSU is reported. That means that for z/OS you will pay for 1.500 MSUs and for CICS you will pay 300 MSUs. Other softwares like DB2 have their own reporting but let’s assume they have the same MSUs as z/OS.
3. Now you have to determine which part of CICS is used for Mobile Transactions and which part is not. This can be a particularly difficult one, since the same transaction might be executed many times, but it can originate from a mobile app or perhaps also from a plain and simple terminal. This is something a customer has to agree upon with IBM and it’s based upon e.g. specific fields of SMF records
4. Based on that, you come to the conclusion that 200 out of the 300 MSUs that are reported by CICS actually have a mobile origin.
   Well, you get a reduction of 60% on that part of the CICS workload reducing that part of 200 MSUs to 80 MSUs.
5. The good news is that for that LPAR, all the software in that LPAR, including z/OS and DB2 get the same reduction. This means that the reported 1.500 MSUs is lowered to 1.380 MSUs.
6. The rest is BAU (Business As Usual), you can use this to determine the peak for that month. It is e.g. possible that at another moment your z/OS reports 1.400 MSUs at a moment that no mobile workload enters the system. This would mean that for that month your peak will be at 1.400 MSUs.

Well, this little example concludes our short walk through Software Pricing history. I might just add one source of information. There’s a very elaborate IBM internet page that explains you utterly everything about software pricing you ever wanted or, perhaps, didn’t want to know. It’s all there for you.

(This was also published in our Realdolmen z Systems newsletter)

Annual price change announcement for some z Systems MLC software

For those who missed the notice they received from IBM : here's the annual price change announcement 'Price Change(s):Price Changes in Monthly License Charges (MLC) on Selected IBM System z Software Programs (516-001)'.

As of January 1, 2016 there will be a price increase of about 4% for a list of MLC softwares. You can find the list in the announcement, but it's pretty much all the important MLC softwares that are around ranging from DB2, CICS, IMS over COBOL, PL/I up to z/OS itself.

There's a special mention for the zOS V2 SDSF feature (5650-ZOS) (so only z/OS V2) that will " increase by approximately 20%, effective January 1, 2016 and apply to all software billing metrics. This increase reflects the additional functional enhancements described in the z/OS Version 2 Release 2 Announcement letter, ZP15-0369, and planned to be available beginning September 30 2015".

Price Changes on Selected System z and zSeries Software Program Products

Well, after more than a month of silence, I'm back on my feet. I had to undergo some surgery but I've recovered well and I'm back at work. I have to wait another couple of weeks before I can start running again, but the doctor says that blogging is quite OK ;-) . So here we go again.

I'm starting off with mentioning a couple of announcements from the last month and here's the first one : 'Price Changes on Selected System z and zSeries Software Program Products (ZA15-1111)'. There's a price increase in one-time charges (OTC) and associated Subscription and Support (S&S) recurrent license charges (monthly and annually). If you have a look at the list, it's all Websphere products.

The price increases (if any) vary from country to country. So you really have to take a look at the announcement for your own country. In Belgium it's an increase of 5%. Increased recurrent licence charges will be effective with the billing  period that starts on or after August 1, 2015. The one-time charge price increases are effective August 1, 2015.

Reference Architectures for Mobile on System z

I introduced IBM Mobile Workload Pricing for z/OS some time ago and I also wrote a follow-up post on how to use the IBM Mobile Workload Tool, but now there's also a nice set of documents on TechDocs that I like to share with you. They're not about pricing, but they're about the real mobile workloads and how you can set them up. The documents are grouped under the common denominator : 'Reference Architectures for Mobile on System z' and you can find them over here.


The first 'System z Mobile Reference Architecture' provides information on standard architectures and configurations that can be used to create the infrastructure for mobile applications on System z. Some topics are Components of a mobile architecture, Mobile topology choices, MobileFirst Platform in production, MobileFirst Platform in dev/test, Scalability and performance considerations ...

The second 'System z Mobile Connectivity Guide' provides an overview and some detail on the ways mobile applications can connect to System z and System z transactions. Some topics are Summary of z mobile connectivity options including MobileFirst Platform Foundation, Details about Push Notification, IBM API Management, CICS, IMS, DB2, WMB ...

The third 'Mobile Security Guide and Security Reference Architecture' provides information on creating secure mobile application infrastructures on System z. It covers the MobileFirst security products and how those can be used to secure mobile applications on System z. This guide is meant to identify the key security components of a mobile solution, where they all run, and how they interact. It also shows examples of some specific mobile environments and how their security requirements can be met.

Get started with the IBM Mobile Workload Pricing for z/OS

A couple of months ago I wrote about the announcement of the new Mobile Workload Pricing mechnanism for z/OS. I also told you that this was going GA in July but so far I didn't see much of it on the IBM Software Pricing page I usually turn to when I'm looking for information on z/OS pricing.

