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Sub-capacity

Sub-capacity is a discount
you re-earn every thirty minutes.

PVU and Virtual Processor Core metrics, an ILMT connector with compliance gap analysis, and Component Resolution that matches deployed components to products with a scored, bulk-appliable suggestion, plus the inventory cycle sub-capacity licensing actually requires.

Answered on one platform. One data model across ITAM, SAM, SaaS, Cloud and AI.

IBM sub-capacity

Illustrative

WebSphere deployment · PVU metric

ILMT connected · compliance gap analysis

Inventory cycle the sub-capacity requirement
≤ 30 min · met
Sub-capacity PVUs partition-level entitlement
1,400
Full-capacity equivalent what you owe if the cycle lapses
3,200
ILMT reporting gaps agents installed but not reporting
2 hosts
Unresolved components deployed, awaiting a product match
12

Component Resolution

86 scored suggestions, bulk-appliable

The problem

IBM does not audit your installs. It audits your evidence.

Sub-capacity licensing is a conditional discount. The conditions are procedural, continuous, and the first thing an audit tests.

  1. 01 the fallback is brutal

    Miss the measurement obligation and the basis reverts to full capacity.

    Licensing then covers every core in the frame. Across a large LPAR footprint that is a step change in cost, and it is applied retrospectively.

    Inventory cycle enforced at the 30-minute sub-capacity requirement SAM

  2. 02 eight weeks of silence

    ILMT is installed and you are still not compliant.

    An agent that stopped reporting eight weeks ago looks fine on a deployment report and is a gap in the record IBM will ask for. Nobody notices a silence.

    ILMT connector with compliance gap analysis SAM

  3. 03 which product is this?

    A component was installed. Nobody can say which product entitles it.

    IBM software arrives as components bundled into products, and the same component can belong to several. Resolving hundreds of them by hand is the reason IBM positions take months.

    Component Resolution matching deployed components to products with a scored, bulk-appliable suggestion SAM

  4. 04 the partition moved

    The LPAR that was 4 cores last month is 12 cores now.

    Capacity changes are routine and licensable. If the topology behind the position is a diagram somebody drew, the position is wrong the first time an administrator resizes anything.

    IBM HMC ITAM

  5. Sub-capacity is only worth having if you can evidence it continuously, on demand, going backwards.

Recognition

The only vendor named Customers’ Choice in the 2024 Gartner® Peer Insights™ Voice of the Customer for Software Asset Management Tools.

Customers’ Choice in the category: 2019, 2020, 2021, 2024

Read the announcement

GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark, and PEER INSIGHTS is a trademark and service mark, of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and are used herein with permission. All rights reserved. Gartner Peer Insights content consists of the opinions of individual end users based on their own experiences and should not be construed as statements of fact, nor do they represent the views of Gartner or its affiliates.

How it is actually done

How the IBM position is built.

Measure at the cadence IBM requires, resolve what was found, then keep the evidence where an auditor can reach it.

  1. Inventory the frames and partitions

    AIX as a first-class operating system, and the hypervisor topology under it.

    • Native inventory agent for Windows, macOS, Linux, AIX, HP-UX and Solaris ITAM
    • IBM HMC ITAM
    • Agentless and command-line inventory (csinvcli) for locked-down environments ITAM
  2. Meet the measurement obligation

    The cadence is the control. Everything else follows from having met it.

    • Inventory cycle enforced at the 30-minute sub-capacity requirement SAM
    • ILMT connector with compliance gap analysis SAM
    • PVU and Virtual Processor Core metrics SAM
  3. Resolve components to products

    The part of an IBM position that consumes months, scored and applied in bulk.

    • Component Resolution matching deployed components to products with a scored, bulk-appliable suggestion SAM
    • Software Recognition Database with centrally maintained title categorisation SAM
    • Publisher normalisation and version recognition SAM
  4. Compute and evidence the position

    Continuous, with the trail that makes a sub-capacity claim defensible in retrospect.

    • Effective Licence Position: purchased, used, available, required, variance, exposure SAM
    • Continuous compliance position rather than point-in-time reconciliation SAM
    • Audit trail across agreements, transactions and exclusions SAM
    • Licences, transactions, agreements, maintenance, suppliers and publishers SAM

Ask to see any one of these running in the product itself, on the screen where it happens.

