IBM Tweaks Power Systems-IBM i Licensing Deal

December 5, 2011 Timothy Prickett Morgan

If you were hoping to get a cheaper IBM i license for old Power6+ blade servers you have in your shop, you just missed the boat.

On November 22, while The Four Hundred was on hiatus for the Thanksgiving holiday, in announcement letter 311-171 IBM cut out the old JS23 and JS43 blade servers from the IBM i Licensing by User promotion.

This deal has been running since August 2010. It gives customers that have user-based pricing for the IBM i operating system–meaning Power 520-class systems, Power-based blade servers (old and new), and the new Power 710 and 720 machines–a 40 percent discount off the price of software licenses. That 40 percent discount applies to customers getting whole new boxes or upgrading to newer machines from older boxes. (Presumably the discount also applies to incremental licenses added to new or upgraded iron, but IBM has never said so explicitly.) The 40 percent discount applies to both per-user fees sold in five- or 10-user blocks for specific machines, or the unlimited user licenses that IBM offers for these machines.

With last week’s change, the discount is still available on Power 520 servers using Power6 and Power6+ processors, as well as to the old Power6-based JS12 and JS22 blade servers (go figure). It is also available on the Power 710 and 720 servers using Power7 processors and the PS7XX blade servers that also use the Power7 chips. It is reasonable to assume that it won’t be long before the Power 520, JS12, and JS22 machines will be dropped from the promotion.