Today, we are excited to announce the general availability of committed use discounts (“CUDs”) for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (“SLES”) with 24/7 support. CUDs are a very effective way of saving on your cloud costs when you have some predictability in your workloads. Now you can take the same advantage for SLES licenses. SLES CUDs can save you as much as 79% on license costs compared to pay-as-you-go prices.

SUSE was our first partner to offer software license committed use discounts. Our close collaboration with SUSE enabled the expansion of these CUD offerings. This is an important step in helping our partners and customers grow their business on Google Cloud.

Here is what Frank Powell, President of Managecore, a Google Cloud Partner had to say about this offering: “We are excited to join Google and SUSE on this new CUD offering for SLES. This will enable our joint customers to accelerate their workload migrations to cloud, from proprietary to more open source solutions. At the same time, it allows them to leverage the maximum discounts, providing choice and flexibility to run their modern workloads on Google Cloud.”

Manish Patil, SUSE Sr. Director for Global Cloud Alliances had to say this:

“Expansion of our CUD offering for SLES in addition to SLES for SAP is another exceptional joint innovative offering for customers resulting in more savings, choice, and elasticity in terms of running more stable and predictable workloads securely on Google Cloud.”

How do committed use discounts work for SLES?

SLES CUDs are region-specific — similar to how SLES for SAP CUDs work today. Therefore, you will need to buy commitments in the same region as the instances consuming these licenses. When you purchase SLES commitments, they form a “pool” of licenses that automatically apply to your running VM instances within a selected project in a specified region. Commitments can also be shared across projects within the same billing account by turning on billing account sharing. Discounts apply to any active VMs, so the commitment is not tied to any particular VM.

When commitments expire, your running VMs continue to run at on-demand rates. However, it is important to note that after you purchase a commitment, it is not editable or cancelable. You must pay the agreed upon monthly amount for the duration of the commitment. Refer to Purchasing commitments for licenses for more information.

How can I purchase committed use discounts for SLES?

SLES CUDs can be purchased on a one-year or three-year contract, and each are priced according to your virtual machine vCPU counts. After purchasing, you will be billed monthly for the commitments regardless of your usage.

How much can I save by using committed use discounts for SLES?

By purchasing SLES committed use discounts, you can save as much as 79% on SLES license costs compared to the current pay-as-you-go prices. Here is a helpful comparison of discounts possible on CUDs relative to pay-as-you-go prices:

What if I need to upgrade my SLES version after purchasing a commitment?

SLES CUDs are version-agnostic and are not affected when you perform OS upgrades or downgrades. For example, if you purchased a commitment for SLES 12, you may upgrade to SLES 15 and continue to use the same commitment without any action from your end. Additionally, commitments are not affected by future pricing changes to the pay-as-you-go prices for Compute Engine resources.

You can find more information on purchasing CUDs for SLES on our CUDs documentation. We are always looking to diversify our offerings to help customers optimize costs on Google Cloud. We hope this helps you find the most cost-optimal plan for your SUSE Linux Enterprise Server deployment needs.