IBM FlexPoints

Predicting the number of required IBM FlexPoints

To predict the number of IBM FlexPoints that are required to license products in your environment, you can use the FlexPoint Calculator. For each product that you are planning to deploy as part of a FlexPoint bundle, specify the number of license metric units. The numbers are then converted into IBM FlexPoints and summed up.

Example

The following example describes how the number of IBM FlexPoints that are used in your environment is counted by BigFix Inventory. The calculations are based on sample values and should be treated only as an example.

Reading metric utilization

Information about FlexPoint bundles

You can view information about FlexPoint bundles on the IBM FlexPoints report. The report lists the FlexPoint bundles 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 FlexPoints.

Information about the products that contribute to FlexPoint bundles

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

When you generate the audit snapshot, information about FlexPoint 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.