IBM FlexPoints

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

Example

The following example describes how the number of FlexPoints that are used in your environment is counted by BigFix Inventory 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 IBM Product 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 IBM Product Bundles

You can view information about IBM FlexPoints on the IBM Product Bundles report. The report lists the IBM FlexPoints 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 IBM FlexPoints.

Excerpt from the IBM FlexPoints and IBM Product Bundles report

Information about the products that contribute to IBM FlexPoint bundles

To view the detailed report with license metric utilization for individual products that are parts of a bundle, go to the Product Bundle report, and click the Product Bundle name in the Product Name column. The detailed information include the peak date of the entire Product 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:

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 Product Bundle, the number of the FlexPoints for the entire bundle is automatically adjusted. For more information, see: Setting and removing the declared metric quantity.

Information about FlexPoints in audit snapshot

9.2.16 When you generate the audit snapshot, information about Product 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	Product Bundle	Metric	Metric Quantity	Peak Date	Bundle Metric Contribution	Recalculation Needed
1	IBM	Cloud DevOps - Perpetual	None	FlexPoint	139,073	06/14/2019		No
2	IBM	IBM Rational ClearCase	Cloud DevOps - Perpetual	Floating User	20	06/14/2019	136,400	No
3	IBM	IBM Rational ClearQuest	Cloud DevOps - Perpetual	Authorized User	1	06/14/2019	2,673	No