Framework Manager licenses.

[JoeSquid]

Hello all, I need some advice about Framework Manager.

We have been told here that IBM now considers FM as part of the 'administrator' role and as such we are no longer "allowed" to publish our DEV packages.
We are to work our models, and when ready, we have to have a 'named' administrator' publish that work up to our DEV portal.

Is this true?
I can understand that this would be in effect for our PROD environment, but the development process tends to be highly iterative - this approach would very quickly overload our 3 named individuals.

We publish to PROD (if necessary) once a week.

How are you members managing this?

As always, your insight is always appreciated.
Thanks.
-D.

[RKMI]

Hi,

I have never heard of such a limitation based on 'admin' role, I know based on what part number you purchased from IBM. Another thing since it looks like you have per user licenses, its good idea to remember not all report authors are data modellers. What I mean by this is your FM licenses would be different from your report authors users.

I would also ask you to reach out IBM or even talk to a middle vendor to clearify wheather the desrcibed part has limitations pointed out by your rep. They can help you find out if there is a good trade-up option for you.

Thanks,
RK

[SomeClown]

We have been told here that IBM now considers FM as part of the 'administrator' role and as such we are no longer "allowed" to publish our DEV packages.
We are to work our models, and when ready, we have to have a 'named' administrator' publish that work up to our DEV portal.

That's consistent with my understanding of licensing as well, though I think it is worse than you ask.  The license is required for anyone to use Framework Manager, whether they are publishing the package or not.  The IBM website is crap but here's a link where you can start for investigation:   http://www-03.ibm.com/software/sla/sladb.nsf/byformnum/13E610057831E5FD852577C10070B46B?opendocument  It's for 10.1. but I doubt much has changed to 10.2.   
Only these licenses mentions metadata modeling (Framework Manager):

2) IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Administrator
3) IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Analysis Administrator

[MFGF]

Yep - FM is only now available as part of the Administrator licenses.

The 10.2 version of Someclown's link is here:

http://www-03.ibm.com/software/sla/sladb.nsf/displaylis/BCD44129B762B25C85257A8D007EA418?OpenDocument

Cheers!

MF.

[JoeSquid]

Thanks for the info guys, I have had a read through the ibm info site there (thou shalt NOT....)

How is everyone working with this service approach?
Do you have one administrator that you send all of your development to so that they can model and publish to the portal?

According to ibm, a 'company' shouldn't need more than 3 admin licenses to operate.
Interesting.
When did ibm start dictating how a company runs their business?

Our issue is that we have 5 verticals within the company, and each is responsible for it's own business (and modeling)
To me that would mean 3 licenses per vertical (15 licenses total).
While this is obviously not needed, the people that make the decisions here are stuck in the ibm groove of "no more than 3".

Thoughts?
As always, thanks for your time.
-D.

[SomeClown]

When did ibm start dictating how a company runs their business?

... about 1953 or so (only half-joking - go read some of their sales tactics/account management from the mainframe days)

While this is obviously not needed, the people that make the decisions here are stuck in the ibm groove of "no more than 3".
Thoughts?

If you don't have enough licenses, then it's a service bureau model (center of excellence, etc).  Central dept where all requests go for modeling.  It doesn't look like you have any middle ground if you cannot get more licenses.  Compliance penalties are rumored to be draconian.

[MFGF]

Talk to your IBM account manager and see what suggestions he/she can provide. They are usually quite flexible when you go to them asking how you can purchase more licenses :)

MF.

[JoeSquid]

I can certainly try that!

Thanks again all for your time and attention.
-D.

[Yunus]

I've been unable to get a solid answer from IBM about "transferring" of licenses.  While admins may be the only ones who can use FM, changing admins is not against the license agreement.  The best answer I could get was from an IBM sales rep who said that as long as we were not transferring the license more than once a day we were fine but he wouldn't/couldn't go into very specific details.

[bdbits]

We are at the tail end of an IBM audit, and though we do not yet have a number, I was told the standard penalty is the cost of a license plus 50%. And that does not purchase an additional license, that is just for the penalty. I've been told they are also not sympathetic that you may have made a simple mistake and the unauthorized user never even knew of or tried to access that feature, nor would we want them to try had they figured out they had access.

Software licensing is painful to begin with, and they seem to want to penalize you to the point of looking for other vendors after you have already given them well into six figures. There, I said it, I feel better now.  8)

[MMcBride]

We are just wrapping up an IBM Audit as well - wow what a nightmare... they outsource their Audits...

