How to Manage MLC Costs to Optimize the Mainframe
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Monthly license charge (MLC) costs are rising, budgets are being squeezed, and requirements for digital business services are exploding. Learn how to overcome the cost management challenges, and take the pain out of your mainframe.
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How to Manage MLC Costs to Optimize the Mainframe
- 1. How to Manage MLC Costs to Optimize the Mainframe Introduction to BMC Mainframe MLC Cost Management
- 2. The Mainframe: Powerful, Trusted, and Growing… Copyright © 2015 BMC Software, Inc.© Copyright 2015 BMC Software, Inc. and IBM Corporation 91% *Source: IBM z13 announcement January 13, 2015 ZSJ03241USEN.PDF
- 3. 3 …but, not without its challenges *Source: Compuware 2015 CIO Survey© Copyright 2015 BMC Software, Inc.
- 4. 4 What Drives Mainframe Costs? ↑ 4% to 7% per year © Copyright 2015 BMC Software, Inc. ® ® ® ® TM
- 5. Mainframe MLC Cost Management Activities Tune or Move Peak Workloads Dynamic Workload Capping Optimize Subsystem License Charges Cost Driver Awareness Advanced Contract Negotiation Strategies © Copyright 2015 BMC Software, Inc. Paying 15% Less Paying 15% more Maturity Model for MLC Management MLC Savings
- 6. MLC Cost Management Activities Tune or Move Peak Workloads Dynamic Workload Capping Optimize Subsystem License Charges Cost Driver Awareness Advanced Contract Negotiation Strategies Using multiple MLC saving strategies can save 15-30% BMC Intelligent Capping BMC Subsystem OptimizerBMC Cost Analyzer BMC Mainframe MLC Cost Management © Copyright 2015 BMC Software, Inc.
- 7. BMC Digital Enterprise Management is a set of IT solutions designed to make digital business fast, seamless, and optimized from mainframe to mobile to cloud and beyond. DIGITAL ENTERPRISE MANAGEMENT
- 8. Digital Enterprise Management DEM is a set of IT solutions designed to make digital business fast, seamless, and optimized from mainframe to mobile to cloud and beyond.
- 9. Optimizing Mainframes for Digital Business BMC empowers IT to optimize their mainframes for digital business through innovative solutions designed to manage mainframe data, infrastructure and costs in a fast changing digital enterprise. Data Infrastructure Cost
- 10. Gear up for unstructured data and the extreme data volumes and performance requirements. Shift to a dynamic infrastructure monitoring and management approach that will automatically adapt to changing patterns and volumes. Aggressively optimize MLC costs. From cost transparency to dynamic capping and subsystem optimization to reduce subsystem instances that drive license costs. BMC Optimizes Mainframes for Digital Business for Competitive Business Advantage By “BRINGING IT TO LIFE”
- 11. BMC Mainframe MLC Cost Management BMC Intelligent Capping 2.0 BMC Subsystem Optimizer 2.0 BMC Cost Analyzer 2.0
- 12. BMC Mainframe MLC Cost Management • Understand drivers of peak resource usage • Forecast and track MLC budgets • Model cost impact of changes to MLC • Improve resource usage with capping that protects the most critical work • Optimize subsystem license costs by separating MLC software BMC Intelligent Capping 2.0 BMC Subsystem Optimizer 2.0 BMC Cost Analyzer 2.0
- 13. Reporting and Forecasting MLC • Understand drivers of peak resource usage • Forecast and track MLC budgets • Model cost impact of changes to MLC software • Understand batch application impact BMC Cost Analyzer 5-10% Savings © Copyright 2015 BMC Software, Inc.
- 14. BMC Cost Analyzer 2.0 NEW in 2.0: • Extends its insight into workloads and specific batch jobs • Pinpoint the drivers of peak resource usage with a more granular view of the impact of specific workloads and batch jobs on MLC costs • Understand possible impact to MLC costs of moving or adding batch jobs
- 15. BMC Cost Analyzer 2.0
- 16. Dynamically Control Peaks • Dynamically reduce MLC costs with automation • Reduce peak 4-hour rolling average • Avoid business risk to high priority workloads • Balance increases in capacity with reductions • Experience cost-aware capping BMC Intelligent Capping 5-10% Savings © Copyright 2015 BMC Software, Inc.
