Flexera, the leading provider of next-generation software licensing, compliance and installation solutions for application producers and enterprises, today announced the industry’s first Software License Optimization solution for VMware products, FlexNet Manager for VMware. The newest component of FlexNet Manager Suite for Enterprises, FlexNet Manager for VMware automates the complex process of inventorying VMware products and reconciling installations with VMware licensing terms, enabling enterprises to buy only what they need and use what they have.
VMware is the market leader in the server virtualization space with about 51% market share—based on data from IDC’s 2014 Worldwide Quarterly Server Virtualization Tracker. VMware has also been in the Leaders Quadrant of Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for x86 Server Virtualization Infrastructure since 2010.
There are a number of license management challenges associated with VMware products. First, there are some challenges related to discovery and inventory—many inventory tools don’t collect the data needed for managing VMware licenses, such as the data on software product editions, license keys, license capacity and assigned capacity of those keys. And license keys may be used across multiple servers which can create a license compliance risk. Both VMware vSphere and vCenter use license keys, for example.
VMware also bundles its products and often the component products in the bundle have different license models—for example, vSphere and vCenter use processor based and device based licenses respectively.
And, as with other vendors, you must also keep track of product upgrades and downgrades to understand your license compliance position.
FlexNet Manager for VMware delivers immediate value with advanced discovery and inventory capabilities for the vSphere and vCenter products, providing visibility into license key assignments across servers. The solution is able to detect if license keys are overused, which could cause an organization to be out of license compliance. It is also able to compare actual server capacity against assigned capacity to find underused license keys, revealing potential over-purchasing of VMware software.
To fully optimize their software estates, organizations need the ability to systematically apply all available software license entitlements – product use rights – to ensure they’re fully utilizing their existing licenses before they purchase more. FlexNet Manager for VMware automates the process of applying product use rights with an included VMware product use rights library that lets enterprises determine an accurate license position and minimize license consumption to reduce ongoing costs. Examples of product use rights that can be leveraged for optimization include upgrade and downgrade rights, and “non-production” use rights that allow additional installations of the software under a single license for certain VMware products.