InfoWorld SMB Blog » CA Extends Measured Workload Pricing Model To Smaller Companies

June 21, 2005 | Comments: (0)

CA Extends Measured Workload Pricing Model To Smaller Companies

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Hoping it helps SMBs increase their workloads on VSE and ESA operating systems, Computer Associates on Tuesday announced it is making Measured Workload Pricing available for its line of mainframe-based management products. The new pricing model is a combination of usage-based pricing and best practices management that is intended to better enable smaller shops to squeeze more performance from their data centers and to cost effectively upgrade its processing capacity.

Explaining how it works, company officials said Measured Workload Pricing bases its licensing costs on measured system usage instead of total potential hardware capacity. This better allows users to more closely align IT spending with changing business requirements, company officials contend. Smaller customers can then establish licensing costs based on measured levels of usage, which gives them the option to increase usage as needed to support spiking demand, they said.

For Measured Workload Pricing utilizing z/VSE and VSE/ESA, baseline utilization is charged at a baseline cost, with additional utilization charged according to a pre-determined on-demand scale. Measured Workload Pricing costs are determined by utilization metrics generated by performance measurement or resource accounting software pre-certified by CA, company officials said.

For example, a customer with 60 MIPS on a zSeries processor running z/VSE or VSE/ESA may only be utilizing the machine at 50 percent capacity, with the rest of the machine's capacity being held back for either anticipated future business growth or periods of peak demand. With the Measured Workload Pricing model, license costs are based on the actual capacity being used with users reserving the ability to leverage the full power of the mainframe until needed, CA officials said.

This new program should allow smaller shops to move forward with mainframe upgrades on a more cost-effective basis, since their software costs are not affected until the added capacity is actually brought online, company officials said. Those users who have an existing CPU- or MIPS-based license with CA for this portfolio of products can convert those license terms to a Measured Workload Pricing model to take advantage of its benefits.

The solution sets are organized under six disciplines including, Automation and Event Management, Storage Management,Security Management, Output Management, Performance Management and VSAM Management.

More information about the solution sets can be seen at http://ca.com/zvse.

Posted by Ed Scannell on June 21, 2005 01:50 PM

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