So I started asking about a bit and David Chase from IBM who gave such a clarifying presentation about the topic during the System z Technical University in Budapest pointed me in the right direction. And yes, the Users Guide and the tool itself are already online. You can find the 'IBM Mobile Workload Tool' (mwrtool.exe) over here. And the 'IBM Mobile Workload Reporting Tool Users Guide' can be found over here. The Users Guide explains step by step how you have to set up the tool (on a Windows 7 64-bit), how you collect the necessary input, how you use the tool and how you submit your report to IBM.

Of course there's a bit more to this. Before you can start submitting the report be sure that you fulfill the requirements. Have a look at my previous post and the announcement to refresh your memory. And then there remains one more question : how do you separate the mobile workload from the rest. This will of course be different per customer. As a matter of fact, you are the only one who knows your shop and can determine this. And this is exactly how it will be done. You will make up a list of your mobile workload and how you can trace it. This will be the basis for an agreement you sign with IBM after a meeting with your IBM representative.

Then one more thing : what will be the benefits ? This is how I understand it for the moment. Suppose you have an LPAR running z/OS and CICS reporting 400 MSU for billing purposes. You will measure the CICS usage and let's say this is 200 MSU. The mobile part of that is e.g. 50% of that 200 MSU. You can subtract 60% from that mobile use. 60% of 100 MSU is 60 MSU so you keep 40 MSU for you mobile workload. 100 MSU plus 40 MSU means you keep 140 MSU of the original 200 MSU. But here comes the beautiful part of the system. You can subtract the 60 MSU from your billing total. So, of the originally reported 400 MSU you only keep 340 MSU for that partition. So where SCRT calculated the Rolling 4-Hour Average, MWRT will make an adjustment to that. As a matter of fact, MWRT will make this adjustment by the hour and then calculate a new Rolling 4-Hour Average. This also implies that it's not only e.g. CICS that benefits from this pricing but z/OS and other softwares as well.

So, as I said in the title of the post : Get Started !

BMC Intelligent Capping for zEnterprise and MLC pricing

I don't really have a habit of putting third party software in the spotlights but this one caught my attention, so I thought I might give you the heads up as well. I don't think I have to tell you a lot about the challenges companies are facing when it comes to MLC pricing - on whatever level through the organisation.

There's a nice video about the product but I don't know how to embed a FlashPlayer video, so click here to go and see it. It's actually quite nice with references to some sci-fi series I kind of like. A clue about the series ? If you implement this you'll live long and prosper. But let's get back to the product itself. I quote the description from the datasheet.

"BMC Intelligent Capping for zEnterprise dynamically automates and optimizes defined capacity settings to help lower mainframe MLC costs by 2 percent to 5 percent or more, while mitigating risk to the business. The solution analyzes, simulates, and automatically manages changes to defined capacity settings based on workload profiles, enabling IT staff to confidently lower costs. BMC Intelligent Capping for zEnterprise removes the manual effort from managing capping limits, while optimizing capacity usage across LPARs. The solution dynamically aligns workload allocations based on utilization needs, workload importance, and customer policy profiles".

Some features to make it a bit clearer ?

• "Capacity management – Adjusts capacity across LPARs and WLM capacity groups intelligently and automatically
• Zero balancing – Balances any increase in a capping threshold necessitated by a high-priority workload with an equivalent decrease in other LPARs or WLM groups with excess capacity
• Minimal implementation risk – Offers gradual automation and control of capacity settings with three modes: Observe, Message, and Manage
• Audit logs – Enable you to see exactly what changes are recommended and actions that are implemented over time"

Looks like an interesting product to me. If you want more information you can start over here or contact your local BMC representative. And before you ask, no, I have no commercial links to BMC. Just passing on information of which I think might be interesting to System z shops . . .

IBM Mobile Workload Pricing for z/OS

Today IBM officially announced the pricing mechanism it already revealed during the April 8 z Anniversary event : 'IBM Mobile Workload Pricing for z/OS can reduce the cost of growth for mobile transactions (ZP14-0280)'. Before giving you the details I'd like to share this video about the First National Bank of South Africa because it illustrates so clearly what mobile is all about.



Combining mobile and mainframe is answering some real concerns or requirements of companies and people using the applications. Mobile is a rapidly growing market generating lots of transactions on lots of data. And as you could see in the video the data must always be up to date. We can no longer afford to offer copies of data, so what's better than to incorporate mobile with the company's primary data. Data that's residing on the mainframe . . . where it always has been.

Now, this new pricing mechanism makes sure you're not penalized for following just that strategy. "This enhancement to sub-capacity reporting can mitigate the impact of mobile workloads on sub-capacity license charges, specifically in the cases where higher mobile transaction volumes may cause a spike in machine utilization. This can normalize the rate of transaction growth and reduce the reported peak capacity values used for sub-capacity charges".

There are some prerequisites of course : it's limited to AWLC and AEWLC pricing which means to zEC12 and zBC12 or environments that have at least one zEC12 or zBC12. You also need to install a new reporting tool that will, in this case, replace SCRT : Mobile Workload Reporting Tool (MWRT). It's use, data collection and timing of reporting is very similar to SCRT. What's the difference ?