- 17. BMC Intelligent Capping 2.0 NEW in 2.0: • Patent-pending cost-aware capability • Changes made in capping only lower MLC costs • Protection of workloads running through Subsystem Optimizer • Other usability enhancements
- 18. Optimizing MLC Software License Costs • Optimize subsystem placement to reduce MLC costs • Lower business risk of subsystem failure • CICS-to-DB2 and CICS-to-IMS DB separation • IMS TM-to-DB2 separation BMC Subsystem Optimizer 10-30% Savings IMS TM CICS IMS DB © Copyright 2015 BMC Software, Inc.
- 19. BMC Subsystem Optimizer 2.0 NEW in 2.0: • Reduce MLC costs by separating IMS Transaction Manager (IMS TM) from DB2 • Separate CICS and DB2 when using IBM MQ shared queues • Support for IMS 14 • Lower business risk of subsystem failure
- 20. Driving Down Resource Peaks Lowered peak 7% MLC Savings 9% 6-month ROI A Growing U.S. Insurance company Rolling Back Monthly Costs Lowered MLC Bill 20% to 2013 levels 6-month ROI A Major U.S. Transportation company Meeting the Need “It’s encouraging to see a company introducing products that help customers manage MLC costs.” - Director, Mainframe Operations A Major Global Insurance company
- 21. — For More Information www.bmc.com/mlc Follow us on Twitter: @bmcmainframe #lowerMLC
Editor's Notes
- Hello. Today we will show you how actively managing mainframe monthly license charges (or MLC) can be highly successful in bringing down the cost of your mainframe, as well as protecting your most critical business services. Welcome to this on-demand webinar, Managing MLC Costs to Optimize the Mainframe. I’m Tom Vogel with BMC Software, and I’m really excited to pass along this important information about the latest technology that can help your company save thousands or millions each year in reduced MLC costs.
- We know about the mainframe. We know it’s the most successful platform of all time. It’s trustworthy and powerful. It provides amazing transaction time and reliability. We also know it’s growing. Many mainframe shops are adding workloads to their mainframes. And with the advent of the digital era, we see companies transforming their applications and writing new applications to offer their customers an anytime, anywhere experience. As you know, that CC transaction cannot fail – even at midnight – or you lose revenue and customers, right? So, there is a transformation taking place for companies to become digital enterprises. Did you know that 91% of new customer-facing applications will touch a mainframe in some way? The new digital requirements are placing a strain on your mainframe.
- We see that this strain takes the form of additional data access, higher peak 4-hour rolling averages, and higher MIPS growth. Isn’t all of this a good thing? Sure, but it means that running the mainframe is getting more expensive – and IBM MLC software costs are often the biggest offender. So, these two opposing forces are squeezing mainframe IT staff. We try to manage the problem, but it’s getting tougher each year.
- We know that MLC costs are in the neighborhood of 30% of your overall mainframe budget. You probably have managed the other items in the pie chart really well, but people we talk to are really unsure how to significantly lower MLC costs. And MLC software costs rise in the neighborhood of 4-7% annually. Is this your experience each year?
