Websphere and Licensing

We are running websphere and I have few questions regarding licensing. When we purchased the technology foundation it included websphere, recently I was informed we were paying maintenance to IBM for this product. Further to this we had set the system up with an instance for DEV, CRP and PROD and are paying for maintenance on each instance.

First off should we be paying maintenance to IBM even though we purchased it from PeopleSoft .

Second is it really necessary to run multiple instances of the product or could we be running all three environments on the one instance.

Any comments would be appreciated.

Kenney,

If you have technology foundation you do not need to pay maintenance to IBM.

Yes, you can run multiple environments on one instance but I would recommend separating PD from DV and PY instance.

--Sam

Kenney,

Your service agreement for WebSphere is through Oracle provided that you recieved WebSphere via the technical foundations packet. In most cases, a request for support for WebSphere must be done through Oracle's GSS dept. If you have a pre-existing service agreement with IBM (i.e. you have an iSeries ENT server), you may be able to get support directly from IBM. I do this for one of my clients in the midwest.

Finally, although it is okay to setup more than one environment on any particular instance, it is generally frowned upon by both Oracle and the consulting community. The reason for this is the caching on the application server instance which can cause objects to show up in an environment even though they have yet to be promoted there. This is especially true for clients who have an abundance of custom development currently taking place on the system.

P.S. I see you are in Windsor. I currently live in the Detroit area. I did not even realize that U of W uses EnterpriseOne.

For what it's worth - we bought our WebSphere outside the technology foundation and we're licenced on a per processor basis. We run multiple instances on each physical server being limited mostly by RAM. This separation lets us avoid cache problems noted elsewhere and also allows DV to be stopped for updates without impacting PD (or at least not afffecting it anywhere near as much as stopping it).