>> On Fri, 15 Jun 2007 11:12:57 -0500, Mark Stapleton <mark.s AT EVOLVINGSOL 
>> DOT COM> said:

> Counting CPUs is a snap for windows: from a DOS prompt, type
>    set n

> for the number of CPUs. (The type of processor can be easily deduced
> by the make/model of server.) Use your existing Windows domain admin
> tools to do this for all machines from one location, and parse
> appropriately.

I've got ~1000 nodes, of which I am actually administratively
responsible for maybe 10-20, and can log into maybe another 50.  Just
getting "A DOS shell" on the segment of my total population which are
windows represents large investment of time, effort and shoe leather.
Heaven help the central TSM administrator who's serving
e.g. departments on the other side of the world.

Further, The correspondence between these physical machines and node
artifacts is erratic, and further confused by the out of band
calculation.  TSM already has the data to e.g. resolve multiple nodes
associated with the same GUID: why can't we do the math in the TSM
server?

> BTW, Tivoli only went to this audit process because there have
> become too many users that have violated the "on your honor" basis
> that Tivoli followed for a long time.

They made their bed, they're now lying in it.  If they had sane
measures, then license audit would be as simple as comparing "Q lic"
with the count IBM's got on file.  45 seconds and a predatory smile
later, the "revised" license fee can be wending its' way through
customer financials.


There are two fundamentally separable issues here.  Each of them
aggravating, but it's only in combination that they're
apoplexy-inducing.


1) license structure disjoint from value proposition of product.  If I
   back up a file server, why do I care how many CPUs it has in it?

2) (as spoken to IBM) I'm installing your software on all of these
   clients already.  Why can't you report whatever-it-is you want to
   use as your license basis?

So now you're making me go install -ANOTHER- alien piece of software
on all my backup clients, and invoke all of the obnoxious security
issues associated with deployment of a homegrown reporting whatzis.

And why? to report a metric I know to be irrelevant to my service, so
that some Tivoli pointy-hair can have a big green bar in row 4 of
slide 12 of his powerpoint presentation, which says "UNIFIED LICENSE
STRUCTURE ACROSS TIVOLI PRODUCT LINES".

And frankly, I don't care if it's the first title on page 1 of his
powerpoint.  It's an interference to my use of the bloody product.  If
you want better license compliance, make the basis straightforward to
measure.

I hear that the KPMG folks are walking around looking at faceplates
and inspecting CPUs.  Maybe if IBM sees how many man-hours they're
paying for KPMG interns to do this work, they'll think twice about
making skilled TSM professionals do it too.


Finally: Note that nowhere in here have I said "the license costs are
too high".  Really, we don't know what the costs are anymore.  IBM's
hiding them from us.  This might be a really advantageous change, in
dollars and cents.


- Allen S. Rout