Eight Critical Forces Shaping Data Center Strategy
BMC Software has extended its efforts to help IT organizations keep their mainframe software licensing fees under control to now include DB2, IMS and IBM CICS transaction processing software.
The BMC Subsystem Optimizer Software for zEnterprise mainframes allows IT organizations to run DB2, IMS and CICS on separate logical partitions (LPARs). Because IBM charges many customers based on peak usage of an LPAR, BMC claims customers can reduce their licensing costs by as much as 20 to 30 percent if they run these IBM subsystems on separate LPARs.
The BMC Subsystem Optimizer software redirects traffic to the different LPARs as appropriate, while optimizing the configuration of transaction processing applications.
Bill Miller, president of the zSolutions and Select Technologies within BMC Software, says that while many mainframes are being replaced by x86 servers, it’s in the interest of the mainframe community to make sure that the total cost of operating a mainframe remains as low as possible. To that end, Miller says since going private, BMC has created two separate groups with the company. The mainframe group, says Miller, is focused squarely on building tools that reduce IBM software licensing costs as much as possible, while the other arm of BMC focuses on distributed systems.
IBM, of course, may not appreciate the way BMC is going about trying to make sure the mainframe stays relevant. But all things considered, lowering the cost of IBM mainframe licensing fees is clearly better than getting rid of mainframes altogether.
