IBM Cognos new licensing model

[Yunus]

Does anyone have more details on the new Cognos licensing model?  I've spoken with my sales rep and gotten some information including some printed slides on it but it seems too good to be true and also a bit contradictory.

The new model does drastically simplify the types of licenses into 4 main categories.  My big question was if the new license called Analytic User is authorized to use the full version of Report Studio and save reports to Public Folder, the documentation I have is contradictory, 1 area makes it sound like they can while another area makes it sound that they can not.

[Yunus]

Well, I answered my own question I guess using Google.  Looks like Analytic Users are authorized Report Studio.

Not sure if this link requires a login but this is where I found it.
http://www-03.ibm.com/software/sla/sladb.nsf/lilookup/258D7A9D4321852885257D1900189AFF?opendocument&li_select=B903DF65E58D432D85257D1900189AE9

[bdbits]

I found out about the licensing changes from an IBM sales guy who was present a couple of weeks ago at a local user group meeting. I passed the documents he gave us to our licensing people, who asked our assigned IBM reps for clarification. I have not yet heard back, other than that they wondered where we found this information. Especially since we have been inquiring about the additional license costs to support a new reporting area. 8)

From the material I have, it appears at least 98% of our user base will be the "Analytic Users". Among other changes, nearly all of our user base here can now use Report Studio among other changes. And the intent is that you will be able to migrate existing licenses to the new model at zero cost. This is fantastic news, as one of the limiting factors here in using Cognos has been having to pay a new often significant upgrade fee every time you wanted to use some additional feature.

I asked the dude at the user group meeting what the motivation was for the change. He said they had been talking with people like Gartner, who told them a big problem with the product was the convoluted licensing (duh) when compared with relatively simpler models from the competition. So they changed it to be more competitive.

I am glad I did not have to wait for the conference in October to get this bit of news.

I would post the PowerPoint and other material but am not sure I can do that as it came from an IBM-internal presentation. Anyone with questions will have to ask your sales rep about it.

[MFGF]

I found out about the licensing changes from an IBM sales guy who was present a couple of weeks ago at a local user group meeting. I passed the documents he gave us to our licensing people, who asked our assigned IBM reps for clarification. I have not yet heard back, other than that they wondered where we found this information. Especially since we have been inquiring about the additional license costs to support a new reporting area. 8)

From the material I have, it appears at least 98% of our user base will be the "Analytic Users". Among other changes, nearly all of our user base here can now use Report Studio among other changes. And the intent is that you will be able to migrate existing licenses to the new model at zero cost. This is fantastic news, as one of the limiting factors here in using Cognos has been having to pay a new often significant upgrade fee every time you wanted to use some additional feature.

I asked the dude at the user group meeting what the motivation was for the change. He said they had been talking with people like Gartner, who told them a big problem with the product was the convoluted licensing (duh) when compared with relatively simpler models from the competition. So they changed it to be more competitive.

I am glad I did not have to wait for the conference in October to get this bit of news.

I would post the PowerPoint and other material but am not sure I can do that as it came from an IBM-internal presentation. Anyone with questions will have to ask your sales rep about it.

The link Yunus posted above is public, and confirms that Analytics User licenses now include Report Studio, as Bob says. The way the linked page presents things is somewhat bizarre - for each license it list the things a user *can't* use rather than what they can. You can figure out the capabilities eventually though.

If you are an IBM business partner there are a couple of very useful documents you can download from PartnerWorld - a presentation showing how the old licenses migrate to the new ones (or don't), and an Excel spreadsheet which defines the capabilities for each of the new license roles.

These are both labelled as "Customer facing" so if you can find an IBM person or an IBM business partner who has them, they should be fine for distribution.

Here's my understanding of the new capabilities (but don't take this as any official form of notification - check with IBM):

IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Information Distribution (PVU license only)

• Receive burst report outputs
• IBM Cognos Connection
• IBM Cognos Mobile

IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Analytics User

• Receive burst report outputs
• IBM Cognos Connection
• IBM Cognos Mobile
• IBM Cognos for MS Office
• IBM Cognos Workspace
• IBM Cognos Workspace Advanced
• IBM Cognos Report Studio
• IBM Cognos Insight
• IBM Cognos Event Studio
• IBM Cognos Query Studio
• IBM Cognos Analysis Studio

IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Analytics Explorer

• Receive burst report outputs
• IBM Cognos Connection
• IBM Cognos Mobile
• IBM Cognos for MS Office
• IBM Cognos Workspace
• IBM Cognos Workspace Advanced
• IBM Cognos Report Studio
• IBM Cognos Insight
• IBM Cognos Event Studio
• IBM Cognos Query Studio
• IBM Cognos Analysis Studio
• IBM Cognos Metric Studio
• IBM Cognos Metric Designer
• IBM Cognos Analysis for MS Excel (CAFE)
• IBM Cognos Framework Manager
• IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Transformer
• TM1 writeback to bundled FLBI TM1 server

IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Analytics Administrator

• Receive burst report outputs
• IBM Cognos Connection
• IBM Cognos Mobile
• IBM Cognos for MS Office
• IBM Cognos Workspace
• IBM Cognos Workspace Advanced
• IBM Cognos Report Studio
• IBM Cognos Insight
• IBM Cognos Event Studio
• IBM Cognos Query Studio
• IBM Cognos Analysis Studio
• IBM Cognos Metric Studio
• IBM Cognos Metric Designer
• IBM Cognos Analysis for MS Excel (CAFE)
• IBM Cognos Framework Manager
• IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Transformer
• TM1 writeback to bundled FLBI TM1 server
• IBM Cognos Administration
• IBM Cognos Cube Designer/Dynamic Query Analyzer
• IBM Cognos Software Development Kit

IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Forward Looking Analytics Architect

• Receive burst report outputs
• IBM Cognos Connection
• IBM Cognos Mobile
• IBM Cognos for MS Office
• IBM Cognos Workspace
• IBM Cognos Workspace Advanced
• IBM Cognos Report Studio
• IBM Cognos Insight
• IBM Cognos Event Studio
• IBM Cognos Query Studio
• IBM Cognos Analysis Studio
• IBM Cognos Metric Studio
• IBM Cognos Metric Designer
• IBM Cognos Analysis for MS Excel (CAFE)
• IBM Cognos Framework Manager
• IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Transformer
• TM1 writeback to bundled FLBI TM1 server
• IBM Cognos Administration
• IBM Cognos Cube Designer/Dynamic Query Analyzer
• IBM Cognos Software Development Kit
• IBM SPSS Modeler Client for BI

Once again, this is not an official list - see IBM for any clarification or confirmation.

Cheers!

MF.

[Suraj]

Last user group meeting had presentation on the new license model.
The only issue is that the roles/capabilities in Cognos administration are not lined up with the licenses so it's the same old manual work to track it and be in compliance.
For example, BSP license auditor can give number of users with different studio/capability but has no idea about licensing model.
Specially the roles with overlapped studios are a pain to track manually.

[MFGF]

Last user group meeting had presentation on the new license model.
The only issue is that the roles/capabilities in Cognos administration are not lined up with the licenses so it's the same old manual work to track it and be in compliance.
For example, BSP license auditor can give number of users with different studio/capability but has no idea about licensing model.
Specially the roles with overlapped studios are a pain to track manually.

Surely this makes the task easier? If Analytics Users have access to all authoring studios you don't need to worry so much about making sure they are compliant?

The out-of-the-box roles don't necessarily reflect the license capabilities - I completely agree, bit it wouldn't take much effort to create five new roles - one for each license?

Cheers!

MF.

[Yunus]

Surely this makes the task easier? If Analytics Users have access to all authoring studios you don't need to worry so much about making sure they are compliant?

The out-of-the-box roles don't necessarily reflect the license capabilities - I completely agree, bit it wouldn't take much effort to create five new roles - one for each license?

Cheers!

MF.

I am imagining that in future releases such as 11 that IBM might reorganize or rename roles to be alligned under this new model.  If they only have 4 primary license levels they could even make icons that appear in the properities of a role and identify the license levels that are authorized to use that role.

Either way the thought around my office was "this seems to good to be true", it will allow us more capability for the same money.  But their documention/salesman and this thread reinforce that it seems accurate, maybe IBM realized they were losing business from their exisiting confusing model.  I spent days tailoring our licenses to be legal but not pay a dime more than we needed to in the past, now it's much more straight forward.

[Suraj]

Yes BSP auditor helps. Also, there are audit and content store queries that help.

Lining up license with roles is one thing but controlling users' access is another.
For example, we won't just give all studios to all users just because we have Analytics User license.
Some are trained only in QS and we have to limit access to QS while others to RS, AS and combination of studios.
That means, roles will never line up and there will always be manual work.

[bdbits]

As you said, "Lining up license with roles is one thing but controlling users' access is another." Not giving your users access to studios they are entitled to from a licensing perspective is not a compliance issue. That part of the "manual work" is your choice. But I fully agree it has been a major pain-in-the-you-know-what to ensure you are compliant.

I would be pretty surprised if we do not at some point (maybe the next release) see new roles added that map to the licensing capabilities. We also see these changes as a very good thing, and generally more capability for the same licenses.

[Suraj]

That part of the "manual work" is your choice.

Believe me, it is not my choice but all the companies I've worked with, that's always the case due to training and other requirements before allowing studio capability. So it's never this, "Oh we have 100 RS licenses, let's add 100 users to RS right away".
Users go through studio training one by one and then only get access.
Been through 5 companies and many more contracting projects and that's the case in every one of them.
There were few exceptions depending upon what user requests access but the trend is to train first and give studio access later so roles align more with capability/ies rather than license.

I would be pretty surprised if we do not at some point (maybe the next release) see new roles added that map to the licensing capabilities.

Already talked to IBM rep and beta developers on this, not happening, at least not in the next release.  ::)