- Take a look at this maturity model for actively managing MLC costs. From speaking with BMC customers and industry experts, we know that mainframe organizations that do not initiate MLC reduction activities tend to pay up to 15% more in MLC. For those who actively manage their MLC by taking the actions you see on this slide, they tend to pay up to 15% less. That’s a 30% difference, and if you do the math on typical monthly bill, that can mean tens of thousands each month. Cost driver awareness involves maybe using spreadsheets to analyze your SCRT report, or taking other actions that identify your peak. These are very labor-intensive activities, that can yield some savings, but can strain the team and be error-prone. Tuning and managing peak workloads is another step that many companies take. Your monitoring solution can help you identify problems and issues, and tuning is a common way to increase efficiencies that can lower costs. Soft capping is a common activity that many shops use, but we talk with many customers who have been burned by capping too aggressively, or they need to be really careful not to impact a critical workload and they don’t take advantage of the maximum resource capping that be there. This is where automated, intelligent capping can help. My favorite technique is optimizing subsystem license costs through separating or isolating subsystems across logical partitions. Did you know that confusion exists today around sub-capacity pricing. The myth is that sub-capacity pricing should equal usage-based pricing. This is not the case with IBM MLC software. Duplicate subsystem copies are often required on the same LPAR, which raises costs. Every IMS TM, IMS DB, DB2, or CICS workload requires an instance of each communicating subsystem to be present on the same logical partition. Many customers have hundreds of CICS, DB2, IMS, or MQ shared queues subsystems running on LPARs because of IBM-imposed limitations on subsystem interaction. By carefully planning and assessing the mathematical impact of moving some of these subsystem instances, your company can save as much as 15 or 20 % on MLC costs. Finally, one of the most significant things companies are doing after reducing their MLC costs by a significant amount comes at contract renewal time. With the lowest possible level of MLC costs in place, they can now be in a more positive position to negotiate favorable MLC contract terms. So how do you take advantage of all these opportunities to save?
- As you can see, BMC is helping companies address the MLC cost issue by providing key automation and control that wasn’t available just 2 years ago. The solutions provide flexibility, in that you can choose from multiple techniques that help reduce MLC costs. By using a combination of these techniques, it’s possible to save 15-30% or more. Let me describe the solutions in more detail.
- IT will need new approaches to optimizing mainframe digital infrastructures, because in the digital world, we don’t know what we used to know. However, by understanding the change drivers of data, infrastructure and cost which result from digital engagement, IT can identify specific actions to take to prepare the mainframe to support the digital enterprise. Data Gear up for unstructured data and the data volume and performance requirements. Infrastructure Shift to a dynamic infrastructure monitoring and management approach that will automatically adapt to changing patterns and volumes. Costs Aggressively optimize MLC costs. Experience has shown that the optimal time for IT to reduce MLC costs is 12-18 months prior to MLC contract negotiations.
- Introducing BMC Mainframe MLC Cost Management, a comprehensive cost reduction suite that provides insight, transparent reporting, resource control, and subsystem optimization and can help you take control of your mainframe monthly costs. BMC recently announced version 2.0 for all 3 of these solutions. Let’s take a closer look at how they can help you.
- Together, the BMC Mainframe MLC Cost Management solutions help you to save up to 20% or even more on MLC. Cost Analyzer increases your understanding of what exactly is driving your MLC costs. You can also enter your MLC budget numbers for the year, and track to that budget. How valuable is this when you get to August and you can clearly see that your MLC bills have been running over? More importantly, you can now model changes you want to make to MLC software in order to fix that broken budget. Modelling changes, and their impact on your costs, before ever committing resources to a project is always highly preferable. Intelligent Capping enables you to dynamically manage defined capacity capping thresholds with confidence. In this manner, you can lower your MLC costs, knowing that your most important workloads are never impacted or delayed. And finally, separating MLC software to lower MLC costs is a key activity you can do with Subsystem Optimizer. When you make changes, the MLC math changes, sometimes in a positive manner, and sometimes negative. You can use Cost Analyzer along with Subsystem Optimizer to model changes in subsystem instance locations, and watch the MLC costs drop.
- Using Cost Analyzer, companies are reaping some amazing benefits: Mainframe IT and management can now understand, on a daily basis, what drives their MLC costs. Cost Analyzer provides deep insight into the subsystem and workload activity that drives the monthly peak. You can enter and manage your annual MLC budget, and track it like never before. You can also model changes you might be planning to your MLC software – in some cases, projects that were thought to bring MLC costs down turn out to be cost increases. Finally, we talk with many customers who say their peak 4-hour rolling average does not occur during batch processing. After using Cost Analyzer, some of them realize that this is not the case. Batch workloads are often the key driver of monthly peak. So you can see how Cost Analyzer can shed some needed light on key drivers of peak.
- Cost Analyzer Version 2.0 extends its capabilities by adding insight and predictive cost planning for specific batch jobs that are driving the peak 4-hour rolling average (4HRA). These new features further IT’s ability to pinpoint and manage the key drivers of cost and identify cost reducing actions they can take. Many customers have batch running in their environments, and batch often runs during the peak 4-hour rolling average (4HRA). Customers can understand as never before the cost impact of adding, removing, or changing batch workloads/jobs. The new capabilities provide additional opportunities for customers to make changes to batch job execution that would lower MLC. This finer granularity enables you to model the impact to making changes to your batch workloads and jobs.
- Here’s a screen shot of Cost Analyzer 2.0 displaying batch jobs and their associated cost.
- Some organizations are using defined capacity capping to limit MLC costs. However many sites are still incurring higher costs due to a lack of confidence in their ability to set effective caps without impacting business work. BMC’s Intelligent Capping solution enables you to set your own policy-driven, automated capping strategy that monitors your workload activity and dynamically adjusts your caps to ensure your most critical workloads are not delayed. And recently, BMC has added patent-pending technology that ensures that a no increase to MLC costs will result from balancing capacity limits across systems. Savings from using an intelligent, dynamic capping solution can result in MLC savings that range from 5 to 10%, depending on how aggressive your staff wants to be. Our customers have been finding that lowering peak MSUs has been fast and successful, and they’re not finished. As they lower the MSU limit, they save even more, without impacting critical business service levels.
- New in Intelligent Capping Version 2.0: 1. Patent-pending cost aware capability. This capability ensures that changes made to the policy will not result in an increase to MLC costs. 2. When using iCap with Subsystem Optimizer, you can be sure that critical workloads are not delayed. 3. In addition, we’ve listened to our customers and enhanced iCap to make it easier to use.
- Here’s a topic that can have a very large impact on MLC costs—optimizing subsystem placement. By enabling the most expensive MLC products, like CICS, IMS, and DB2 to talk to each other without running on the same logical partition, your MLC costs can drop significantly. You probably already know about the technical restriction that exists for MLC software. That is, when a transaction request comes in, say for DB2 via CICS, both these subsystems must reside on the same logical partition. BMC Subsystem Optimizer can provide new flexibility by enabling you to place them on separate LPARs and still communicate with each other. The amazing part is that this separation often changes the MLC math and quite often can lead to significant savings – and this happens with no application changes. You can see here that CICS-to-DB2, CICS-to IMS DB, and IMS TM-to-DB2 configurations are all supported by Subsystem Optimizer. In addition, Subsystem Optimizer provides an important failover capability in case a subsystem temporarily goes down. If a request comes in and the DB2 or IMS subsystem is down, you normally need to wait until that subsystem is restarted before the transaction can complete. With Subsystem Optimizer, you can redirect that request immediately to another running subsystem on a different LPAR. This is a big advantage that you might not have today. Customers today are seeing dramatic results with Subsystem Optimizer, on the order of 10-30% or more in MLC savings.
- 1. New in Version 2.0 for Subsystem Optimizer includes support for a widely used configuration of MLC software – IMS TM to DB2. Now, you can separate these subsystems onto different LPARs, and they can still communicate, without any application changes. 2. If your CICS-to-DB2 configuration involves IBM MQ shared queues, no additional steps need to be taken when separating the subsystems. 3. Also, support for IMS 14 is included with V2.0. This all equates to more flexibility in your environment, more redundancy, and significantly reduced MLC costs.
- BMC Mainframe MLC Cost Management solutions are empowering customers to deliver the services that customers expect, and at a lower cost. Companies in many verticals and geographies are using Cost Analyzer, Intelligent Capping, and Subsystem Optimizer today to quickly lower their MLC costs. Our customers are reducing what they pay each month, rolling back MSU peak usage rates to lower levels, and increasing their knowledge of how to negotiate the next MLC software contract. Is it time for you to take that next step?
- Be sure to learn more about these powerful solutions. BMC is a leading innovator on the mainframe, and we see great things ahead for the platform. Find out more by speaking with your BMC rep or go to the link you see on your screen. Thank you!