You can track and manage IBM licenses in both VMware vSphere environments and IBM LPAR infrastructures by integrating the Software Asset Management publisher pack for IBM with Software Asset Management providers that are authorized to participate in the IBM Authorized SAM Provider (IASP) Program. With these integrations, you can track and manage IBM licensing directly without having to integrate with the IBM License Metric Tool (ILMT) or BigFix Inventory.

The IASP Program is an invitation-only license verification program that allows clients who contract with authorized Software Asset Management providers to report on their IBM license usage independently. For more information on the IASP Program, see IASP Verification.

The IBM publisher pack supports integrations with the following authorized Software Asset Management providers:
  • Anglepoint (through the Anglepoint Elevate platform)
  • Deloitte

To integrate with an authorized Software Asset Management provider, you must request and install the IBM License Compliance for Software Asset Management application from the ServiceNow® Store. This application provides the core functionality and license metrics that are required for tracking and managing IBM licensing directly. If you are integrating with Anglepoint, you must also request and install Anglepoint's IBM Licensing for Software Asset Management application from the ServiceNow® Store. This application enables you to store IBM software information from Anglepoint.

After you install the necessary applications, you must retrieve the IBM software discovery catalog from the authorized Software Asset Management provider that you are integrating with. This catalog, which is maintained separately by each authorized Software Asset Management provider, is a centralized repository of IBM software information that discovery tools, such as the ServiceNow® Discovery application, can use to identify the IBM software that is discovered in your environment. After you retrieve the catalog, you must upload it to your ServiceNow instance.

On successful upload, you can use the ServiceNow Discovery application to run a discovery for your IBM software. The Discovery application uses the uploaded catalog to identify any IBM software that is discovered in your environment. It then sends this data to the authorized Software Asset Management provider for comprehensive software classification and bundling.

After your discovered IBM software is properly classified and bundled, the authorized Software Asset Management provider sends this data back to your ServiceNow® instance. The Software Asset Management application can then use the processor value unit (PVU), resource value unit (RVU), and virtual processor core (VPC) license metrics to reconcile this data so that you can track your IBM software usage and optimize your licensing costs. For more information on the PVU and RVU license metrics, see IBM processor value unit (PVU) and resource value unit (RVU) licenses. For more information on the VPC license metric, see IBM virtual processor core (VPC) licenses.

Prerequisites

Before you can integrate the IBM publisher pack with an authorized Software Asset Management provider, you must complete the following prerequisites:
If you are integrating the IBM publisher pack with Anglepoint, you must also complete these additional prerequisites: