Our Philosophy
In addition to revolutionizing data access, our goal is to transform the pricing and licensing models that go with it.
At VirtualZ Computing, we had the luxury of starting with a clean sheet of paper, creating uniquely simple, transparent, and easy to manage pricing and licensing models. In addition to the cost savings and functional benefits of our products, our approach reduces customer operating costs by lowering management overhead, avoiding unplanned license fees, and eliminating costly compliance audits that result from legacy models.
Our License Metric
Lozen™ provides efficient real-time, read-write access to IBM Z data. We opted for a simple license metric: measuring the volume of data that passes through the Lozen NFS Server installed on your mainframe zIIP engine. Your license grants you the right to install and use on an unlimited number of locations and machines in your enterprise, including your outsourcer (provided the software is used only for your benefit or the outsourcer has a service bureau license).
Our Pricing and Data Volume Bands
One of the challenges of doing business in the enterprise software space is finding information about license and maintenance pricing. Therefore, it was important to us to be completely transparent in this regard. The pricing for Lozen is simply $150,000 for the first terabyte (TB) per year and each incremental TB is $100,000. This data volume is consumed over the annual contract term and can be monitored by you through the SMF reporting described below.
Lozen includes the no-code NFS functionality at no additional cost. Other no-code connectors are available at a flat annual fee of $50,000 per connector, including license and maintenance.
Each Lozen license includes (1) the zIIP-enabled, low-code, no-code Lozen NFS server, (2) unlimited LPARs, sites, and installations for your enterprise, and (3) all data types supported by Lozen, including VSAM, KSDS, RRDS, ESDS, QSAM, BSAM, BPAM, and more.
Monitoring and Reporting
During normal operation, the Lozen process writes accounting records to the IBM Z SMF system. You can read these records at any time during your license to monitor your Lozen usage. Additionally, these records need to be provided to us as part of the license term renewal or end-of-term reporting process.
You can control the SMF record type Lozen uses with the –smftype startup option. By default, Lozen writes SMF type 229 records.
The user ID associated with the Lozen process must have READ access to the BPX.SMF resource in the FACILITY class. (Please consult the Lozen Product Guide for details on setting up these permissions.)
The 60-day, no-charge evaluation is a great opportunity to see how efficiently Lozen accesses your information and to estimate the correct volume of data to license.
Renewals and End of Term
In addition to a simple and straightforward licensing metric and pricing model, our goal is to be transparent and fair when it comes to renewals and end-of-term discussions.
As you approach the end of your current license term, we ask that you share the unaltered SMF report from each install with us.
If you have not exceeded your licensed terabyte limit, you can simply renew for your projected limit in the next term or stop using Lozen and not renew.
If you exceeded your terabyte(s) data limit, you then have three choices:
- Renew at the higher terabyte rate, with no true up for the prior overage.
- Renew at the lower terabyte(s) limit and pay for the higher terabyte(s) usage for the expiring term.
- Do not renew, stop using Lozen, and pay for the higher terabyte(s) usage for the expiring term.
The following examples illustrate these options:
Example 1: Customer A subscribed to a one-year term at $150,000 for 1 TB of data through Lozen and the Lozen API. At renewal, the customer had actually used 1.83 TBs and wishes to renew for a second term at the higher volume. The renewal in year two, then, is simply $250,000 for 2 TBs of data through Lozen plus $50,000 for the Lozen API for a total of $300,000. No true-ups are due.
Example 2: Customer B subscribed in year one for 1 TB but used 1.76 TBs. Customer B determined that this was an anomaly and would not need to renew above 1 TB for year two. In this case, Customer B pays the additional $100,000 true-up and renews at the lower $150,000 1 TB rate for the upcoming year.
Example 3: Customer C subscribed for 2 TBs of data for a bubble project but ended up using 2.89 TBs of data. They have stopped using Lozen and will not renew. In this instance, Customer C owes a final payment of $100,000 for the additional TB.
Learn More
To learn more about how to unlock the power of real-time, read-write mainframe data access with Lozen:
- Try Lozen for free.
- Explore our demos page and YouTube channel.
- Watch webinars and read the blog.
- Still have questions? Contact us.
