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Unisys Libra 590/595/690 Metered Systems : With our help metering can save you a lot of money!

The Unisys Libra 590, 595 and 690 systems introduce a whole new way of managing your system. Instead of investing in a system with a fixed power for a fixed time period, you are now investing in an unlimited power system but only paying for the amount that you use.

This gives you all the performance advantages of a much more powerful machine, such as improved response and turnaround times, without any additional cost. In fact, as a result of installing Libra 590’s, clients are claiming as much as a 30% reduction in overall hardware and software costs.

This almost seems too good to be true, but the reality is that this is an opportunity that all users of Unisys NX systems should take advantage of. As users have remarked, in terms of costs and accountability, this makes the Unisys mainframe a very competitive long term option.

Getting The Most From A Metered System

The first question has to be, are there any drawbacks? You will be presented with a monthly bill from Unisys for your system usage, which will be decremented from your prepaid investment, which would typically last for 5 years. Provided that the bill is for the amount expected, there will be no problem.

However, if this is more than expected, this can become an issue. The immediate questions will be: why did this happen, and will it happen again? The bill will only give you the total usage, but you will not know whether the increased usage if from increased business volumes, extra management reports or unscheduled work on the system.

The trick here is to have total control of the use of the system on an ongoing basis, with minimal additional usage costs.

Our product, RG Solutions (RGS) is designed to specifically address this scenario. It provides you with the ongoing reporting of your costs that is essential for complete control of your Libra systems.

RGS lives on a Windows platform, thereby eliminating the additional Libra usage costs associated with traditional products. (These can be as high as 10%!).

Below are examples of the reports used by our clients to fully control and audit their Libra systems to ensure that costs are contained and predictable.

Machine usage is measured in “Meter-Months”. A Meter-Month is the amount of usage consumed by using a single RPM for one month (sometimes called an RPM-Month). We have introduced the concept of a “Quota”, which represents your expected machine usage in RPM-months. The reports focus on comparing actual usage compared with your expected usage, and accounting for any discrepancies.

Click on the pictures to see the full reports:

Weekly Management Report:

Monthly Workload Categorisation report:

Monthly Cost Analysis Report:

Things to think about before metering!

There are potential problem areas that must be carefully considered before defining a new Server quota/threshold.

  • Unexpected business demands.
  • Is your workload stable?
  • New applications.
  • Exception processing.
  • Specialised processing.
  • Database recoveries.
  • Re-runs.
  • Adhoc Management Reporting (ERGO).
  • Is your workload stable?
  • When and why did your system last fail?
  • Can you do this with your existing systems management tools?
  • Do you have sufficient time to make decisions on all of the above?

    • You must have the right information to make a right decision!

    Making the right decision!

  • We gather all the facts.
  • We evaluate all the requirements.
  • You decide your best contract option.
  • You negotiate with your hardware suppliers.
  • We validate your decision.

    • You will have complete control because.......

    RG Solutions automatically tells you:-
  • Who used it, why they used it, when they used it and how they used it.
  • When, why and if you should invoke the increased machine power.
  • Whether you can actually use the increased machine power.
  • That you got what you paid for.
  • That you will stay within quota.

    • In these situations RG Solutions pays for itself in one month!

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