"MWRT will calculate the 4-hour rolling average of the reported mobile transaction general purpose processor time consumed by the Mobile Workload Pricing Defining Programs and subtract 60% of those values from the traditional sub-capacity MSUs for all sub-capacity eligible programs running in the same LPAR(s) as the mobile workloads, on an hour-by-hour basis, per LPAR. The program values for the same hour are summed across all of the LPARs (and any z/OS guest systems running under z/VM®) in which the program runs to create an adjusted sub-capacity value for the program, for the given machine, for each hour. MWRT will determine the billable MSU peak for a given program on a machine using the adjusted MSU values".

You can find all additional details in the announcement itself. And . . . you have some time to figure out how things work as MWRT becomes available on June 30, 2014 and the first report can be submitted as of July 2, 2014.

Announcements on price changes for IPLA and MLC softwares on z/OS

Today IBM announced DB2 11, IMS 13 and the DB2 Analytics Accelerator for z/OS V4.1 and I'll surely return to (some of) these in later posts. But there were also a couple of announcements regarding software pricing. And don't turn away yet assuming there's another round of price increases. No there's actually good news too, this time. So, keep on reading.

About the IPLA software there's a list of Websphere products that will see an increase in Belgium of 3% starting on January 1, 2014 : 'Price Changes on Selected System z and zSeries Software Program Products (ZA13-1127)'. As you know I mainly give the details for my own country but do check out the announcement itself to see what will happen in your country.

About the MLC software there's a limited list of softwares that get the same pricing as later versions : 'Price Changes in monthly license charges (MLC) on selected IBM System z Software Products (ZA13-1128)'. We've seen this mechanism before. "With these increases, DB2 for z/OS versions 8 and 9 will cost the same as version 10, IMS versions 10 and 11 will cost the same as version 12, and Enterprise COBOL for z/OS versions 3 and 4 will cost the same as version 5".

But how about the good news then ? Well, Ray Jones (IBM) mentioned it in his keynote speech at the Total Solutions Event last week in Brussels, but here it is in this same announcement : "IBM intends to price the next upcoming version of DB2 and the next upcoming version of IMS equal to the prices of DB2 10 and IMS 12 respectively". This is actually two times good news. First of all, there's no price increase between the two releases. But there's more. When DB2 10 was announced IBM did a large effort to improve the efficiency of DB2, so that the new release not only offered new functionalities but actually consumed less resources. If this happens again with DB2 11, you actually win twice ! And, I refer to Ray Jones once again, the same will now also apply to IMS 13 where the same efforts were now also delivered by the IMS development team.
All in all, this gives you a couple of good reasons to move forward to newer versions of these software products.

Announcement : CICS Transaction Server for z/OS Value Unit Edition V5.1

Last week IBM announced CICS TS VUE pricing : 'IBM CICS Transaction Server for z/OS Value Unit Edition V5.1 offers a one-time-charge price metric for net new Java workloads (ZP13-0207)'.

We already have this type of pricing for DB2 for z/OS. It's not the simplest matter at hand and the best way to find out whether you qualify for this kind of pricing and whether it's financially interesting is to turn to your local IBM or BP representative. Belgian customers can surely turn to me for assistance in this matter.

What's it about ? Lots of softwares like e.g. z/OS, DB2 and CICS fall under MLC pricing and you pay for what's reported on your monthly SCRT report. Now, at a certain point in time, pricing for z/OS was reduced when people invested in New Workloads on System z. There were several pricing mechanisms that supported this but eventually we now still have zNALC pricing (New Application License Charge). As a rule of thumb you can say that z/OS costs about one tenth of the regular price in a zNALC LPAR.

Other initiatives followed to further encourage New Workload on System z. A couple of years ago DB2 for z/OS VUE (Value Unit Edition) was introduced. Instead of through MLC pricing, DB2 VUE was handled through IPLA pricing. IPLA pricing is perhaps still better known as OTC or One Time Cost pricing. It means you once buy a number of Value Units for that particular software. There are several exhibits and according to the applicable exhibit the Value Units represent a certain number of MSUs. You are then entitled to use that number of MSUs for this software. And that's it. No more monthly payments. Unless you're interested in support or a free upgrade path to future releases and versions. Then you can pay for Subscription & Support.

Well now, CICS TS VUE also follows this mechanism and it should be less expensive than the regular CICS TS pricing. But before you want to convert all your CICS TS licenses to CICS TS VUE you must know there are restrictions : it's for eligible workloads that are deployed in a qualified zNALC LPAR. "Eligible Workload is defined as net new Java workload that executes within the CICS TS VUE Java Virtual Machine (JVM) server environment, on condition that the workload is qualified and approved through the zNALC qualification process. The OTC price metric provides an alternative pricing model for new CICS Java applications and new CICS Java-based, service enablement workloads".
Further requirements are z/OS V1.13 and the minimum required level of Java is IBM 64-bit SDK for z/OS, Java Technology Edition, V7 SR1.

