IBM MQ Advanced licensing: edition premium, PVU, Cloud Pak for Integration.

MQ Advanced inside the MQ product family.

IBM MQ is the message oriented middleware that has anchored enterprise integration at Fortune 500 customers for more than three decades. MQ comes in three principal commercial editions: MQ, MQ Advanced, and MQ Advanced for Developers. MQ Advanced is the superset edition that adds the advanced security, replication, file transfer, and high availability features to the MQ base. For customers running MQ in regulated industries (banking, insurance, healthcare, government) MQ Advanced is the de facto standard because the security and resilience features are operational requirements.

This article works through MQ Advanced specifically. For the broader MQ licensing context see the IBM MQ Licensing article. For container and Cloud Pak context see Container Licensing and Cloud Pak Strategy.

We work as an independent firm. We are not an IBM Business Partner, reseller, or affiliate, and we hold no resell margin on any MQ Advanced licence.

What MQ Advanced adds over MQ base.

MQ Advanced adds several feature sets to the MQ base edition. The principal additions are Advanced Message Security (end to end message encryption with key management integration), MQ File Transfer (managed file transfer over MQ), MQ Replication (active active replication for high availability and disaster recovery), MQ Telemetry Transport at scale (the MQTT broker integration for IoT and edge), and Advanced features for compliance and audit (message integrity, non repudiation, and audit trail capabilities).

The features come bundled in the Advanced edition. The customer pays an edition premium over base MQ. The buyer side discipline is to verify that the customer is actually using the Advanced features, because the edition premium only pays back where the features are operationally consumed. Customers commonly hold Advanced entitlement on instances that use only base MQ features, having upgraded the entire estate to Advanced for procurement simplification rather than feature need.

MQ Advanced metering.

MQ Advanced is metered in Processor Value Units on the distributed platform and in Million Service Units on the mainframe (where MQ for z/OS Advanced applies). PVU metering on distributed MQ Advanced is sub capacity eligible, which means the customer can pay for only the virtualised capacity the MQ instance actually consumes rather than the full physical capacity of the host. ILMT is required. See Sub Capacity Explained and ILMT Guide.

MQ Advanced also has an Authorized User metric for specific use cases, particularly where MQ is deployed as a developer tool or as part of a packaged solution. The harvest move on Authorized User MQ Advanced is to verify the user count against the active developer or solution user population.

MQ Appliance Advanced.

The MQ Appliance is the hardware appliance form of MQ. The Advanced edition of the appliance includes the Advanced features in the firmware. The appliance is licensed per appliance and is generally a quieter line in the renewal than the distributed software, because the entitlement is tied to the physical hardware. The harvest opportunity on the Appliance is at hardware refresh, when the customer can re evaluate whether the Advanced features are still needed and whether the appliance footprint should be reduced.

MQ Advanced in Cloud Pak for Integration.

Cloud Pak for Integration includes MQ Advanced as one of the integration capabilities under a single Virtual Processor Core entitlement. For customers consolidating MQ Advanced with API Connect, App Connect, DataPower, and the rest of the integration portfolio, the Cloud Pak for Integration path can pay back. For customers using only MQ Advanced and no other Cloud Pak for Integration capability, the Cloud Pak path is usually more expensive than direct MQ Advanced entitlement under Passport Advantage.

The buyer side discipline on a Cloud Pak for Integration conversion offer for MQ Advanced is the same as on any Cloud Pak conversion: model both paths at three year total cost of ownership against the realistic feature consumption. See Cloud Pak Strategy and the Cloud Pak expertise page.

Where the conversion does pay back, the buyer side negotiation moves are to lock the VPC conversion ratio for MQ Advanced for the term, to retain the perpetual MQ Advanced entitlement under Passport Advantage as a fallback, and to align the Cloud Pak for Integration anniversary to the broader Passport Advantage anniversary.

Annual MQ Advanced harvest.

MQ Advanced harvest is one of the higher impact harvest disciplines because the edition premium is material. Inventory the entitlement, inventory the feature consumption, reconcile, identify excess, downgrade or harvest at the next renewal.

1. Inventory all MQ Advanced entitlement by edition (Advanced or Advanced for Developers), metric, and PVU or Authorized User count.
2. Inventory all deployed MQ instances. For each instance, identify whether MQ Advanced features are actually used.
3. Reconcile entitlement to feature consumption.
4. Identify instances where MQ Advanced entitlement is held but only base MQ features are used.
5. Downgrade those instances to base MQ at the next renewal.
6. Document the harvest decision in the entitlement inventory.

See IBM Shelfware Recovery for the general method.

MQ Advanced at renewal.

MQ Advanced renewal sits inside the Passport Advantage anniversary. The buyer side moves at renewal are the edition harvest (downgrade where features are not used), the PVU compression on instances that can move to newer processors with more favourable PVU ratios, the ILMT discipline that protects sub capacity rights, and the resistance against any IBM Cloud Pak for Integration conversion offer that does not pay back.

MQ Advanced is a strategic IBM product line, which means IBM commercial leverage is meaningful. Buyer side leverage comes from the strength of the MQ replacement alternatives at the edges (Kafka, RabbitMQ, ActiveMQ for messaging, MFT alternatives for file transfer) and from the harvest position. The customer who arrives at renewal with both a clear harvest position and a credible alternative analysis improves the achieved discount materially. See Renewal Strategy and IBM Discount Structures.

MQ Advanced in an IBM audit.

MQ Advanced audits centre on three findings. First, edition gaps where the deployed instance has Advanced features active but the entitlement is base MQ. Second, sub capacity gaps where ILMT did not capture the MQ Advanced workload correctly. Third, Authorized User gaps where the active user population exceeds the entitled count on Authorized User MQ Advanced deployments.

The buyer side audit defense on MQ Advanced is to control the feature activation evidence, control the ILMT report, control the Authorized User list, and refuse any IBM proposal to broaden the entitlement requirement without specific evidence of feature consumption. See IBM Audit Complete Guide and the Audit Defense service page.

MQ Advanced conclusion and next steps.

MQ Advanced is one of the higher impact harvest opportunities in a Fortune 500 IBM estate because the edition premium is material and the feature consumption is often narrower than the entitlement assumes. Inventory the feature use, downgrade where the features are unused, hold the line on ILMT discipline, and refuse Cloud Pak for Integration conversions that do not pay back.

For a buyer side advisor on your MQ Advanced estate see the License Consulting service page or the contact page.