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Status Submitted
Workspace WebSphere Liberty
Created by Guest
Created on Dec 22, 2025

usage-based licensing model for WebShpere Liberty

I have received requests from two customers, who are using Liberty, to provide a usage-based licensing model that can accommodate dynamic capacity scaling in cloud environments. I also occasionally receive inquiries from other customers asking whether Liberty supports pay-as-you-go pricing. 

Would it be possible to release a new licensing model? 

Idea priority High
  • Guest
    Dec 23, 2025

    I fully agree with this opinion, and I would like to add a few comments.

    Container platforms such as Kubernetes are important technologies for enabling a microservices architecture. As systems move toward microservices, CPU resources are assigned to Pods on a per-service basis. However, the current Liberty licensing model does not seem well suited to this approach. This is because Liberty licenses are calculated based on the CPU limit values set for Pods, rather than on the CPU request values or the actual CPU usage.

    In practice, a Pod needs a certain amount of CPU just to start, and some extra margin is usually required to handle unexpected situations. As a result, as services are broken down into smaller Pods, the gap between the CPU limit and the actual CPU usage becomes larger. This means that we need to prepare far more Liberty licenses than are actually used, and we are concerned that this may become an obstacle to adopting a microservices architecture.

    We truly appreciate the high-quality products and services, including Liberty. We hope that a new user experience better suited to microservices and autoscaling will be offered in the future.