Hi,

Justin Miller wrote:

Not to rain on your parade or anything but in talking to my IBM rep she
told me that the licensing strategy is indeed changing with the 5.4
release but not for the better in my opinion.  Now instead of basing it on
the number of CPU's that you have, it will now be based upon the type of
CPU you have.  Each CPU type will have a certain number of "value units"
assigned to it and you have to purchase the value units in something like
blocks of 10 so that you end up with enough to cover the type of CPU you
are using.  Sounds fun doesn't it?  Obviously their way of getting you for
have CPU's with multiple cores.

I never understood why a backup software is being licensed based on the
number or type of the processors. This would be ok for a database or
mathematical software but not for a backup software. TSM will backup the
same data, be it on a single or multi processor machine.
I also don't understand why a client running on a "server" is more
expensive than a client running on a "workstation". Both are TSM
clients, doing the same job. The old licensing scheme, where you have to
pay much for the TSM server and less for any client was much more
accurate in my opinion.

Regards,

Dirk Kastens
Universitaet Osnabrueck, Rechenzentrum (Computer Center)
Albrechtstr. 28, 49069 Osnabrueck, Germany
Tel.: +49-541-969-2347, FAX: -2470