Have you ever been frustrated by the disconnect between MSUs and Dollars (or Euro or Yen or Pesos or whatever)? I expect that many of us have been in the position of trying to explain why reducing your z/OS workload by 10% will not reduce your software bill by 10%. Or, conversely, that increasing your workload by 10% will not increase your software bill by 10%. We know that the change will be less than 10%, but trying to put a precise number on exactly how much the difference will be is not a trivial exercise. And without precise numbers, you are already on the losing side of the argument.
Another case might be where your company is considering implementing Mobile Workload Pricing. You know that IBM’s recent performance recommendations have been to minimize the number of CICS regions (because that gives you a better RNI). But your procurement colleague heard that you can get a bigger discount if you use dedicated CICS regions for your mobile transactions. Both of you are right, but without a tool to help you estimate the financial cost of both approaches, which option do you choose?
While you are mulling over this, your manager rushes into your office with a pale face to tell you that he just heard that you are about to have a software audit. Why is he pale? Because his peer in another company was provided with ‘an opportunity to pursue other career options’ after they failed an audit and had to pay the vendor millions of dollars in penalties. As he glances around nervously, he asks “we do have all the contracts and addendums and all our SMF data for the last year, don’t we?”
It is precisely for these reasons that Watson & Walker announced a new service offering called SCRTPro today. Cheryl and I are both techies at heart, but we realize that hard cash is what controls business decisions. We also understand how mind-bendingly complex mainframe software pricing is. The SCRTPro service includes a monthly review of your SCRT data by our software pricing experts. Before you even send your data to IBM, we can tell you how much your bill is going to be. We help you identify out-of-line situations that might impact your bill – did you have a looping program that drove up your peak Rolling 4-Hour Average? Did someone run a program in a system where it should not have run? Did you remember to adjust your NO89 statements after you removed some no-longer-used product? We also review your systems to ensure that you are exploiting all the available hardware and software technology that can help you minimize your peak MSUs. And we discuss IBM’s latest software pricing options with you to determine which ones are applicable to your environment.
If this sounds like a service that might be valuable to your company, click here for more information. And if you are attending SHARE, attend Cheryl’s Vendor session 20828 SCRTPro – A New Offering to Contain z/OS Software Costs in room 210H on Tuesday at 1:45, or drop by our booth in the Technology Expo for a personal demo by Cheryl.