BRMS went subscription. Half of IBM i shops haven't moved

IBM i 7.4 loses standard support on September 30, 2026. If your plan is to upgrade to 7.5 or 7.6 before that date, you are about to run into a second deadline nobody put on the calendar: the backup software running that upgrade may not come with you, or may cost real money to keep.

BRMS, the tool that has shipped with IBM i for decades, went subscription-only two years ago under a new product number, 5770-BR2. Most shops still don’t know it, because it didn’t break anything at the time. The 7.4 deadline is what turns it into a decision.

What actually changed, and when

IBM’s August 27, 2024 announcement letter withdrew the old non-expiring BRMS license, product number 5770-BR1, from marketing and replaced it with a subscription product, 5770-BR2. This is confirmed straight from IBM’s own “BRMS Subscription Term” reference document, which IBM was still actively revising as recently as March 2026.

The timeline that matters for anyone still on the old version:

August 27, 2024: 5770-BR1 withdrawn from marketing. No new customers can buy it.
September 30, 2025: 5770-BR1 loses standard support.
October 1, 2025 onward: 5770-BR1 moves to usage and known-defect support only. Existing licenses remain non-expiring and IBM i Group SWMA customers can still call IBM for known defects, but no new enhancements and no new defect fixes ship for it, ever again.

None of this is 2026 news. It is two years old. What is new is a September 9, 2026 IBM i Global community session, posted by IBM Champion Robert Berendt, revisiting the Fortra relationship and the state of the new web interface. That session is worth knowing about, but read past the headline before you act on it.

No, Fortra did not just take over BRMS

The framing making the rounds after that community session is that IBM “handed BRMS to Fortra.” That is not accurate, and getting it wrong will send you looking for a Fortra sales rep who cannot sell you what you need.

Fortra has developed BRMS under contract for roughly a decade, working out of IBM Rochester alongside former IBM developers. The same arrangement covers PowerHA SystemMirror, Rational Developer for i, and part of Db2 for i. This is not new, and it is not a change in ownership. IBM remains the sole publisher and the only company that can sell you a BRMS license. Fortra writes the documentation and does the engineering. It does not take your order.

Where the confusion comes from: the product code changed from 5770-BR1 to 5770-BR2 back in March 2024, months before the subscription pricing itself. Anyone conflating a licensing-model change with a vendor handoff hasn’t opened IBM’s own paperwork.

BRMS 5770-BR2 pricing: $400 per core per year, no discount for loyalty

Here is what the subscription actually costs, verified from IBM’s own pricing document and IT Jungle’s coverage of the January 2024 announcement.

The old 5770-BR1 license, bundled with IBM i Group SWMA and amortized over five years the way most shops actually kept it, worked out to an effective $181 to $226 per core per year. The new 5770-BR2 subscription lists at $400 per core per year, close to double the historical cost, sold in 90-day or one- through five-year terms.

IBM’s FAQ on the subscription is direct about what you do not get: “No. IBM does not offer conversion pricing for 5770-BR1 to 5770-BR2.” Whatever you paid IBM i Group SWMA over the years to keep BRMS current buys you nothing toward the new price.

The licensing unit matters too. IBM’s own documentation is explicit: “5770-BR2 is not licensed to the specific cores used by BRMS, but, instead, licensed for the IBM i workload which is being backed up.” A partition with 8 IBM i processor entitlements licenses 8 units of 5770-BR2, regardless of how much of that capacity BRMS itself consumes. At list price, that is $3,200 a year for a tool that used to ride along with the operating system at no extra charge. A 16-core partition is $6,400 a year. The bill scales with the size of the box you’re protecting, not with how much you actually back up.

Why IBM i 7.6 makes this non-optional

This is the part that turns a pricing footnote into a real problem for anyone reading this because of the 7.4 deadline.

On IBM i 7.6, 5770-BR1 is not an installable option at all. Fortra’s own supported-versions documentation states it plainly under the 7.6 overview: BRMS “is only available with the new subscription pricing option.” There is no fresh install of the free version on 7.6, under any circumstance.

The picture on 7.5 is slightly softer but not much better. IBM’s FAQ says an existing 5770-BR1 install carried forward through an upgrade “will not be deleted,” but it runs “on an as-is (not supported, unwarranted) basis,” because 5770-BR1 was never tested past IBM i 7.5. So the honest read for a shop weighing the move off 7.4: technically the old program might still execute, but IBM has not tested it, will not support it, and treats it as inherited risk you chose to keep.

Put together with the site’s coverage of the 7.4 end-of-support deadline and the Power8 hardware dead end: a shop forced off 7.4 this quarter, whether by the calendar or by hardware that can’t run anything newer, is walking straight into this. Move to 7.5 and keep the old BRMS running unsupported, or move to 7.6 and the choice is made for you. Either way, the free ride on backup software is the thing that ends, quietly, in the same maintenance window as the operating system upgrade you were already dreading.

