ISV Cost Reduction

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ISV stands for Independent Software Vendor and from a "tools" perspective is often defined as vendors independent of IBM, i.e. CA, Compuware, ASG, BMC, etc.

There are three ways to reduce your ISV costs:

1. Negotiate from a position of power

2. Replace the ISV 

3. Consolidate ISVs

The Smith Group joins with Information Systems Asset Management (ISAM) to arm you with the information you need to take control of the ISV negotiating process. And, we will even handle the entire negotiation for you.

ISAM was founded in 1996 to help data centers apply world-class software asset management practices to reduce software costs. 

Our consultative approach helps software buyers become better negotiators.  Often, our clients are already doing a good job with the information they have.  But with the additional information and expert advice we provide, they can do a better job getting to the lowest possible cost structure for their data center.  ISAM helps companies negotiate from a position of strength based on what they want, not what the vendor wants to give them.

ISAM’s proprietary GreenBook Database contains more than 100 million software cost, product usage and categorization data points from over 800 software vendors across 1,000 data centers worldwide. Actual software costs paid by data centers like yours are the backbone for numerous applications we use to guide your team to best-in-class software pricing. The GreenBook Database is a behind the scenes tool that is not available to the public.  It’s only available from ISAM.

In the early 2000s IBM realized that the high cost of ISV software was impacting the Total Cost of Ownership of the System z platform.  IBM undertook an aggressive strategy to match or increase the quality of IBM's software tools vs. the ISVs.  And at the same time, significantly reduce the price of the IBM tools vs. the ISVs.

Start with the list price of the tool sets.  IBM's software's list price is oftentimes 25 to 50% lower than the ISVs.  Add that to IBM's willingness to apply significant discounts for their replacement products and significant reductions in a customer's annual software tools cost can be achieved.

As IBM's mainframe customers begin to modernize the possibility for capacity growth increases. By replacing the ISV tools with IBM's, not only does a customer's annual maintenance cost decrease but the software cost due to that increased capacity will be lower and more in line with the value that the tools deliver.

The Smith Group specializes in the replacement of ISV software with IBM tools assuring IBM's customers the highest possible ROI on that transition.

Most organizations negotiate with their ISVs independently.  The Smith Group will review your entire ISV stack and identify opportunities to "offer" expanded footprints to well positioned ISVs in exchange for reductions in their annual cost.  This kills two birds with one stone; i.e., a reduction in both ISV costs.  The Smith Group has, over time, come to understand what competing product replaces every ISV's product, allowing us to know which vendor has the best strategic position to enable you to maximize your ISV cost reduction strategy.

           HCL - HCL has taken over the R&D and support for certain IBM systems software products

           and for a subset of those, they have been allowed to offer their own branded own branded

           version of the products.  These products are offered on a term license only with no large

           up front license fee, allows them to match the annual maintenance cost of the products

           they replace without an extended break even period.  In addition, they offer their own

           services for the conversion.  

           Modern Systems and Syncsort - Both of these software vendors have a specialization in

           replacing IDMS.  Syncsort will migrate in automated fashion to DB2 on z/OS while Modern

           Systems can migrate IDMS to DB2 z/OS as well as any distributed platform.  Both have

           been doing these migrations for many years and boast many succesful customer 

           reference.

           VirtualZ - VirtualZ strives to dramatically reduce your mainframe software license costs on-

           premises or in a mainframe cloud saving 50% or more on software license fees.  Their on-

           premise solution allows a multi CPU customer to install certain batch-oriented ISV

           software on the customers smallest CPU while directing the workload to run any other or

           all other CPUs.  Those batch oriented ISVs can also be run in the cloud and redirected to

           your on premise mainframe.  Batch products from IBM, ASG, Compuware, BMC, Rocket

           and Microfocus will qualify. A sample list of ISV replace candidates for VirtualZ are:

                      CA - CA Cleanup, CA Easytrieve® Report Generator, CA Librarian®, CA 

                      MICS® Resource, Management, CA Optimizer®, CA Optimizer®/II, CA Panvalet®

                      Compuware - File-AID

                      Microfocus - ChangeMan

                      SAS - 9.4 m5

IBM and IBM Business Partners tout the benefits of new mainframe and storage hardware.  While there are improvements delivered by each new generation of 

hardware, the major benefit of a new mainframe CPU is what is called the "Software

Dividend".  This means that each new generation of mainframe brings with it a lower MLC

cost.  IBM charges a hefty premium in terms of your MLC cost for staying on old hardware. 

If you are still on an older mainframe, you should strongly consider upgrading to an N-1

generation of System z (today that would be a z14 or even a z13).  Mainframes, like luxury

cars, depreciate significantly once they roll off the showroom floor.  The transition to a

newly used CPU is routine and risk free but the reduction in your biggest platform cost,

MLC, can be major.  Tiger Financial and The Smith Group have partnered together to lower

the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of your mainframe hardware requirements.

IBM's Cloud Tape Connector (CTC) for z/OS - IBM® Cloud Tape Connector for z/OS® allows you to easily copy and move mainframe data to private, hybrid or public Cloud storage, offering improved security, flexibility and economics for archive or for backup and recovery. IBM Cloud Tape Connector for z/OS processes and moves your data without the need for additional hardware gateway devices. It leverages zIIP processors to minimize  CPU cost of data movement.

The latest version features new additional security options with Life Cycle Encryption and

provides “deviceless” Virtual Tape Emulation for a completely software-defined storage lifecycle.

Reduced overhead.  Requires no complicated gateway hardware devices, or virtual or local tape hardware to purchase, configure or maintain. It connects directly with your public or private Cloud storage environments.

Secure data transmission.  New Life Cycle Encryption optionally ensures that only encrypted data is ever transferred to the cloud, and that the encryption keys are only  managed on the mainframe.

Extensible infrastructure.  Use the same Cloud storage infrastructure for both mainframe

and open systems data.

Optimized data handling.  Tailor data caching and movement for workload optimization.

Model9 - Model9 is comparable to IBM's Cloud Tape Connector (see above) but on steroids, with the ability to archive to low cost distributed storage as well as the cloud.  In addition, Model9 can eliminate tape management software such as IBM's HSM and RMM as well as CA's CA1.

Virtual Tape Libraries (VTLs) were a modernization and cost reduction replacement for physical tape in the 1990s.  The next evolution in that modernization and cost reduction strategy is archiving to the cloud or low cost distributed storage.

• Eliminate tape and virtual tape management overheads by using cloud object storage directly from your mainframe, with no additional hardware
• Gain business insights using mainframe data analytics in the cloud by enriching data lakes and Business Intelligence processes with valuable mainframe data
• Mitigate mainframe skills shortage risks with modern, easy-to-use cloud-based solutions for mainframe
• Cut costs by 50% or more by reducing MSU consumption, offloading ETL processing to the cloud, using affordable cloud storage and consolidating software licenses