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.