I've been in this business for decades and have never once observed a deliberate conspiracy to cheat a vendor. Frequent ads about 'piracy' conjure up boardrooms full of Captain Hooks comparing the size of their parrots while they chart cheating schemes. It doesn't happen.
OTOH I've become aware of a few unauthorized or inadvertent violations. One involved a cowboy operator who copied an ISV product to an environment for which it was not licensed. He thought he had found a better way to do his job. Nasty fallout. Another case concerned PSF, where the contract specified a certain volume of AFP print--not CPU MSUs. No one noticed that the limit had been exceeded until a routine IBM audit revealed the excession. The piper was paid. The alternative to customer self-regulation is a complex of software keys and usage monitors. As a long-time customer, I believe that IBM places a high priority on the customer's business. This means keeping it running while anomalies are sorted out and resolved. I've experienced major business interruptions when *other* vendors' products simply stop working when some cap is exceeded, consequences be damned. Be very careful what you wish for. . . J.O.Skip Robinson Southern California Edison Company Electric Dragon Team Paddler SHARE MVS Program Co-Manager 323-715-0595 Mobile 626-543-6132 Office ⇐=== NEW [email protected] -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Sankaranarayanan, Vignesh Sent: Wednesday, October 18, 2017 5:37 AM To: [email protected] Subject: (External):Re: Potential stupid question - MSUs Thanks Bob, yes I'm fairly comfortable with the sub-capacity reporting for IBM. From time to time, I get these questions in my head such as, what would happen if IBM were to try and implement a per-second billing sort of thing that cloud providers do. Real-time enforcement/monitoring will also allow shops to know their usage (of s/w by diff vendors) and pay for just that instead of something as broad as charged-for-CPU-limit-eventhough-it-may-not-be-used, and wait for a really long time before the ability to renegotiate. This may mean extra $$ for most, and there's no dearth of complexity in pricing, but... these things are fun to learn sometimes with examples. - Vignesh Mainframe Infrastructure -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Richards, Robert B. Sent: 18 October 2017 15:44 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Potential stupid question - MSUs Vignesh, Whether or not enforcement is even necessary depends on your software contract with IBM. If you do not mind paying for full capacity (let's use the 30 MSUs that Tim liked as the max capacity), then you can choose to just pay IBM 6,000 rupees every month (30 times 200 rupees) and not worry about sending IBM any usage information. Most companies do not want to just give money away, especially if you know you can't always get to the peak of 30 MSUs. Enter the sub-capacity software contract with its terms and conditions. Once in force, you are required to send IBM a report every month. That report is created by culling certain SMF records from every lpar and having them read by a tool that IBM provides called the Sub-Capacity Reporting Tool (commonly known as SCRT). Assuming that you only peak at 20 MSUs in a given month, then your software bill would only be 4,000 rupees. Put the 2,000 rupees that you effectively saved that month (assuming you budgeted for full capacity) to good use. Maybe for a tool that audits the SCRT report called LCS <grin>. The SCRT report is the enforcement tool *after the fact*, but only if the sub-capacity contract is in play. Good faith or not....IBM software contracts are legally binding. Bob -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Timothy Sipples Sent: Wednesday, October 18, 2017 12:40 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Potential stupid question - MSUs Vignesh Sankaranarayanan wrote: >....but for some reason, I just can't fathom a vendor leaving the >enforcement of a rule up to a customer, and letting the contract >(something completely detached from the machine) be the only binding >factor. Is that so hard to imagine, though? Let's suppose you rent an apartment, and you sign a lease. The lease contains certain terms and conditions. Those terms include, as possible examples: 1. You cannot sublet (rent out) the apartment to someone else without the landlord's permission. 2. You cannot make major modifications to the apartment, such as paint the walls with alternating pink and black stripes. 3. You cannot start an open fire inside your apartment and roast marshmallows (or anything else). 4. You cannot keep a tiger, lion, elephant, or alligator in the apartment. If you violate the terms of the lease, you face certain penalties, enforced through the courts (hopefully). Does the landlord have video cameras installed the apartment, with round-the-clock surveillance, to make sure you are living up to your contractual obligations? No, usually not. In fact, in most jurisdictions, the landlord has only very limited rights to enter the apartment, under specific conditions that seldom apply. Contracts routinely depend on the parties having "good faith," with voluntary compliance as the default behavior. This approach works especially well when the parties have an ongoing, mutually beneficial relationship of some kind. For example, software vendors and licensees typically have some sort of support and subscription agreement. There are also what are known as "due diligence" checks, before you do business with someone. A landlord might run a credit check before renting an apartment. A software vendor might check with Dun & Bradstreet or some other firm to verify creditworthiness. And vice versa. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