Announcement : General Price Action on System z Software

Here's the annual EMEA announcement for the MLC software price changes. They become effective July 1, 2013 : 'General Price Action on System z, zSeries and S/390 Software Program Products (ZA13-1001)'. The same reason as always : "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 countries within EMEA and also versus US prices, IBM has decided to adjust prices accordingly."

There's a new element however. We do no longer talk about 'price changes'. "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". A bit of a laconic explanation follows : "For each price point for which the price will be reduced, the applicable reduction will not exceed 2%. Likewise, for each price point for which the price will be increased, the price increase for the impacted MLC prices will not exceed 5%".

The following softwares are excluded : IMS V9 through V12 and CICS TS V3 and V4.

Much ado about Nothing . . . euh . . . FWLC

I was going to write my year review, yes there's one coming up and I wanted to refer to the FWLC price raise that IBM announced a couple of months ago. But now I see this story popping up again in other year reviews and I do not totally agree with everything I read. I might be looking at this from a more European, or even Benelux, point of view, but still . . .

When I first read the articles and all the excitement about an announcement of a 10% price raise for FWLC softwares (American version 2012 (312-129)), I just thought : no big deal, we had ours last year (EMEA version 2011 (ZA11-1013)) that also bluntly announced that 10% raise. 'Oh well', I thought 'most of the mainframe watchers are focused on American announcements, they just missed this one here in Europe'. I also noticed they did not interpret the announcement all that correctly but what the heck. As I already said : much ado about nothing. I'll tell you why in a minute. But then in December there was another European announcement (ZA12-1087) once again announcing a 10% raise on all FWLC software. Hey, that's adding up to let's say 20%. So I started searching the announcements and found out that there had been the exact same announcement for the United States in January 2011 (311-002). Why no one mentioned it back then ? I don't know.

But why am I not al that worried about it ?

First of all FWLC is a pricing mechanism which has a flat monthly rate per server independent of its capacity. But, perhaps more important, it's only applicable to let's say Enterprise Class machines and sysplex pricing : VWLC and AWLC for most customers nowadays.
Customers on smaller systems having EWLC and AEWLC pricing do not even have FWLC pricing. So when I read that customers that are still on older machines running this old software are the first victims of this, I tend to disagree. These are usually small customers who do no longer update their systems ànd who are usually on small systems, hence, nót having FWLC pricing. So who stays : large customers and sysplex customers. But there again it will only be the larger customers as smaller customers who run sysplexes on BC machines are often cheaper off paying each machine separately with EWLC or AEWLC pricing.
Since this mainly effects larger customers I cannot imagine that lots of those customers, who still invest largely in mainframe technology will have many of these older softwares running.

Secondly, what about the 10% price raise ? Well, I checked it and it's actually correct. Customers will see a 10% price raise on their software stack . . . at least on their FWLC softwares. So, when I read in some year review that software prices for mainframe customers will raise with 10%, that is definitely not the case.  I've checked a number of software stacks and the maximum percentage of FWLC software I found for a customer was about 4% of the total bill. So . . . in reality we're speaking of a raise on the total bill of maximum 0.4% instead of 10%. Hey, now I can even live with the 20% I just mentioned.

So, you know I usually can be critical about price 'changes' by IBM, but not really about this one. Unless the American market is entirely different. But then again why did no one mention it last year ?

Price changes for some OTC softwares

Yesterday IBM made the following announcement : 'Price Changes on Selected System z and zSeries Software Program Products (ZA12-1059)'. This is a price increase for OTC softwares and their associated Subscription and Support (S&S) recurrent license charges (monthly and annually).

As far as I can see this is just an EMEA announcement and Belgian customers should expect an increase of 3%. This will be effective "with the billing period that starts on or after January 1, 2013".

The products ? I see lots of Websphere products, some DB2 tools and some other like IBM Tivoli Storage Productivity Center for Replication for System z, IBM Tivoli System Automation for z/OS and IBM ISPF Productivity Tool for z/OS.
For the entire list you'll have to take a look at the announcement itself.

Price changes for some CICS and IMS versions

On September 1, 2012 IBM announced some price changes. The first one is for CICS : ‘Price Changes on IBM CICS Transaction Server for z/OS V3 and V4 Software Program Products (ZA12-1058)’. Effective with the billing period that starts on or after July 1, 2013, the monthly license charges (MLC) will increase for the following programs and its features : CICS Transaction Server for z/OS Version 3 and CICS Transaction Server for z/OS Version 4. In the meantime IBM also makes the intention to keep supporting CICS TS V3.2 until at least 3Q 2014 and CICS TS V4.2 until at least 3Q 2017.
In general, EMEA prices for these recurring charges (MLC) will increase by 9%.