However we had identified 4 Administration Roles and licensed accordingly
We went through a migration of users off of Powerplay into 8.1 then again when IBM went to the Consumer, Enhanced Consumer Roles

To this day we still only have a general idea on our licensing - every time we ask for clarification we get a slightly different answer...

The things we know for certain and I make sure each year it stays the same is we have 4 Admin's - then a large block of Professional Authors, another of Authors - then we have a PVU set for Consumers.

Our Author groups seem to vary so I keep my numbers about 20% below the max (just in case...)
I was hoping with the Audit we could clear things up but when I ask "How many licenses do we have?" I hear "yeah your fine" - not the answer to my question but as long as they aren't billing us more I guess it's all good...

The IBM Audit took around 9 months (All IBM Products were audited not just Cognos) I had to provide screenshots of every folder, security setting capability etc in the entire environment - the Audit has been over for 6 months and we still do not know how we fared officially...

[Suraj]

May be late in the game but there is actually a separate license for FM user, at least in our license agreement.
It's called 'IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Reporting Developer Authorized User'.

This license allows installing FM on a user's machine instead of using FM on a Cognos server.
Also helps manage that FM modeler without granting full Cognos admin license.

About Cognos audit, it was a nightmare as well few years ago.
Had to do bunch of back and forth emails/phone calls, meetings etc... to explain what they found vs. what we had license for.
The audit company they hired didn't have full knowledge of everything IBM licenses and caused more trouble.  :o

Penalty aside but you should be able to re-route that license to purchase other license if you re-organize.
For example, we had few users as admin who don't need to be admins.
So we bought additional RS licenses instead of paying for those additional admins they found and removed those users from admins.

[simon.hodgkiss]

Never too late in the game to share useful information!  This will certainly help me!  Thanks all.   ;D

Talk about fate - I happened to browse this thread this morning, and this afternoon my colleague gets off a call with IBM and tells me that they're sending in the license auditors!  I've been in this team 7 years and never been checked!

Serendipity led me to this thread also earlier too http://www.cognoise.com/index.php/topic,20945.0.html

The universe is obviously paying close attention to me today...  Should've been thinking lottery numbers...

Si

[bdbits]

Good luck, simon.hodgkiss. It is a painful process, and unless you were/are very careful, they are likely going to find something for which they can charge you a penalty. In our case, they were auditing our entire suite of IBM products. I'm sure there will be a fair bit of money involved. Given the vagueness around licensing and even vendor reps from the same company giving you different answers, it is nearly impossible to avoid inadvertently violating something.

For us at least, it was made even more annoying because they outsourced the original auditors to KPMG, and they clearly did not know as much as they should about Cognos to do an audit (in my opinion).

With all the people reporting getting audited in the last year, I wonder if licensing revenue is down at IBM?  :P

[SomeClown]

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9238511/IBM_39_s_revenue_deflated_in_2013_39_s_first_quarter

[MMcBride]

bdbits - KPMG was who IBM used for our Audit as well
The Audit itself took 9 months, We just an email from them today saying we are out of Compliance

Their findings
Number of Physical CPUs: 2
Number of Cores per CPU: 6
Total Number of Cores: 18
PVU: 820

Now lets just ignore basic math... and look at our actual hardware specs
Number of CPUS: 6
Number of Cores per CPU: 4
Total number of Cores: 24
PVU: 720

We purchased the Hardware WITH the Cognos Licenses and had IBM come in and set up the hardware for us...

[SomeClown]

To be honest, neither of those PVU multipliers coincide with this:
http://www-01.ibm.com/software/lotus/passportadvantage/pvu_licensing_for_customers.html

Hopefully you're named user for licensing (PVUs don't matter then).

[bdbits]

I feel your pain, MMcBride. I would hope IBM itself will back off considering it sounds like you bought everything for your Cognos install from them. KPMG does not seem very knowledgeable on a lot of things, especially how the licensing works. When we threw stuff back at them in response to initial numbers and explained why they were wrong, at least they backed down a little. Our audit is still not complete. Because it was all of our IBM products and we have a bunch, it is going to be expensive when all is said and done. Of that I am pretty certain.

