It’s no surprise that you need to understand your license position to avoid overbuying software and be in compliance with your software vendor contracts. A common question I get is whether configuration management and inventory tools like SCCM 2012 are good enough for software asset management and license optimization. The short answer is no. But to understand why, I made a good housekeeping checklist. It may not be exhaustive, but it should provide a starting point for an IT asset management (ITAM)/software asset management (SAM)/license management (LM) request for information (RFI), to cut to the chase and quickly determine suitability of tools for this purpose.
IT Asset Management
It all starts with knowing what’s in your IT ecosystem. Flexera One discovers even the most elusive assets whether on-prem, SaaS, cloud, containers and more.
The list implies that multiple knowledge reservoirs must work together to provide an accurate picture of an IT estate, provide actionable information, and hold up to the scrutiny of an independent software vendor (ISV) license review or audit. These requirements go far beyond standard discovery and inventory of software for physical devices.
| Discovery, Inventory, Application Recognition, Metering Support |
|---|
| Aggregation of multiple inventory sources |
| Wintel-based desktops, notebooks, laptops… |
| Unix and Linux machine coverage |
| Agentless Inventory for production servers (agents not allowed) |
| Active Sync mobile devices (iPads, iPhones, Android…) |
| Network-based: Oracle, SAP, Microsoft SQL Server, IBM ILMT… |
| Virtual Machines: VMware, Hyper-V… |
| Hardware Partitions: LPARS, WPARS, nPars, vPARS, Solaris Zones… |
| Streamed or locally cached applications: Citrix XenApp, Microsoft APP-V… |
| Virtual desktops: Citrix, VMware VDI… |
| Hardware inventory details: processors/cores (type & count), memory, server model… |
| Concurrent license usage: Cadence, Mentor, Synopsys… |
| ISO 19770-2 Application Tagging support |
| Repackaged Application Recognition |
| Recognition of applications from all major vendors |
| Recognition of application suites and bundles |
| Recognition of internal/custom applications—per user supplied rules |
| Non-Inventory Data Sources |
| Organization: LDAP |
| HR: role, authorization level |
| Software Request Portal; Helpdesk |
| Purchase Order System, ERP system |
| CMDB |
| Libraries |
| Application Entitlements (Product Use Rights): Upgrade, downgrade, roaming, multiple installations, second use, virtual server, virtual desktop, DR/Failover… |
| Product ID / SKUs: Indentify how purchased, full packaged product, OEM, volume, maintenance… |
| Application Recognition: Transform Inventory to application titles, editions and suites |
| Automated Processing: SKU library linked to application recognition library |
| Licenses |
| Models supported: Device, processor/core, resource, authorized user, concurrent use, full capacity, Subcapacity… |
| Vendor Specific Models: Oracle NUP, Oracle Processor, IBM PVU / RVU / UVU, SAP User… |
| Allocation: Subsidiaries, business units, cost centers, regions, departments, users, devices… |
| Association: Licenses to contract terms |
| Contract Management |
| Volume Agreements: Microsoft EA, Select, Select Plus, Adobe CLP… |
| Alerts: Time sensitive terms, renewals, review periods, annual true-ups… |
| Licenses covered per contract |
| Document storage: copy of a contract, proof of license, and compliance record. |
| Optimizing Algorithms |
| Order of license allocation considering versions and editions of applications |
| Smart allocation of licenses to application Suites |
| Maximum utilization of License Entitlements (Product Use Rights) |
| Optimized consumption: Microsoft server models, built-in PVU tables… |
| Optimize User Type allocation based on application usage (e.g. SAP User licenses) |
| Remix of application licenses based on application usage (concurrent licenses) |
| Predictive compliance/financial What-If analysis before hardware or software changes |
| Compliance, Reports, Alerts |
| Optimized license position |
| Purchased versus installed license position |
| Applications and suites Installed; software asset reports |
| License position per business unit or cost center |
| Rolled-up Company position (liability to vendor) |
| Pending maintenance renewals with financial impact; areas for maintenance cost savings |
| Alerts on breaches, unauthorized applications, financial liability of change |
| Chargeback to business units, cost centers, regions… |
| Application purchases not under volume agreement |
| Trend analysis and reports to forecast future licensing needs |
Software asset management and license optimization solutions that can meet this set of requirements can help your organization maintain continuous license compliance, manage hardware and software assets from a financial perspective, and reduce ongoing costs for software licenses and maintenance.
Is there anything else that should be added to the checklist? Please send me your comments.
