News roundup – May 2022

What happened in the world of IT and ITAM in May 2022? Here’s a roundup of ITAM news stories during May 2022.

IBM make ILMT more difficult 

Organisations are no longer allowed to manually update the software catalogue with ILMT, instead a full ILMT upgrade will need to be completed on a quarterly basis. This change will make it that bit more difficult to manage IBM ILMT installations – something I’m sure all IBM customers are pleased to hear!

Check out more info from Piaras MacDonnell here: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:ugcPost:6932690886564745216?updateEntityUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afs_updateV2%3A%28urn%3Ali%3AugcPost%3A6932690886564745216%2CFEED_DETAIL%2CEMPTY%2CDEFAULT%2Cfalse%29  

And the official IBM announcement is here: 

https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/node/6223460

IBM & AWS hook up 

In more IBM news, they’ve announced a strategic partnership with Amazon AWS whereby they intend to offer a range of IBM products, including Db2, as “SaaS” via the AWS cloud. The plan being to make it easier for organizations to acquire IBM software in the cloud, enabling faster and more cost-effective deployments. They also state that this IBM software purchased via the AWS Marketplace will count towards Amazon Enterprise Discount Program (EDP) commitments. 

The IBM announcement is here: 

https://newsroom.ibm.com/2022-05-11-IBM-Signs-Strategic-Collaboration-Agreement-with-Amazon-Web-Services-to-Deliver-IBM-Software-as-a-Service-on-AWS

Broadcom acquire VMware 

Following their acquisitions of Computer Associates (CA) and Symantec, it’s probably fair to say that Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware isn’t going to excite many end user organizations and asset managers.  

It’s likely there will be a higher focus on shareholder value and profits than before, this excellent analysis over at Silicon Angle: 

https://siliconangle.com/2022/05/27/broadcom-will-tame-vmware-beast/ 

gives great insights into how Broadcom operate and what will change for VMware – including more subscription revenue, a reduced R&D budget, and a focus on earning more from existing customers. As part of all this, I would expect to see an increased focus on license compliance and audits – they’re a tried and tested method to earn additional revenue relatively cheaply. 

Google increase cloud data costs 

Google have announced a range of price increases (and a few decreases) for their GCP offering, all of which will kick in from October 1, 2022. While none of the price changes look dramatic on their own, even an increase of just a few pence/cents can have a big impact when it applies to every GB of data you store/move around in the cloud. 

The Google announcement is here: 

https://cloud.google.com/infrastructure/services-updates 

and the prices are here: 

https://cloud.google.com/storage/pricing-announce 

Be sure that your organisation understands how these will impact your bills…and make any possible changes to mitigate them. 

Longer reads and analysis

Here are some more in-depth stories published by the ITAM Review during May 2022 you may have missed:

• ITAM + DEX – a podcast with 1E
• 3 considerations before a move to Oracle Cloud
• Microsoft makes big changes to licensing policies for European Cloud Providers
• As ITAM ascends, what does it all mean for ITAM salaries and skills?