IBM and Amazon Web Services have partnered to allow developers to use Amazon EC2 to build and run a range of IBM platform technologies, the companies announced today. The new ‘pay-as-you-go’ model provides development and production instances of IBM DB2, Informix Dynamic Server, WebSphere Portal, Lotus Web Content Management and Novell’s SUSE Linux operating system on EC2.
Developers can use their existing IBM licenses on Amazon EC2 or use new Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) that IBM is making available at no charge for development and test purposes, enabling software developers to quickly build applications based on IBM software within Amazon EC2. In coming months, Amazon will introduce production AMIs running IBM services, enabling users to purchase these services by the hour.
(Via Data Center Knowledge.)
My comments.
There are three main cloud killers out there right now: licensing, compliance, and comfort. The announcement above is a great step forward in the licensing front. Typically licenses from most ISVs out there are tied to physical devices. These are known as device based licenses. I call them DBLs. The problem with DBLs is you need to know which device the license is tied to and typically you need to own that device.
Microsoft Windows licenses are a good example of DBLs. Let’s say you deploy a Windows box in the cloud. Well, for one you never know which physical host it’s going to land on. If the cloud is big (let’s say 5,000 hosts) and the number of Windows servers you’re deploying is low (let’s say 20 servers) then you’re going to pay a large sum to Microsoft just to have your servers run in the cloud. The same problem exists for Microsoft applications.
Now this is if you actually own the cloud and you’re not using some cloud service like Amazon. If you’re using Amazon then you don’t actually own any of the physical hosts which means you can’t deploy a DBL that you own. No worries since Amazon is probably using something called the Service Provider License Agreement (SPLA) from Microsoft. Amazon owns the license and has built in that cost for the instance you’re running. This is why Windows VMs in EC2 cost more than Linux VMs.
There are several questions that come up when dealing with licensing in the cloud:
- What do I do with my existing licenses when I move stuff to the cloud?
- What happens with other applications (Oracle, SAP, etc)?
- Do I still need CALs if I’m in the Windows world?
These questions are just the tip of the iceberg. There’s good news in all of this though. Virtualization in the x86 space has caused a lot of ISVs to really look at how they handle licensing. There have been some good changes in licensing as a result of virtual machine deployments increasing. Most notably is probably Microsoft who has continually updated their licensing models. On the other end of the spectrum is Oracle who has been completely ignorant about licensing models for virtual deployments. The good news for cloud is companies are aware of the challenges in their legacy licensing models and are working on changing them. Cloud has arrived at the perfect time to influence some of these changes.
IBM is probably the first major vendor I’ve seen that has started to tackle licensing issues in the cloud. Actually they went one step further and pre-built free appliances for development purposes. That’s incredible. It’s not the first time IBM has made pre-built appliances available. There are several IBM appliances out on the VMware Virtual Appliance Marketplace already (they’ve been there for a while). You really have to give IBM a pat on the back for taking the lead on this front. They have made a statement on how licensing should work and how you should make your software available. It will be interesting to see who follows in their footsteps. One can only hope that everyone will.
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