AppPoints & Licensing Optimization
Right-size your MAS licensing. We model your Limited, Base, and Premium user mix and per-install riders against real usage, so you neither over-buy nor run short, with the advisory the market under-explains made explicit and tool-backed.
Outcomes
- A defensible AppPoints pool sized to your actual concurrent-user mix, not a vendor's default
- An over- and under-buy gap analysis and a per-install-rider inventory of the riders that quietly inflate the pool
- A re-tuning cadence aligned to Continuous-Delivery feature-channel uptake, so your licensing stays right-sized as your user mix shifts
How it works
MAS replaced per-module perpetual licenses with a single shared pool of AppPoints. Users and installs draw from that one pool. The mechanic is simple to state and easy to get wrong, which is exactly why it is white space.
Three tiers set what a user can do, and each higher tier inherits everything the lower ones grant:
| Tier | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Limited | Read and report use across Manage, plus a small set of modules and Monitor |
| Base | Many Manage modules plus the Health application |
| Premium | Access to the entire suite of applications |
Where sizing goes wrong is in the detail: concurrent users draw from the pool only while they are active (login consumes, logout releases), authorized users are dedicated, and several apps add per-install AppPoints on top (Optimizer, Civil Infrastructure, and the visual and predictive apps all carry per-install riders). Buy to your headcount instead of your real concurrency and you over-buy; miss the riders and you run short mid-project.
We promote this to its own offering rather than burying it in a migration step, because it recurs: at migration, at managed-services renewal, and every time Continuous Delivery shifts your user mix. We publish the math the market keeps vague and back it with a Catalyst data and web analyzer that ingests your usage telemetry and recommends the pool. The two leaves below are an AppPoints Sizing Assessment (a fixed-scope, deliverable-bearing sizing) and ongoing License Cost Optimization.
What you own at the end
A defensible AppPoints pool sized to your real usage, a rider inventory, and a sizing model your team can rerun next renewal without us. The advisory is yours, written down, with the assumptions shown, so the number survives a procurement review.
FAQ
Why not just buy what IBM's sales rep suggests? You can, and many do, which is how shops end up over-buying. A default pool sized to headcount ignores concurrency and the per-install riders. We size to the usage data, so the pool matches the operation.
Isn't this part of the migration? The migration's readiness assessment gives you a rough AppPoints exposure estimate for scoping. The detailed sizing and ongoing optimization is this offering: it is cross-lifecycle, not a one-time migration step, so we run it as its own line.
How is it priced? Fixed-scope, fixed-fee for the sizing assessment; a periodic engagement for ongoing optimization. The deliverable and the data we need are pinned before the work starts.
Proof
- Login and usage-data-driven sizing that avoids paying for AppPoints you do not use: Limited, Base, and Premium tiers plus per-install riders, modeled against your real concurrency
- Entitlement consolidation and tier substitution that lowers total licensing draw without losing capability