More than half of BRMS users are still exposed

This is not a hypothetical edge case. IT Jungle’s April 2026 coverage of the latest BRMS enhancements quotes IBM i engineer Kris Whitney directly: “IBM still has a large number of customers running on the legacy BRMS version 1, which is no longer supported. According to IBM, more than half of all BRMS users are on the old version.”

Whitney also told IT Jungle that IBM built a new Angular-based web interface specifically to pull those customers forward: “We are trying to reinvigorate them and say, hey, we’ve actually innovated on BRMS quite a bit since we discontinued VR1, and there’s reasons to jump to VR2.” He separately noted that the old Navigator-based GUI that shipped with 5770-BR1 carried a Log4j vulnerability, one more reason IBM wants the install base moved.

If more than half of BRMS users are on the free version, and the 7.4 deadline is about to push a meaningful share of IBM i shops through an upgrade, the population running unsupported or non-installable backup software this quarter is not small.

What actually got better

The subscription isn’t purely a price increase with nothing behind it. The new web interface, reachable at http://<system-name>:2088, is a real and ongoing 2026 rollout. IBM shipped save and restore operations at the library and IFS level to the GUI in April 2026, with file and object-level operations promised in a future release. IBM deliberately kept the BRMS GUI separate from the main Navigator for i product rather than folding it in, specifically to avoid dependencies between the two.

If you’re already paying for 5770-BR2 or about to be forced onto it, the GUI is the part of the deal actually worth using, not just tolerating.

What to do before September 30

Find out which BRMS version you’re running. Not the product name on a slide, the actual PID. WRKPRDLIB or checking your licensed program list against 5770-BR1 versus 5770-BR2 tells you in five minutes whether this applies to you.
Price your core count now, not after the upgrade. Multiply your IBM i entitlement count by $400. That is your annual number at list price before any negotiation.
Do not assume “it still runs” means “it’s supported.” If you’re planning a 7.5 upgrade and staying on 5770-BR1, write down that you are choosing an untested configuration on purpose, and know that a 7.6 upgrade later removes the choice entirely.
If you’re already covered under BRMS’s backup and recovery mechanics from the summer Tech Refreshes, this is the licensing half of that same story, and it is worth reading both before you sign anything.

Bottom line

The 5770-BR1 to 5770-BR2 transition is not new, and it is not a Fortra takeover. It is a two-year-old IBM pricing decision that most of the install base has quietly ignored because their non-expiring license kept working. The September 30, 2026 deadline is what forces the question, because it pushes shops toward exactly the releases where the old version either runs unsupported or isn’t available at all.

If you’re budgeting for the 7.4 upgrade already, add BRMS to that spreadsheet. $400 per core per year, no loyalty discount, licensed to your full entitlement count. Cheaper to know that now than to find out from an installer telling you the free version isn’t an option anymore.

Running a platform transition like this with a skeleton crew is a different problem than running it with a full department behind you. The IBM i AI Field Guide is built for the shops doing exactly that.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is BRMS still free on IBM i?

The old version, 5770-BR1, has a non-expiring license and shops that already own it can keep running it. But it lost standard support on September 30, 2025 and now gets usage and known-defect coverage only, no new features and no new fixes. The replacement, 5770-BR2, is a paid subscription at $400 per core per year. There is no free path to a currently supported version of BRMS.

How much does BRMS 5770-BR2 cost?

IBM’s list price is $400 per core per year, sold in 90-day or one- through five-year terms with Software Maintenance included. That is licensed to your full IBM i processor entitlement count, not to the specific cores BRMS touches, so an 8-core partition licenses 8 units regardless of backup workload.

Does Fortra own BRMS now?

No. Fortra has developed BRMS under contract for roughly ten years, working alongside former IBM developers out of IBM Rochester, the same arrangement that covers PowerHA, RDi, and part of Db2 for i. IBM remains the sole publisher. Fortra cannot sell you a BRMS license. Every 5770-BR2 subscription is acquired from IBM.

Can I still install BRMS 5770-BR1 on IBM i 7.6?

No. Fortra’s own supported-versions documentation states that on IBM i 7.6, BRMS is only available through the subscription option, 5770-BR2. If you upgrade an existing 5770-BR1 install from 7.5 to a later release, IBM says the program will not be deleted, but it runs on an as-is, unsupported and unwarranted basis, since 5770-BR1 was never tested past 7.5.

Is there a discount for moving from 5770-BR1 to 5770-BR2?

No. IBM’s own FAQ on the subscription states plainly that it does not offer conversion pricing from 5770-BR1 to 5770-BR2. Years of IBM i Group SWMA payments that covered your old BRMS license do not reduce the new subscription price.