Job Summary
The Licensing Specialist - SAM will provide IBM licensing and ELP expertise with strong focus on sub-capacity licensing, ILMT or BigFix Inventory evidence, Passport Advantage entitlement interpretation and IBM-specific license metrics. The role will support compliance evaluations, tool-based reconciliation, data normalization and audit-ready documentation for IBM and other Tier-2/Tier-3 publishers.
Key Responsibilities
IBM entitlement review: Analyze IBM Passport Advantage records, license certificates, support status, subscription coverage, Product Use Rights and agreement conditions.
Metric interpretation: Apply IBM metrics such as PVU, RVU, VPC, Authorized User, Concurrent User, AppPoints and Cloud Pak-related metrics where relevant.
Sub-capacity validation: Validate IBM sub-capacity licensing requirements using ILMT or BigFix Inventory outputs, report schedules, agent health, scan completeness and processor/core evidence.
ELP preparation: Prepare IBM ELP inputs by mapping entitlements, deployments, infrastructure attributes, ILMT/BFI evidence, software bundling, component usage and assumptions.
Deployment analysis: Validate IBM software installations across physical, virtualized, cloud and hybrid environments including hosts, VMs, clusters, LPARs and containerized deployments where applicable.
Tooling support: Use Flexera or ServiceNow SAM Pro to support IBM application recognition, license creation, entitlement upload, reconciliation and compliance reporting.
Discovery and inventory validation: Work with infrastructure, discovery and CMDB teams to close gaps in host mapping, server ownership, environment classification, version details and usage evidence.
Audit and risk support: Identify sub-capacity risk, untracked installations, unsupported versions, missing ILMT reports, evidence gaps and potential audit exposure.
Optimization analysis: Support optimization through deployment rationalization, support lifecycle review, license harvesting, metric review and architecture assessment.
Tier-2 and Tier-3 publisher support: Support compliance and ELP activities for other publishers using standard SAM methodology and tool-enabled reporting.
Documentation and communication: Maintain calculation workbooks, evidence packs, assumption logs and communicate findings clearly to SAM leads and stakeholders.
Sub-capacity and ILMT: Hands-on understanding of ILMT/BFI reporting, sub-capacity validation, scan completeness, host mapping, core/PVU interpretation and evidence requirements.
SAM process: Strong understanding of entitlement management, inventory normalization, license reconciliation, compliance reporting, ELP preparation and remediation tracking.
Preferred Experience and Credentials
Recommended 4+ years of SAM / ITAM experience with 2+ years in IBM licensing, sub-capacity or ELP support.
Experience with IBM audits, IASP-style ELP methodologies, Cloud Paks, containerized IBM products or mainframe-related licensing is preferred.
Working knowledge of other publishers such as Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, Adobe, Red Hat, VMware or ServiceNow is an added advantage.
Certifications such as CSAM, CITAM, IBM licensing, Flexera or ServiceNow SAM Pro are preferred.