Another announcement was about IMS : ‘Price Changes on IBM IMS V9 and V10 Database Manager and Transaction Manager Software Program Products (ZA12-1054)’. Effective with the billing period that starts on or after January 1, 2013, the monthly license charges (MLC) will increase for the following programs IMS V9 Database Manager, IMS V9 Transaction Manager, IMS V10 Database Manager, IMS V10 Transaction Manager. IMS V9 will be priced consistent with the price of IMS V10 today, and IMS V10 will be priced consistent with the price of IMS V11.
“Average VWLC and AWLC increases for a 500 MSU configuration will be within a bandwidth of +9% to +11%, depending on the program product and the country. Average EWLC and AEWLC increases for a 150 MSU configuration will be within a bandwidth of +8% to +10% depending on the program product and the country” (< EMEA Newsletter).

The new IBM zEnterprise EC12 - A technical introduction

General Introduction

Ok, ok, I’ll anticipate a bit. I’m sure some of you will remark when they’ve read through this : is that all ? Does that justify a new System z announcement ? IBM zAware, Flash Express, some kind of discount on the MLC pricing and … oh, that’s it ? Well, I guess it is. Or not ? It's definitely not what people at IBM will tell you when you make this remark. They really invested a lot of money and people into this system and it really has a lot more to offer than you would think at first sight.
Well, you know what, let me walk you through it and at the end you can let me know which side you are choosing.

The new system that’s being announced today is the zEnterprise EC12 or zEC12 (machine type 2827) : ‘The IBM zEnterprise EC12 - proven hybrid computing designed to manage multiple workloads, with the simplicity of a single system (ZG12-0262)’. Although dimensions haven’t really changed, the zEnterprise has a completely new look.

Click on image for larger version

What about the name ? If you follow the logic of the zEnterprise z196, this should be the zEnterprise z2A1, but it isn’t. It’s the zEnterprise EC12. zEnterprise is clear, this is the new brand name since it was introduced in 2010. Apparently EC pops up again for the Enterprise Class Models. And we seem to have picked up the count again where we left off after the z10, skipping 11 and now resuming at 12. Hence : zEnterprise EC12 or zEC12. Thank God IBM keeps its naming conventions transparent.

I’ll first give you the general technical details. Then we’ll have a look under the covers with some special attention to connectivity and physical planning. Then we move on to the new features : Flash Express and IBM zAware. Other topics covered are Operating Systems, zBX, the HMC, software pricing, Statements of Direction, documentation and some key dates.

Technical specifications

Let’s start by giving you an overview of the most important technical specifications with all new elements indicated in blue.

Click on image for larger version

Models and sub-capacity settings

Similar to the z196 the zEC12 has four regular models and one large sized model : H20, H43, H66, H89 and HA1 (the ‘A’ standing for ‘10’, so ‘A1’ stands for ‘101’). For the regular models, every book has 27 PUs with the HA1 each book has 30 PUs.
There are 2 spares designated per system. We see 4 SAPs per book. So if we take e.g. the H20 with 27 PUs, we subtract the 4 SAPs and the 2 spare processors, that leaves us with, hey, 21 PUs. Well, each system has 1 PU which is reserved for future use. And, no, don’t ask, I really don’t know what it will be used for. As usual processors can be defined as Central Processors (CPs), ICFs, IFLs, zAAPs zIIPs and optionally as additional SAPs.
A full processor (the 701 or a specialty engine) has a capacity of 1.514 mips as opposed to 1.202 on the z196. We have again three sub-capacity levels (4-, 5, -6) now for up to 20 CPs.

The zEC12 supports two different internal I/O infrastructures : the InfiniBand I/O infrastructure first introduced on the z10 supporting the 6 GBps InfiniBand I/O interconnect and the PCI Express Generation 2 (PCIe Gen2) I/O infrastructure introduced with z196 and z114 supporting the 8 GBps PCIe I/O interconnect. Only the last one is available on new systems.

Memory

In general we have the same RAIM Memory design as introduced on the z196. The system minimum is 32 GB and goes up to 768 GB per book and up to 3 TB for the entire system. This means the same maximum as on the z196. You can go up to 1 TB per LPAR. The fixed HSA is now set at 32 GB.

Where are the improvements ?
First of all the Out of Order core execution has become more performant than on the z196. There’s the introduction of 2 GB page frames, increasing efficiency for DB2 buffer pools, Java heap and other large structures. Decimal format conversions enable broader exploitation of Decimal Floating Point facility by COBOL programs.

And there’s the improved cache, too. A small comparison :

z196

• L1 private 64k i, 128k d
• L2 private 1.5 MB
• L3 shared 24 MB / chip
• L4 shared 192 MB / book

zEC12

• L1 private 64k i, 96k d
• L2 private 1 MB i + 1 MB d
• L3 shared 48 MB / chip
• L4 shared 384 MB / book

And next to that, there’s the additional Flash Express, which I will discuss later in this post.

