As an IBM customer, you sometimes find it difficult to identify IBM software license deployment metrics and usage across your hybrid cloud deployments. To improve the visibility and transparency of license entitlements and usage across on-premises and container-based software deployments, IBM will soon be launching a free-to-use license entitlement and usage management portal, IBM Software Central. IBM Software Central enables real-time, online access to software entitlements, reporting across multiple deployments, and drill down access, delivering insights on what and how software is being consumed.
IBM is currently seeking and recruiting volunteers for early access and participation in the Beta Program for the IBM Software Central and its software license use metering technology. By participating in the IBM Software Central Beta Program, you will have the opportunity to shape IBM’s strategy to meter hybrid cloud software and provide feedback directly to our product management, design and development teams.
During the Beta Program, we will provide participants with:
- a single, online, real-time dashboard displaying the overall License Usage, IBM Software Central
- IBM License Service, a Cloud Pak Foundational Service that collects and aggregates IBM software license data across Cloud Paks
- Red Hat OpenShift Certified Operator from Red Hat Marketplace that communicates containerized software usage data to a centralized dashboard for visualization and review
- IBM License Metering Tool (ILMT) that identifies and shares VM-based IBM software deployments to the same centralized dashboard on IBM Software Central
The Beta Program is active from September 15th to November 1st, allowing participants to use the new capabilities of IBM Software Central and share feedback. This beta marks a significant step forward in the evolution of improving software usage insight through IBM Software instrumentation. This new information gives IBM customers the ability to make more data driven decisions for software utilization policies, improving overall product utilization.
To be eligible for participation, you must have the following:
- traditionally deployed virtual machine (VM) based Software reporting license usage to ILMT (v9.2.23). See Cloud park versioning readiness in the attached deck and / or
- containerized IBM Product that integrates with License Service Operator (v1.4.1), deployment on an OpenShift cluster v4.5 or higher. See Cloud park versioning readiness in the attached deck
If you are interested, please comment below and we will reach out to you to get you enrolled.