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IBM Introduces New Cloud Pricing

Feb. 9, 2021, 3:59 p.m.

TL;DR

IBM announced that it would be launching a new pricing plan/billing model in a bid to convince prospective customers to its cloud.

This new model is available to a few US-based customers and throughout 2021, IBM seeks to roll out worldwide

Key Facts

1
With this billing model, you are billed monthly as per your usage.
2
Unlike the subscription model, you commit to spend a specific amount on the IBM cloud every month.
3
The plan is called “Pay As You Go With Committed Use”.
4
Discounts are also placed strategically across the cloud platform.
5
Having agreed on a fixed amount, if you exceed consumption, you’ll then be charged with the default pricing.

Details

The Covid-19 pandemic has seen different businesses evolve to stand the test of these challenging times. IBM is committed to providing a flexible billing model that aids you in optimizing several parts of your business. This latest addition will be beneficial to lovers of consumption billing - you are billed at the service level for your consumption of each month. Having agreed upon certain prices and discounts with the IBM sales team, your monthly usage charts, and potential discounts will be reflected in your monthly invoice. IBM boasts that its new plan is different and innovative, but with a keen look it doesn’t pose much difference to what Amazon Web Services offer with their savings plan but Azure reservations buyers now have some serious consideration to do.

It all begins with a payment and usage commitment of Big Blue’s cloud each month. You and the sales team then negotiate and agree on a said number, if you exceed expected consumption, you’ll still get the same pricing.

No penalty for overage charges! If you spend more than the amount you committed to, you will continue to receive the same discounts agreed upon by IBM. The discounted charges will be reflected on your monthly invoice. Big Spiel Marketing spiel added.

The bill might come as a shock to you if you consume more cloud than expected, but on the bright side you’ve negotiated a discount rather than regular rates.

With an improved console experience, you can easily visualize the progress towards a commitment. You will identify your discount, spending progress and time remaining on the commitment all with ease. The monthly spend is broken down by month and you can manage any changes seen in your spending month-to-month commitment and be able to observe spending trends over time. You can also click into a single month to view additional details about your commitment. A view of the usage dashboard for that particular month will then be sent to you.

These new benefits and discounts of the IBM Pay as you go with Committed Use billing model will be available to new US-based customers by default while existing customers that are interested in adopting the new model will have to contact the IBM Sales Team and be connected to their sales representative for more details. This new model is available to a few US-based customers and throughout 2021, IBM seeks to roll out worldwide.

Major improvement has been made to IBM’s cloud in recent years seeing issues like clunky consoles and slow provisioning times fixed while in turn expanding their services.