Processor speed

Processor speed has now gone from 5.2GHz on the z196 to 5.5GHz on the zEC12

 

Click on image for larger version

 Upgrades

In short you can upgrade from any z10 EC or any z196 to a zEC12.

When a z196 with a zBX is upgraded to a zEC12, the zBX Model 002 is converted to a Model 003. Mind you, this takes a considerable amount of additional planning. So be sure to walk this through with BP or IBM Subject Matter Experts.

Under the covers

Here’s a picture of how an air cooled model might look like on the inside

Click on image for larger version

The cooling has been changed for this new system. As far as I understand it for the moment, you have ‘fill and drain’ kits for both air and water cooled models. The radiator is filled with some kind of cooling fluid which is used for cooling the cores in the book. This fluid is cooled with water in the water cooled models and with air in the air cooled models. It’s an entirely new system which is completely incompatible with the z196.

Drawers and connectivity

Must I remind you of the fact that ESCON is no longer supported ?
Let’s have a look at the other card types.

FICON

Well, nothing spectacular concerning FICON. The FICON-Express8 card can be carried forward and the FICON-Express8S card for the PCIe drawer was already available. There is some improvement with zHPF as the 64k byte limit is eliminated allowing the card to fully exploit its available bandwidth.

OSA-Express

There’s now also a new OSA-Express4S 1000Base-T card for the PCIe I/O drawer.

The card has 2 ports accounting for 1 CHPID.

There’s nothing much to tell about the other OSA-Express cards. It’s pretty straightforward as already saw on the illustration above.

Crypto-Express

The new Crypto Express4S card has one adapter per feature and you initially have to order two features. There are three configuration options for this PCIe adapter, but only one configuration option can be chosen at any given time. Switching between configuration modes will erase all 'card secrets'. The three options are : Accelerator, Secure IBM CCA coprocessor (default) and IBM Enterprise PKCS #11 (EP11) coprocessor, which is new.

Just a final remark on connectivity in general : there are limitations on carrying forward I/O cages and drawers. A maximum of 45 Non-PCIe Feature Cards can be carried forward following strict rules. So, do your planning carefully if you still have a lot of these cards.

Physical Planning

Measurements, weight, clearance

As far as I can see, as good as no changes regarding the footprint. There will apparently be identical floor cutouts for the zEC12 as for the z196 with no significant increase in weight. The depth of the system with covers will increase by 64 mm or 2.52 inches.

Top exit power cabling and non-raised floor option

The overhead Power option is shipped separately and installed on-site to allow for door clearance. In some cases this can avoid ordering the machine with height reduction saving the IBM CE some extra work.

The only thing for which there is no overhead support is for the water supply on water cooled systems. So it also speaks for itself that for the new non-raised floor models, only air cooled systems will be available.

Let’s move on to the really new features now.

Really New 1 : Flash Express

As a picture tells more than a thousand words, I guess this illustration shows you immediately what Flash Express is about :

Flash Express is used to deliver a new tier of memory, which is indeed slower than real memory but which is a lot faster than external disk. So, Flash Express introduces Solid State Drive (SSD) technology to the zSeries family. An operating system, such as z/OS, will be able to access blocks of flash storage as storage locations within a logical partition.

The main application of internal Flash in the zEC12 GA-1 is paging store for z/OS. z/OS paging subsystem will work with a mix of internal Flash and External Disk. This leads to improved paging performance realized through a simplified configuration. That way Flash Express can improve availability and reduce latency during transition periods and spikes. It helps accelerate start of day processing. It enables faster snapshots of diagnostics (e.g. SVC dump, standalone dump).


With pageable large (1MB) pages it can improve performance of DB2 and Java making it also ideal for applications with random read access and high read/write ratios.


Flash Express is implemented via NAND Flash SSDs (Solid State Drives) mounted in PCIe Flash Express feature cards.

They plug into PCIe I/O drawers in pairs. They are cabled together to form a Raid 10 Mirror for redundancy thus providing 1.6 TB of storage.

A maximum of 4 pairs is allowed per system.

Internal Flash is accessed using the new System z architected EADM (Extended Asynchronous Data Mover) Facility, an extension of the ADM architecture used in the past with expanded storage. Definition in IOCDS is not required.

You assign flash memory to partitions like main memory by minimum/maximum memory amount, not by feature. Each partition’s flash memory is isolated like main memory. You can dynamically increase the partition maximum amount of flash or dynamically configure flash memory into and out of the partition.

For the moment Flash Express is only used by z/OS 1.13 (4 GB LPAR or larger) plus PTFs. In the future it may also be exploited by Linux on System z … For availability, check the key dates below.

Really New 2 : IBM zAware

IBM zAware grew from the awareness (no pun intended) that systems are changing very fast and are gradually getting more and more complex. It becomes a real challenge to detect problems soon enough before they cascade and lead to system failures at some or other point. The challenge lies in the ability to identify the causes of system anomalies and other problems proactively and repair them as quickly as possible, within SLA conditions before the system lets you down. That’s why IBM developed IBM zAware (IBM System z Advanced Workload Analysis Reporter).

