By Insight UK / 7 Nov 2023 / Topics: Software Asset Management (SAM) Software
Impact to your business – Annual records and maintenance renewals:
• You need to maintain an annual record and must establish a licensing baseline, backed up with audit quality deployment data that can be provided within 30 days of IBM’s request.
• Software maintenance renewals (Subscription and Support). If you want to reduce the number of licenses under support, you will need to prove that you have reduced the software usage 30 days prior to renewal. If not, then you cannot reduce quantities, and will have to pay the 24% price increase on your subscription and support you're not using too.
Effective Timeline – 1st May 2023
According to IBM, they state in version 11 of the IPAA “For existing Clients, the effective date of new IPAA terms will be three months following the document publish date and changes are not retroactive. Changes will apply, as of the effective date, to new orders and renewals. Client accepts changes by placing new orders or allowing transactions to renew after the effective date of the new IPAA terms”.
February 1st, 2023 for new PA Agreements and PA Express transactions, May 1st 2023 for the majority of PA Agreements that existed before February 1st, 2023.
The announced changes will significantly affect your software license compliance obligations, putting more burden on your teams. You will need to fully understand the impacts of these changes to your business, both from a financial and operational risk perspective.
Reporting and compliance
The onus is on you to provide the new mandatory compliance report as stated in “Section 4.1a” above. Many organisations will struggle to provide the appropriate licence reconciliation against the deployed data they have. You need to ensure your IBM License Metric Tool (ILMT) is configured correctly and check the reporting data for accuracy. In many cases we have seen that ILMT is not configured correctly and the reconciled data is inaccurate, ILMT is an IBM provided tool and as such will always favour IBM.
Software & Subscription renewals
If you want to reduce the number subscriptions, you will now have to provide the required documentation verifying current use and installations 30 days prior to renewal. You have to allow enough time prior to renewal to understand your effective license position and carry out any remediation to reduce your compliance risk exposure
Underestimate the complexities and time required to produce the required reports, and licensing position at your peril. You would put IBM in the driving seat and leave yourself open to non-compliant audit penalties whilst paying more for the software you are actually using.
Our IBM optimisation and governance experts have detailed knowledge and experience with IBM’s licensing contracts, commercial terms and ILMT.
We help organisations setup, configure and maintain an effective ILMT to support gathering the right data. We will normalise the data, provide analysis, advice and guidance to support you in really optimising your IBM agreements.
If you’re unsure or need help in any aspect of your IBM agreements, contact me to discuss further.
