Eligible Public
Cloud BYOSL Policy

The Eligible Public Cloud Bring Your Own Software License (BYOSL) policy allows you to deploy and execute on an Eligible Public Cloud (EPC) any IBM software licensed to you directly or through an authorized IBM reseller under IBM license terms, subject to the use authorizations and restrictions stated in the applicable governing license agreements and transaction documents for such software including the IBM International Passport Advantage (IPAA) and IBM International Program License Agreement (IPLA) and the License Information documents applicable to the software.

This policy does not apply to IBM z/OS software or to any IBM software sublicensed to you by a third party. This policy also does not apply if you are an IBM Business Partner authorized to deploy your solution on a hosted environment – such situations are handled under a separate arrangement.

Back to top

The approved listing of Eligible Public Clouds (EPCs) where you may deploy licensed IBM software are defined by provider below. The "Required IBM Licensing Tools" are mandatory only when deploying capacity-based products (i.e., those licensed using Processor Value Unit (PVU) or Virtual Processor Core (VPC) metrics).  For other products, you are responsible for using any other tools made available by the EPC to provide compliance reporting per the IPAA.

If you have IBM software that is deployed via a Cloud provider that is not listed below, please send an email to 'talk2sam@us.ibm.com'. Be sure to include BYOSL in Subject line.

Note: The Licensing Footnotes below apply only where specifically noted within the Cloud provider sections above. They do not apply universally to all offerings.

1. In all instances: 1 vCPU = 1 Core = 1 VPC = 70 PVUs
   • For containers with Hyperthreading enabled:  2 vCPUs = 1 Core = 1 VPC = 70 PVUs  (See Container Licensing page for more information).
2. See the Processor Value Unit tables for requirements based on system configuration. Client must use the full ILMT configuration.
3. An Oracle Compute Unit (OCPU) corresponds to two hardware execution threads, known as vCPUs.  PVU licensing requires 1 OCPU = 2 vCPU = 140 PVU
4. Metering and reporting requirements are to be managed by client in Managed Kubernetes environments (such as OpenShift managed by Red Hat).
5. Physical Server or Bare Metal Clients may deploy software on physical server or bare metal public cloud offerings provided by EPCs (see above). These deployments must follow the guidance (including use of Licensing Tools) as defined in the sub-capacity and container licensing policies. For PVU deployments, see the Processor Value Unit tables for requirements based on system configuration.
6. On-premise deployments of public cloud services (e.g., Oracle Cloud@Customer, AWS Outpost) are supported and must follow sub-capacity and container licensing policies, including use of IBM Licensing Tools.
   For PVU licensing, deployments using eligible services are licensed at 70 PVUs per vCPU/Core, similar to if they were deployed in the public cloud. If IBM Licensing Tools are not used, full capacity licensing applies, as per International Passport Advantage Agreement terms.
7. For all above: Solaris x86 is not supported and therefore ineligible for use.
8. With the release of IBM Passport Advantage Agreement v11 (Release: February 2023), the Container Licensing addendum is no longer required. See the Container Licensing webpage for more information.
9. For deployments of Db2 Software on the Managed Services via the bring-your-own-license option, to count VPCs when deploying the full vCPU capacity of the instance, IBM will consider 1 VPC = 1 physical core = 2 vCPUs for all EC2 instances that have published their physical core counts on the EC2 “Physical Cores by Amazon EC2 Instance Type” page, where the vCPU count is twice the physical cores (meaning hyperthreading/simultaneous multi-threading (SMT) degree is set to (2). Only Db2 Standard Edition, Db2 Advanced Edition, Db2 ESE Add-on, and Db2 AESE Add-on licenses are eligible. See CPU cores and threads per CPU core per instance type.

The Eligible Public Cloud BYOSL policy does not modify or supersede any obligations in the applicable governing license agreements, including requirements for licensed software use in a virtualized environment as defined in the sub-capacity and container licensing policies.

The verification terms in such license agreements apply to you when you upload, install, or use eligible IBM software in an EPC and you agree to collect any required usage data for your licensed software in that EPC. You will not provide the cloud provider with any unauthorized use or access to the eligible IBM software.

You must use install and configure reporting tools designated by IBM (as noted above) for reporting usage and provide such reports to IBM upon request in accordance with IBM’s guidelines.

When you use a license entitlement according to this policy, you may not use such entitlements for any other purpose or in any other place at the same time.

Unless it is noted above, the Eligible Public Cloud BYOSL policy DOES NOT apply to engagements with vendors where those vendors are accessing the software and/or running or managing some or all of your computing environment under the control of their own employees, either on your premises or on theirs (e.g. Strategic Outsourcing, Web Hosting, managed service providers, etc.) –such engagements require separate arrangements. If your software is deployed in any of these manners, please send an email to 'talk2sam@us.ibm.com'. Be sure to include BYOSL in Subject line.

Back to top