Re: I'm sure it's a nightmare from a licensing perspective
Since this takes the whole topic of software licensing off the user (if you're willing to accept IBM products for the various tasks), there's no negotiation involved. IBM gets the best deal for them, and you pay a arbitrary price depending on how much processing time and resources you use. Timesharing v.2.
My only real question is why z/OS plays such a large role (other than the POK z/OS uber alles crowd). The combination of z/VM and Linux is a lot easier to sell and understand to the cloudies; it's more like lots of discrete boxes so you don't have to think about it much.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