SomeClown, the PVU calculations - particularly if you have 'sub-capacity' licensing for any of it - are very dependent on exactly what you have. Even the PVU number the auditors gave him is not an even multiplier from that chart. IBM account reps have trouble figuring out the proper PVUs (worked on this with server admins and IBM a few months before the audit started). In the end it seems you have to tell them what you have or are contemplating purchasing and wait for a number. Just get it in writing.

I much prefer PVU licensing over named, though we have a mix depending on role. It makes worrying about new users and licensing much less painful, and I think once you reach a certain number of users it is more cost-effective. The flip side is you cannot upgrade with impunity. Buggers.

[Suraj]

bdbits - KPMG was who IBM used for our Audit as well
The Audit itself took 9 months, We just an email from them today saying we are out of Compliance

Their findings
Number of Physical CPUs: 2
Number of Cores per CPU: 6
Total Number of Cores: 18
PVU: 820

Now lets just ignore basic math... and look at our actual hardware specs
Number of CPUS: 6
Number of Cores per CPU: 4
Total number of Cores: 24
PVU: 720

We purchased the Hardware WITH the Cognos Licenses and had IBM come in and set up the hardware for us...

You mentioned IBM set up the hardware.
If you or network guys at your place didn't change anything like CPU, machine etc..., then it's their fault and can be explained.
If you upgraded it after IBM's setup, then they'll grill you.

I don't understand the calculation.
Their findings
Number of Physical CPUs: 2
Number of Cores per CPU: 6
Total Number of Cores: 18
PVU: 820

Shouldn't that be total of 12 cores (2 cpu with 6 cores) and not 18????

[MMcBride]

Shouldn't that be total of 12 cores (2 cpu with 6 cores) and not 18?

Thats why I said lets ignore basic math... :)

We have PVU for Enhanced Consumer - we purchased the PVU for Consumer when we upgraded our licensing, there was alot of confusion so we listed the hardware we were planning to implement in our hardware and asked IBM to tell us how many PVU's we needed.
We also have additional Software that is loaded...
So since I have 24 Cores - 6 allocated to PVU's
I still have TM1 with 6 Cores allocated to that
Plus 300 Prof Authors, 250 Advanced Business Authors and 200 Business Author - All named seats.

But within Cognos I can't limit certain processes to specific cores - that I am aware of...

Once again I point out we had IBM in house to help us get the environment up and running

IBM may very well Fine us...

We have emails from our IBM Sales Rep where they specifically outline how many PVU's we will need to fit our environment.
Could the sales rep have read the PVU licensing incorrectly thinking 1 PVU was for 1 Processor and not 1 core? Perhaps

Either way we have these emails that go up the chain a good bit where we state this is the size of the LPAR we are using for COgnos - how many PVU's do we need? - Their answer was 720 and verified by two additional IBM employees in writting before we deployed...

We still don't know what IBM intends to do with KPMG's results if anything...
My boss sent the emails from IBM to our License Management team asking them to be prepared for the worst...

Or we will have to create much smaller LPAR's and break out the Cognos software across a group of servers so from a license perspective we are compliant... or something...

[JoeSquid]

. . . great :-\ . . . nothing like taking your troubles and sharing them with your customers . . .

[Suraj]

IBM partners who come for audit don't fully understand license as much as we think they do.
We had Deloitte for audit and had to explain few things to drop the counts as they were not up to date with IBM's new licensing process and were auditing with old licensing in mind.
Anyways, if IBM was involved and you didn't change anything, they should not fine you.
Also, for named license users, you can setup another server and block all consumers from it.

[randomcoder]

Ancient topic but audits still do happen...
Simple question: If FrameworkManager is installed at a server, do you need a license for every user that can access the server at operating system level regardless of whether they can log in to Cognos or not?

[MFGF]

Ancient topic but audits still do happen...
Simple question: If FrameworkManager is installed at a server, do you need a license for every user that can access the server at operating system level regardless of whether they can log in to Cognos or not?

Hi,

My feeling on this is no, but don't take this as being a statement of fact. My understanding is that you'd need to be able to log in to Cognos to require a license. I'm basing this on the line in the license docs which states:

Each person who is provided an output(s) of the Program through the Bursting feature or who authenticates to the Program must be covered by an appropriate entitlement.

The license docs link is here:

http://www-03.ibm.com/software/sla/sladb.nsf/lilookup/65D328F8928F23B285257F2200543DF0?OpenDocument

As always, I'll caveat this by saying you must check with your IBM account manager to get a definite answer :)

Cheers!

MF.