License Dashboard. All rights reserved.

Transcription

1 License Dashboard. All rights reserved.

2 Table of Contents 1. Executive Summary The two sides of License Management The Trouble with audit data Licensing isn t easy Comparing Apples with Oranges ITAM solutions don t do licensing License Management Tools Why you need License Manager Next Steps License Dashboard. All rights reserved.

3 1. Executive Summary With analysts reporting that software purchases now typically account for around 35 per cent (and growing) of an organization s annual IT spend, it is clear that both the management of these expensive assets is becoming increasingly important and that eliminating unnecessary spend should be a high-level priority. The proper management of software licenses ensures not only that the organization doesn't overspend vast sums on unnecessary licenses and support agreements, but also that it complies with its contractual obligations and doesn't leave itself open to charges of misuse or even fraud and the consequent penalties such claims bring with them. Software license management is an intricate process but, as in other areas of business and commerce, it can be automated and made simpler with the right technology. And the implementation of the right application brings with it peace of mind from knowing that your organization is fully compliant, free from risk, that the appropriate operating unit, departmental and/or country allocation is accurate and satisfaction in the knowledge that every item of expenditure is being put to good use. In short, the peace of mind that knowing everything is as it should be! This document will outline the case for license management technologies and how, by selecting the right solution for your specific needs, you can cut both risks and spend License Dashboard. All rights reserved.

4 2. The two sides of License Management Managing software licenses depends largely on the collection, aggregation and reconciliation of two data sets: your software deployment inventory and your software license entitlements. In essence, your license entitlements outline what you are allowed to be using (i.e. what you have paid for!) and your inventory shows what software is actually installed on your network. Over eight years and 800 license management engagements managed by our consultants tells us one thing with certainty. Your software entitlements will NOT exactly match your inventory! It s a given fact that there will be some form of discrepancy, and this is partly why your organization now faces a 65 per cent chance of being audited by at least one software in the next 12 months. The software publishers know that organizations like yours misuse software, either deliberately or accidentally. That s why audits continue to increase, because the software vendors are exercising their legitimate rights to reclaim monies they believe are owed to them. But that s only half the story. Our 800-odd engagements also tell us that organizations waste a lot of money on software and support they don t need typically around 20 per cent of the annual software spend. They do this because they don t take advantage of volume licensing agreements, they don t proactive manage application deployments, they don t crack down on rogue purchasing and they don t manage support contracts. So reconciling the two data sets usage versus entitlement not only enables you to identify and redress any potential compliance / over-use issues, it should also open the door to significant cost savings through more proactive software management. 1.1 The Trouble with audit data Many organizations have already invested in deploying a software inventory solution. It could be something like Microsoft SCCM (often included with Enterprise Agreements), part of a larger IT Asset Management suite (such as Altiris or LANDesk) or even freeware or low-cost tools (Spiceworks, for example). Of course, some organizations will not yet have deployed a tool in which case read section xx in this document. Whatever inventory tool is in place, the chances are that it does a pretty good job of finding the software installed on PCs and Servers (granted, some tools are better than others, but the differences are often small). These tools then bring back a wealth of information around the hardware configuration of the device and the software files located on it. And this is where the problems start. Inventory tools are just that; inventory tools. They are designed to scan a hard drive and report back on everything they find. For License Management purposes, this is not ideal for two reasons: 1) inventory tools report a lot of data that has no relevance to managing licenses and 2) inventory tools usually report verbatim on what they find which is great from an audit point of view, but often confusing when trying to manage licenses. For example, you might see a report from your inventory solution telling you it has found 20 copies of Office on your network. But what is Office ?! A skilled licensing specialist will know that this is, in fact, Microsoft Office 2007 Professional, but most other people would not. This is why the vast amount of inventory data is almost impossible to use for licensing purposes in its raw state. What s needed is a solution that can turn this raw data into comprehensible information that relates clearly to licensable software products and suites. 1.2 Licensing isn t easy If it were, there would be no need for solution providers like License Dashboard to exist! But with literally thousands of different licensing models, and complexity on the increase (thanks to Cloud, Thin Client, Virtualization etc) rather than decline, making sense of license entitlements is far from easy. Unlike an audit solution that neatly collects all software inventory into a central repository; this can t be done with licenses as they are usually procured through many different ways (direct from the vendor, through reseller, off-the-shelf, with the hardware etc.) over many years. For the vast majority of organizations, this means they have no centralized repository of their license entitlements; yet License Dashboard. All rights reserved.

