IBM FlexPoints

Available from 9.2.13. FlexPoint is a license metric unit that can be used to determine the cost of IBM products that are purchased as part of FlexPoint bundles. Each product from a bundle is licensed based on a different license metric but all metrics are converted into IBM FlexPoints. The conversion is based on the specific calculations. PVU and RVU software that is assigned to a FlexPoint bundle, must be licensed based on subcapacity rules. Products that are currently available as part of FlexPoint bundles are products from the IBM Cloud and IBM Analytics.

Predicting the number of required IBM FlexPoints

To predict the number of IBM FlexPoints that are required to license products in your environment, you can use the FlexPoint Calculator. For each product that you are planning to deploy as part of a FlexPoint bundle, specify the number of license metric units. The numbers are then converted into IBM FlexPoints and summed up.

Example

The following example describes how the number of IBM FlexPoints that are used in your environment is counted by BigFix Inventory. The calculations are based on sample values and should be treated only as an example.

You purchased the IBM Cloud DevOps offering and you deployed three products from this offering: UrbanCode Deploy Server Agent, Rational Test Workbench, and Rational Test Virtualization Server. Each of the products is licensed based on a different license metric as presented in IBM FlexPoints needed to license products deployed as part of the IBM Cloud DevOps offering. To calculate the number of IBM FlexPoints that are used by these products, BigFix Inventory multiplies the number of license metric units that each product uses by the number of IBM FlexPoints that are assigned per metric unit for that product. Results for each product are then summed up to obtain the number of IBM FlexPoints used by the entire FlexPoint bundle.
Table 1. IBM FlexPoints needed to license products deployed as part of the IBM Cloud DevOps offering

The table consists of four columns and five rows. In the fifth row, the first three columns are joined.

Product Used license metrics IBM FlexPoints per license metric unit Calculations
UrbanCode Deploy Server Agent 2 Virtual Servers 129,800 2 x 129,800 = 259,600
Rational Test Workbench 50 Authorized Users 15,950 50 x 15,950 = 797,500
Rational Test Virtualization Server 210 PVUs 2,893 210 x 2,893 = 607,530
Total FlexPoints Used 1,664,630

Reading metric utilization

Information about FlexPoint bundles

You can view information about FlexPoint bundles on the IBM FlexPoints report. The report lists the FlexPoint bundles based on the decisions that you make during software classification. The metric quantity represents the license metric utilization for an entire bundle over the specified period of time expressed in FlexPoints.


Excerpt from the IBM FlexPoints report

Information about the products that contribute to FlexPoint bundles

To view the detailed report with license metric utilization for individual products that are parts of a bundle, go to the IBM FlexPoints report, and click the FlexPoint bundle name in the Product Name column. The detailed information include the peak date of the entire FlexPoint bundle and the number of FlexPoints used by each individual product. Additionally, you can check the number of original metric units by which the products are licensed that are used over the reporting period.

Note: 9.2.16 You can change the metric quantity for the products that contribute to the bundle. Once you set the declared metric quantity for a product that is a part of a FlexPoint bundle, the number of the FlexPoints for the entire bundle is automatically adjusted. For more information, see: Setting and removing the declared metric quantity.

Excerpt from the detailed report.

Information about FlexPoints in audit snapshot

9.2.16 When you generate the audit snapshot, information about FlexPoint bundles and the number of FlexPoints that they use is contained in the flexpoints.csv file. The file additionally contains information about the software products within the bundle and the number of FlexPoints used by them.

Table 2. A fragment of the flexpoints.csv file
Row No. Publisher Product Name FlexPoint Bundle Metric Metric Quantity Peak Date FlexPoint Quantity Recalculation Needed
1 IBM Cloud DevOps - Perpetual FlexPoint None 139,073 06/14/2019 No
2 IBM BigFix Rational ClearCase Floating User Cloud DevOps - Perpetual 20 06/14/2019 136,400 No
3 IBM BigFix Rational ClearQuest Authorized User Cloud DevOps - Perpetual 1 06/14/2019 2,673 No