Here’s an illustration of how IBM zAware monitors your sysplex(es).

Click on image for larger version

Let’s have a look at the several components on this picture. IBM zAware is running in its own LPAR (on a CP or an IFL), kind of acting as e.g. a coupling facility does. Therefore it is also defined from the HMC. So it needs its own memory as well and this is estimated to start at 4GB and an additonal 200MB per monitored system. It also requires its own DASD and connectivity via HiperSockets or OSA ports. It can monitor any System z Server running z/OS 1.13 + PTFs. However, it can only run on a zEC12.

IBM zAware goes through massive amounts of OPERLOG messages (including all z/OS console message, ISV and application generated messages) and turns this into useful information. It creates a 90 days baseline. Starting from this baseline it performs machine learning, pattern recognition, and statistical analysis on the new streaming messages. It looks for unexpected patterns detecting unusual behavior of z/OS images in near real time.
The results are presented in a single browser based view showing the health of your Parallel Sysplex via a relative weighting and color coding as you can see in the example below.

The colors give you an indication on the timeline of possible problems with their weight and you can drill down on any problem (color) in order to get more details about it.
IBM zAware can also provide information in XML format that can feed other processes or tools.

There are some overlaps with other products like e.g. z/OS Health Checker, z/OS PFA and z/OS RTD. Still it goes one step further because it’s a self learning pattern based message analysis tool able to diagnose complex z/OS problems across your sysplex reporting problems that might bring down your system(s).

IBM zAware is a fee-based feature based upon the number of z/OS images it is monitoring. The good news : IBM zAware licenses for DR machines are included in the base purchase, so no extra cost there.

Operating Systems

z/OS Support Plan :

• z/OS V1R10 with PTFs (Toleration, Lifecycle Extension Required)
• z/OS V1R11 with PTFs (Toleration, Lifecycle Extension required)
• z/OS V1R12 with PTFs (Exploitation of some functions like e.g. Crypto Express4S)
• z/OS V1R13 with PTFs (Exploitation of most functions plus Flash Express and IBM zAware Support)
• z/OS V2.1 with Full Exploitation in base

z/VM Support Plan :

• z/VM 5.4, 6.1, and 6.2 will support zEC12 in compatibility mode with PTFs
• Exploitation support to be provided with z/VM 6.3 (to GA after zEC12)

z/VSE Support Plan:

• z/VSE plans to provide compatibility support at zEC12 GA1 for:
• z/VSE 4.3 with PTFs
• z/VSE 5.1 with PTFs

Linux for System z Support Plan :

• IBM intends to support zEC12 with the following distributions:
• SUSE SLES 10 and SLES 11
• Red Hat RHEL 5 and RHEL 6

zBX and hybrid computing

General

When you take a look at the zBX Model 003, apparantly there was no money left to do a restyling for this box too. As a matter of fact, when you take a closer look at new functionalities or features, there’s nothing much that really accounts for introducing a new model at all. There’s no big deal happening under the covers either. To put it bluntly : no new types of blades (not even for the DataPower XI50z), just some extra connectivity for redundancy and throughput reasons, and that’s about it. Does that justify the extra amount of planning and work it takes for the forced upgrade from model 002 to model 003 when upgrading to a zEC12. I’m just not sure about it.

So what ís new here ?
For the Unified Resource Manager dynamic discovery and configuration of storage is added. There’s a fulfillment of the statement of direction to implement new Unified Resource Manager APIs to enable discovery, monitoring and management of ensemble resources using external tools. As an example, IBM Tivoli is using these APIs.

For connectivity the 10 Gb cables between BladeCenter 10Gb switch and 10 Gb TOR (Top of Rack) switch are doubled enabling a potential of 20 Gb Ethernet bandwidth via link aggregation.

By the way, if you should have a IBM Smart Analytics Optimizer (ISAOPT), it is no longer supported on the Model 003. You will have to migrate to the IBM DB2 Analytics Accelerator (IDAA) which is the separate Netezza box. If this was all you were running on the zBX, you probable won’t even need a Model 003.

I’ll finish this part with a spark of good news : at least there is no cost for upgrading from Model 002 to Model 003 and transferring zManager from z196 to zEC12.

And of course the zEnterprise keeps its enormous wealth of possibilities that were already introduced since it's first announcement back in 2010.

Operating system support on zBX

Support for Linux environments on System x blades in zBX

• 64-bit version support only
• Red Hat RHEL 5.5, 5.6, 5.7, 6.0 6.1
• SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 10 (SP4) and SLES 11 SP1

Support for Windows environments on System x blades in zBX

• Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 and Microsoft Windows Server 2008 (SP2)
• For either Windows the Datacenter Edition is recommended

Support of AIX environments on POWER7 blades in zBX

• AIX: AIX 5.3 Technology Level 12 or higher,
• AIX 6.1 Technology Level 5 or higher, AIX 7.1

HMC

It’s simple : only HMCs with feature code FC0091 are allowed on the zEC12. When carrying them forward previously supplied FC 0091 consoles are upgraded to the newly required 16 GB with Driver Level 12 adding an additional 8GB to them. FC0091 shipped prior to zEC12 have only 8GB.

