Enterprise Savings Plan billing model

The IBM Cloud® Enterprise Savings Plan billing model is similar to the billing model for Subscription accounts but with a few added benefits. With this billing model, you commit to spend a certain amount on IBM Cloud and receive discounts across the platform. You are billed monthly based on your usage and you continue to receive a discount even after you reach your committed amount.

Before you begin

If you haven’t created an account, you can register for IBM Cloud by completing the following steps:

Consult with an IBM Cloud Sales representative.
IBM Cloud Sales directs you to the registration page. Enter the required information.
After registration is complete, provide your name, email, and the account ID to the sales representative you are working with.
Your account is activated upon order processing. After the account is activated, you can start using the benefits of our Enterprise Savings Plan billing model.

To use the IBM Cloud Enterprise Savings Plan billing model, you must have a Subscription account. After you have the correct account, work with IBM Cloud Sales to sign up for this billing model. The sales team creates a commitment quote based on the spending amount for the period that you want to commit to.

After you accept the commitment quote, you receive an additional email to confirm that your payment information is processed and that the commitment is added to your account.

Viewing your commitment quote

After you contact IBM Cloud Sales and sign up for a commitment, you receive a quote. The commitment quote details your contract period, duration of the commitment, billing frequency, UOM, discount, and commitment terms. The sales team emails you a copy of your quote.

Viewing your commitment usage

The Enterprise Savings Plan page provides the usage details for your commitment on the account. You can track your usage month to month for a detailed view of your commitment usage history. To access this information, you need an access policy with the viewer role or higher on the billing account management service. See IAM access for more information.

To view your Enterprise Savings Plan usage in the IBM Cloud® console, go to Manage > Billing and usage > Commitments and select Enterprise Savings Plan.

Click the tabs to view information about active or upcoming commitments. Active commitments are commitments that still have a remaining committed amount to spend and time that's remaining in the commitment term. Upcoming commitments are commitments that were added to the account but haven't yet reached their term period. A commitment is inactive if its term expires or all of its committed amount is spent.
Use the graph to view what you've spent toward your overall committed amount. You can view the days remaining in the commitment, discount, billing method, and billing frequency.
View a monthly breakdown of the spending history for the commitment. Monthly spending is broken out by month. You can manage your commitment by viewing any change in spending month to month as well as viewing your spending trends over time.

Remaining commitment

If you don't spend the total committed amount by the end of the commitment term, you are invoiced for the amount that you didn't consume. The graph on the Enterprise Savings Plan page provides details about what you've spent toward your overall committed amount, so you can easily track what you've consumed and how much time is remaining in your commitment.

Product-level discounts

In addition to the platform-level discount applied to an Enterprise Savings Plan commitment, you can receive additional discounts that apply to a service, category, plan, and metric. Discounts on products vary depending on your account type.

The discount that you receive on platform usage does not combine with a product-level discount that you might receive for a service, category, plan, and metric.

To view the discounts that are applied to your commitment in the IBM Cloud console, go to Manage > Billing and usage > Commitments > Enterprise Savings Plan. In the discounts section, use the table to view your active discounts.

For more information about product-level discounts through your Enterprise Savings Plan, work with IBM Cloud Sales.

Getting support

You can get Advanced or Premium support with your Enterprise Savings Plan. The level of support that you select determines the severity that you can assign to support cases and your level of access to the tools available in the Support Center. Both support plans cost just 10% of your annual commitment and usage. To get support, contact IBM Cloud Sales.

For more information about IBM Cloud support plans, see Basic, Advanced, and Premium Support plans.