The licence model

The IBM licence model, term by term.

IBM exposure is procedural before it is arithmetic. Each row is a condition of the discount you are already claiming.

PVU

How the publisher counts Processor Value Units price a core by processor family, so the same core count costs differently on different hardware.

What the engine does PVU metric supported directly, with the processor detail that determines the rate.

Virtual Processor Core

How the publisher counts Newer products licence by virtual core, counted per partition.

What the engine does Virtual Processor Core metrics supported alongside PVU on the same infrastructure.

Sub-capacity eligibility

How the publisher counts Partition-level licensing is conditional on continuous, tool-generated measurement.

What the engine does The 30-minute inventory cycle sub-capacity licensing requires, enforced and visible.

ILMT

How the publisher counts IBM expects ILMT data, and a deployed agent that has gone quiet is a gap in that record.

What the engine does ILMT connector with compliance gap analysis, so silence is surfaced as a finding.

Component Resolution

How the publisher counts Software arrives as components bundled into products, and one component can belong to several.

What the engine does Deployed components matched to products with a scored suggestion you can apply in bulk.

AIX and LPAR topology

How the publisher counts Entitlement follows partitions, and partitions are resized routinely by people who do not licence them.

What the engine does Native AIX agent and IBM HMC integration, so every capacity change is inventoried.

Bundling and entitlement

How the publisher counts What you bought and what got installed are described in different vocabularies.

What the engine does Agreements, transactions and maintenance held against the resolved products, with a full audit trail.

Every capability in the right-hand column ships in the CerteroX SAM IBM engine.

The end state

What good looks like.

IBM done properly is quiet. That is the whole benefit.

  1. 01

    The measurement cadence is a monitored fact.

    The thirty-minute inventory cycle is enforced and visible, so the condition your sub-capacity discount depends on is not something you hope was still true last quarter.

  2. 02

    ILMT gaps surface as findings.

    Compliance gap analysis over the ILMT connector turns a silent agent into an item on a list, weeks before an auditor asks for the record.

  3. 03

    Components are resolved once, in bulk.

    Scored suggestions matching deployed components to products, applied across hundreds of instances at a time instead of one at a time in a spreadsheet.

  4. 04

    Capacity changes are inventoried.

    IBM HMC and native AIX inventory mean an LPAR resize shows up in the position on the next cycle.

  5. 05

    The sub-capacity claim is defensible backwards.

    A continuous position with an audit trail lets you evidence where you stand today and that the conditions held throughout.

IBM, specifically

Questions worth asking us.

Not the one you came with? Ask it directly and we will answer it in writing.

We already run ILMT. Why would we need anything else?

ILMT is IBM’s measurement tool and it is necessary. What it does not give you is a licence position: entitlement, agreements, variance and exposure across all your publishers in one model. The ILMT connector reads what ILMT knows and adds compliance gap analysis on top, so a silent agent becomes a finding on the compliance list.

What actually happens if we miss the measurement obligation?

The basis for licensing reverts from partition to full capacity, meaning every core in the frame, and it is applied retrospectively. At that scale it is the single most expensive thing that can go wrong in an IBM audit, which is why CerteroX enforces the thirty-minute cycle and shows you the hosts that miss it.

What is Component Resolution actually doing?

IBM software is deployed as components which belong to products, and the same component can be entitled by more than one product. Resolution proposes the product each deployed component belongs to, scores the suggestion so you can see how confident it is, and lets you apply the decision in bulk. It is the difference between a two-week exercise and a two-month one.

Our IBM workload is mostly AIX on Power. Is it covered?

Fully. AIX gets the same native agent, inventory cycle and licence engine as Windows and Linux, and IBM HMC integration brings the frame and partition topology in with it. Unix is a first-class platform here.

Can we see IBM and everything else in one position?

Yes, all of it in one position. Six publishers have dedicated engines on the same inventory, entitlement store and evidence trail, so the depth is per publisher while the data model is shared, and the audit response is a single report.

IBM, specifically

See what a full-capacity
fallback actually costs.

Measurement cadence, reporting gaps, unresolved components and the compliance gap analysis over the ILMT connector, walked frame by frame with the claim priced both ways. Tell us where your ILMT reporting worries you and the session opens there.

The evidence is what keeps the discount.