On 25.11.2009 3rd zPricing Workshop of ceCMG took place at Maritim Hotel in Munich. The president of ceCMG Wolfram Greis was able to welcome 35 participants from the zSeries Community, including representatives of the IBM Software Group.

zPricing Working Group established in ceCMG due to the high interest in the market in 2009. Representatives of large IBM users as well as IBM itself participated in addition to independent producers of support tools on zPricing.

Thomas Heitlinger from FIDUCIA AG is heading the working group within ceCMG.

In the first presentation Thomas Heitlinger showed out that the currently used methods for roalty accounting of software on the mainframe are not easy. But if supported with appropriate data processing technology also opportunities arise from the methods towards a common standard. Therefore required interfaces have to be documented to allow the support from the software industry.

Transparency and data processing technology enable planning of the settlement procedure, which results in significant benefits for users in terms of flexibility and competitiveness in comparison to other platforms.

While in the first two workshops there were discussed more fundamental relations, the 3rd workshop focused on a market overview of various tools. Tools for support and optimization of capping and about reporting were presented. Especially the presentation of the company Data Base Solutions to one of their products was important. The product increases the workload of the zIIP-Processors on the zPlatform according to the rules for IBM DB2-zIIP-eligible workloads and thereby allows a direct cost reduction.

The event was perceived by participants as very positive and productive. During the discussion, there was a high demand for information and transparancy, so that we consider to offer a ceCMG seminar on basics of cost reduction and licensing in the mainframe environment.

The next zPricing Workshop will be scheduled during the ceCMG Annual Conference on Friday, 19 March 2010 held in Darmstadt. As in 2009 in Königswinter, IBM will be present with their own lectures about software pricing. Also the topic of capacity on demand from IBM is presented with an additional case study.

Wolfram Greis and Thomas Heitlinger