For those still using dial up connections : HMC application LIC for zEC12 and zBX Model 3 will NOT support dial modem use. Modems on installed HMC FC0091 hardware will no longer work and future HMCs will no longer have modem hardware.

Another point of attention : the HMC LAN switch (FC0070) which could be supplied with former systems is no longer provided. They can be carried forward or the customer must acquire the switches separately to implement the required HMC LAN connectivity.

Related announcement : 'Hardware Withdrawal: Hardware Management Console (HMC) (ZG12-0244)'

Software Pricing

The software pricing is pretty straightforward this time. It may come as a surprise, but the pricing metric remains the same for MLC : AWLC. Still, there’s a benefit of on average 5%. How is it realized ? Quite simple, there’s a reduction on some softwares depending on the MSUs.

Let me give you an example. You have a zEC12 with a machine capacity of 1.500 MSUs and your SCRT reports 1.300 MSUs for z/OS and in a smaller partition 300 MSUs for Cobol. Well, it’s not the reported MSUs that count. Since your machine has 1.500 MSUs, you’ll get a reduction compared to the z196 of 5% on those softwares. So, no need to make elaborate calculations starting with 2% on the first 45 MSUs, then 4% from 46 to 315. No, plain and simple 5% because the machine has 1500 MSUs. You see, even software pricing can be easy from time to time.

More information on software pricing can be found in a separate announcement : 'Technology Update Pricing for AWLC offers price-performance advantages for IBM zEnterprise EC12 servers (ZP12-0418)'. Here you also find the list of software to which the reduction is applicable. Transition offerings are available for mixed sysplex environments.

Statements of direction

The zEC12 will be the last high server to support connections to an STP Mixed CTN. This includes the Sysplex Timer(R) (9037): After zEC12, servers that require time synchronization, such as to support a base or Parallel Sysplex(R), will require Server Time Protocol (STP), and all servers in that network must be configured in STP-only mode.    

Removal of support for Ethernet half-duplex operation and 10 Mbps link data rate: The OSAExpress4S 1000BASE-T Ethernet feature is planned to be the last copper Ethernet feature to support halfduplex operation and a 10 Mbps link data rate. The zEC12 servers are planned to be the last IBM System z servers to support half-duplex operation and a 10 Mbps link data rate for copper Ethernet environments.   

Removal of ISC-3 support on System z: The zEC12 is planned to be the last high-end System z server to offer support of the InterSystem Channel-3 (ISC-3) for Parallel Sysplex environments at extended distances. ISC-3 will not be supported on future high-end System z servers as carry forward on an upgrade.  
The same applies for OSA-Express3 support and FICON Express4 support.


IBM System z Integrated Information Processor (zIIP) and IBM System z Application Assist Processor (zAAP) simplification: IBM zEnterprise EC12 is planned to be the last high-end System z server to offer support for zAAP specialty engine processors. IBM intends to continue support for running zAAP workloads on zIIP processors ("zAAP on zIIP"). This is intended to help simplify capacity planning and performance management, while still supporting all the currently eligible workloads. In addition, IBM plans to provide a PTF for APAR OA38829 on z/OS V1.12 and V1.13 in September 2012 to remove the restriction that prevents zAAP-eligible workloads from running on zIIP processors when a zAAP is installed on the server.

Documentation

IBM Announcement page.
Here you'll also find more product details, the data sheet and an elaborate FAQ, which also gives you an idea of some price features

The Technical manuals will be available in the Library section of Resourcelink.

Two redbook drafts are available : the IBM zEnterprise EC12 Technical Introduction and the IBM zEnterprise EC12 Technical Guide.

I'll come back with a larger overview as soon as all documentation is fully available.

Key Dates

August 28, 2012 :

• Announcement Day
• First Day Orders for GA Systems

September 4, 2012

• zEC12 Models H20, H43, H66, H89, and HA1
• z10 EC and z196 upgrades
• z196 with zBX model 002 upgrades to zNext with zBX model 003
• IBM zAware
• Flash Express - orderable August 28, 2012, and deliverable September 19, 2012. Planned availability of z/OS exploitation of functionality is December 14, 2012

December 7, 2012

• Model conversions for IBM zEnterprise EC12

December 14, 2012

• z/OS V1.13 support for Flash Express available at http://www.ibm.com/systems/z/os/zos/downloads/

December 31, 2012

• MES features for Models H20, H43, H66, H89, and HA1

1Q2013

• zBX model 003 move from one zNext to another zNext
• z/OS support for 2 GB large pages and dynamic reconfiguration for Flash Express

And to wrap things all nicely up, here's a video that walks you through all components of the new system