① Guide · Broadcom (CA)
Broadcom (CA) renewals are priced at portfolio level, which means you pay for products you stopped using years ago. Rationalize the estate first and you negotiate from a smaller, truer baseline. Here is the sequence, with enough lead time to make it count.
Negotiating the rate on products you do not use is the most expensive habit in mainframe sourcing.
When Broadcom acquired CA Technologies in 2018, it restructured mainframe selling around portfolio agreements: large families of products licensed and renewed together rather than tool by tool. The bundle is convenient for the vendor and opaque for the buyer. Over successive renewals, products that were displaced, consolidated, or simply abandoned stay on the paper because nobody itemized them out, and the portfolio uplift is applied to the whole inflated baseline.
Rationalization fixes the baseline before the negotiation starts. The goal is not to threaten the vendor; it is to walk into the renewal with a documented, defensible list of what you actually run, so the conversation is about the real estate and not the historical one. This pairs directly with Broadcom (CA) license negotiation and with the contract structures in negotiating Broadcom portfolio license agreements. Start the sequence 12 to 18 months before expiry; the inventory and decommissioning work is the part that cannot be compressed.
List every CA product on the current agreement, its entitlement, its capacity basis, and its term. Broadcom portfolio paper routinely carries product families the buyer cannot even identify; the inventory is where they surface.
For each product, confirm whether it runs, where, and who depends on it. SMF and product activity data tell the truth that the entitlement list does not. Anything with no measurable usage is a rationalization candidate.
Sort every product into one of three buckets using a consistent test, shown in the table below. Keep what is load bearing, target for replacement what has a credible alternative, and retire what is dead. This is the decision that shrinks the baseline.
Retire the dead products on your own timeline, documented, so that at renewal they are simply gone rather than a concession you are asking Broadcom to grant. A removed product carries no uplift; a product you merely asked to drop is a bargaining chip the vendor controls.
Take the smaller, evidenced baseline into the negotiation. The portfolio uplift now applies to what you run, the replacement candidates back a credible exit, and the term protections lock it. When the renewal is under 18 months out, we compress the sequence and mobilize within 48 hours.
| Bucket | Test | Renewal effect |
|---|---|---|
| Keep | In active use, load bearing, no credible alternative at acceptable switching cost | Negotiate rate and caps; this is the core you are paying for |
| Replace | In use, but a third party or ISV alternative exists and the switch is costable | Backs the credible exit; prices the renewal risk for the vendor |
| Retire | No measurable usage, or function fully covered by another tool you keep | Decommission before renewal so it carries zero uplift |
Vendor behavior described here reflects patterns commonly observed across Broadcom (CA) portfolio renewals, not a fixed policy. Your paper governs.
Audit notice or renewal under 18 months out? We mobilize within 48 hours. Facing an uplift now? Pair this with Broadcom (CA) license negotiation.