IBM Z latest novelties for cloud – what does it mean for you?

IBM is announcing new cloud-like pricing option called Tailored Fit Pricing for IBM Z. Starting from June 21^st 2019 clients will have the opportunity to choose between two options: Enterprise Consumption Solution and Enterprise Capacity Solution. Both of them are much simpler pricing methods adjusted to the workload patterns that change constantly (hybrid cloud) and therefore it is hard to predict their MSU cost.

The most important novelties that these pricing options bring are:

• No more capping
• Larger capacity available for dev and testing environment
• Reduced pricing for increased workload (clients define a baseline and planned increase of MSU consumption and in case the planned limit is exceeded clients can get a considerable discount without any complications).

For Consumption Solution basic step is to define the baseline starting with total MSU consumption for the past year (sum of consumption for every day during a year) and make a plan for the next year with certain MSU increase.

For Capacity Solution clients are simply charged for full capacity of machines.

Though it might look attractive at first Tailored Fit Pricing will hardly lower the client’s MLC costs for existing workload because history shows that IBM is willing to cut the MSU prices only when clients bring additional workload to Z. So it might be acceptable if there is more workload to be added on Z.

IBM also announced a few novelties regarding z/OS cloud enablement. The most important one is z/OS Container Extensions (zCX). It will enable Docker containers to execute on z/OS and along with them everything that now runs at Linux on Z (around 2000 Docker images currently available). This feature will be available from September on new version of z/OS 2.4 and it requires z14 hardware. There is no info about licensing model at this moment.

Another thing is called z/OS Cloud Broker. It brings the ability to integrate z/OS legacy applications and data into IBM Cloud Private.

Both of those could be seen as an attempt to enable better integration of z/OS services and resources into customer’s cloud environments.

At the end we can say that the main goal of these announcements is to encourage and enable mainframe users to implement and perform new tech thing on mainframe, for reasonable price (we will see how reasonable it will be). Also this looks like an attempt to keep the mainframe in line with modern IT trends.

Mainframe experts in CROZ will continue to follow future signals from IBM and in case you find any of those interesting you can come to us for more insight and expertise.