Subscriptions

Authors: JerrySaulman, StevenBeard

IBM IoT CE on Cloud is offered on a monthly subscription; you subscribe to a certain usage during the month. Users per month (UPM) is the greatest number of users who are logged on to the service during the applicable calendar month.

Example

You subscribe to 100-users-per-month for 12 months.

• During month 1, 80 users are registered and they all log in. You are charged for 100 subscribed users for the first month.
• During month 2, the number of registered users increases to 150 but only 110 log in. You are charged for 100 subscribed users with an overage charge for 10 users. These 10 users are charged using overage part numbers which carry a 25% premium.
• During month 3, the number of registered users increases to 350 but only 95 users log in. You are charged for 100 subscribed users.

You can start with only five users a month for a commitment from 1 to 60 months for IBM Engineering Requirements Management DOORS Next SaaS, IBM Engineering Workflow Management SaaS, IBM Engineering Test Management SaaS, and IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management Base SaaS. IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management Extended SaaS has an entry point of 200 users a month for a commitment from 1 to 60 months, because the Extended tier provides additional capabilities that require a larger subscription commitment to maintain. IBM does not offer concurrent licenses for IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management Base SaaS.

You can't reduce the number of subscribed users during the term of your contract, such as starting with 205 users and then reducing the number of users to 150. You can cancel your subscription at the end of the contract term, and enter into a new subscription, with a lower number of users. For details, see: IBM Cloud Services Agreement for termination policy guidelines. For general Cloud services terms, see: Cloud Services terms.

Authorized Users

Authorized users are shown as floating licenses. IBM provisions SaaS to provide floating flexibility, at authorized user pricing. IBM provisions the environment so that you can simply add as many users to the system as you want, while you are charged only for those unique users who login during a given month. If IBM deployed only authorized user licenses, you’d have the burden of re-allocating licenses to specific users, and other users would receive out-of-license messages whenever you reached the authorized user limit. Provisioning with authorized user licenses also increases operational costs, because IBM has to issue a new license key every time you want to increase or decrease usage, because of a planned or unplanned overage.

Concurrent user subscriptions

IBM SaaS offerings offer a concurrent user subscription metrics. Concurrent users are the person(s) who are accessing the cloud service at any particular point in time. With concurrent user metric, subscriptions can be more cost effective than unique user metrics. You subscribe to the average number of users accessing the environment at the same time in a month, instead of subscribing for every unique user that might need access in a given month, regardless of frequency. Concurrent user subscriptions allow you to provide cost-effective access to:

• give insight to executives and managers through dashboards and cross project views
• broaden your organizational reach, with no worry about infrequent or light users
• retain legacy accounts without impacting your subscription totals

A concurrent user is a person who is accessing the cloud service at any particular point in time: regardless of whether the person is simultaneously accessing the cloud service multiple times, the person counts only as a single concurrent user. You must obtain entitlements for the maximum number of concurrent users simultaneously accessing the cloud service in any manner directly or indirectly by any means per month, or as specified in your Client's Transaction Document.

• You must choose one metric per environment to measure usage by: either Authorized (Unique) User or Concurrent.
• If you already have a subscription to IBM IOT CE & CLM on Cloud offerings, you cannot add concurrent user subscriptions to your existing authorized user subscriptions.
• If you already have an authorized user subscription, but you prefer a concurrent user metric, you either have to wait until your existing subscription terminates, or work with your seller to see if you are eligible to replace your current authorized user subscription with a new concurrent user subscription.
• If you subscribes to a concurrent subscription, we can limit the number of licenses deployed to only what is subscribed to avoid a pay per use or overage subscription. In this model, you would receive an out of license error message when the peak concurrent user capacity is reached. Work with your seller if you desire to limit users in this way.
• IBM provides all infrastructure-related support, which includes patches, fixes, and upgrades.
• You pay for subscription services on a monthly per concurrent user basis. There is a minimum of 5 concurrent users, except for IoT Continuous Engineering on Cloud, which has a minimum of 50 concurrent users.
• Peak concurrent usage is calculated as the highest number of authenticated users with simultaneous usage within 1 hour intervals over the monthly measurement period.
• SaaS offerings that provide concurrent user licenses include:

• • IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management Extended SaaS
  • IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management Extended SaaS for US Federal
  • IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management Base SaaS
  • IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management Base SaaS for US Federal
  • IBM Engineering Requirements Management DOORS® Next SaaS
  • IBM Engineering Requirements Management DOORS® Next SaaS for US Federal
  • IBM Engineering Workflow Management SaaS
  • IBM Engineering Workflow Management SaaS for US Federal
  • IBM Engineering Test Management SaaS
  • IBM Engineering Test Management SaaS for US Federal
  • IBM Engineering Systems Design Rhapsody - Design Manager SaaS
  • IBM Engineering Systems Design Rhapsody - Design Manager SaaS for US Federal
  • IBM Engineering Lifecycle Optimization - Engineering Insights SaaS
  • IBM Engineering Lifecycle Optimization - Engineering Insights SaaS US Federal on Cloud
  • IBM Engineering Workflow Management Contributor SaaS
  • IBM Engineering Workflow Management Contributor SaaS US Federal on Cloud

The concurrent user subscription model is similar to a floating license model.

Subscription Expiry

When your subscription expires or is terminated, you have a few options for dealing with your data:

• Maintain your project data on an existing SoftLayer® infrastructure. You can work directly with IBM SoftLayer for Cloud hosting.
• Receive a backup copy the latest version of the backup data for either archive purposes or on-premise installation.
• Arrange data migration as an add-on service by using a separate services contract
• Request that your data be destroyed in a secure fashion.

Protecting and Returning Your Data

Your data can be provided either on demand or in case of contract termination. In case of contract termination, we would provide you with the most recent backup of your data. If you want to receive data on demand, you may execute a data export of the environment to capture the data for import.

Related topics: Engineering Lifecycle Management SaaS home, Deployment web home, Deployment web home

External links:

• IBM