5 Even if you can lay your hands on all the various bits of paper, stickers and s that make up your license entitlements, actually understanding what they mean and therefore what the usage rights associated with them are is near impossible unless you happen to be a software licensing expert. So, again, what s needed is a solution that can not only become a centralized repository for all licensing evidence, but one that applies some level of intelligence to the entitlements, automates the process of allocating upgrades to base licenses, understands when one license can cover multiple products etc. 1.3 Comparing Apples with Oranges Okay, so we have our two data sets inventory and entitlement. Now we need to reconcile this against each other. Historically this would have been done by an expensive licensing specialist who knew and understood the reporting eccentricities of the different audit solutions and was able to read licensing entitlements that to the rest of the world look more like something from The Matrix. Without this licensing expert, most organizations would be stuck at square one because all-too-often what the audit solution is reporting bears little or no resemblance to what the entitlement says. Remember our example of Office ? You won t find Office on any entitlement anywhere, so how would you be able to reconcile these two items accurately? The short answer is, you wouldn t. Just as audit data needs to be translated into information valuable for the purpose of license management, and entitlements need to be understood, so too you need a dedicated solution that is designed to reconcile these two disparate data sets to overcome the shortcomings of both and yet still find a way to accurately match what you ve bought against what has been found on the network. 1.4 ITAM solutions don t do licensing Gartner highlighted in 2011 that IT Asset Management (ITAM) tools were wide perceived to be in what it describes as the trough of disillusionment. Essentially Gartner says that many organizations that have invested large sums in ITAM solutions are now disappointed with them and believe they are not the all singing, all dancing solutions they were promised by the tool developers. Software license management is a good example of where most, if not all, multi-discipline ITAM solutions fall way short. While some will claim to offer this functionality (and it may have appeared on the surface to be sufficient when the organization was originally focused on software deployment or helpdesk integration), the truth is that, at best, they are simplified license repositories with no ability to intelligently reconcile usage against entitlement. So really the only choice is to look for a dedicated license management solution but one that complements existing ITAM investments, not one that forces you to rip and replace tools that are already fit-for-purpose (albeit perhaps not currently delivering exactly what you were hoping for). 3. License Management Tools License Management tools are potentially one of the most important tools in a SAM implementation. ITIL SAM Best Practice Publication License Manager from License Dashboard is an example of a solution that is designed to remove much of the manual labor historically associated with collecting and reconciling software licenses against usage information. Using License Manager, organizations can effectively and automatically control and report upon their entire software assets lifecycle from purchase to upgrade and beyond. License Manger complements the functionality of a typical asset inventory program to provide the following important features: From a single interface, report the organization s compliance status, highlighting what the organization is entitled to install, how many times it has been installed or used, how many licenses are still available and which software is non-compliant License Dashboard. All rights reserved.

6 Aggregate the organization s installation rights by business unit/purchase centre, thus enabling organizations with multiple entities to publish their compliance status individually or globally Record and track all license types, such as concurrency, value units, processor, MIPs, client access licenses, named users and site licenses and many more. This includes managing usage information for Terminal Services, Citrix, Oracle, Midrange and Mainframe systems Associate licenses to active and non-active purchase agreements, ensuring that all agreements are effectively managed and renewed. Even though the purchasing agreements have expired, most agreements continue to provide perpetual rights to software and in many cases they may need to be tracked, even though they are no longer used. For example, they may be acting as a base license to recently purchased upgrades or maintenance licenses Differentiate between contract and non-contract entitlement and ensure all associated entitlement is effectively recognized. In addition, where continued tracking of contract entitlement is required, such as a Microsoft Enterprise agreement - a function that enables automated true up calculations - is essential Report entitlement by the country of usage and ensure that all entitlement is allocated è effectively. Many global organizations lose control of their global contracts and mistakenly allocate entitlement to countries that are not entitled under the contract Effectively manage Client Access License (CAL) entitlement. As asset inventory tools only measure the instances of installation, they are unable to meter the CAL usage Maintain the relationship between upgrade licenses and base licenses, ensuring there is a comprehensive audit trail for all referenced licenses Maintain and track maintenance agreements, ensuring that all renewals are actioned and that all version entitlements are maintained effectively Facilitate the transfer of licenses between different business units/purchase centres, thereby enabling effective load balancing of entitlement across the organization Distil software usage data and recognize licensable products, shareware, freeware and system drivers, thus fully understanding the organization s license liability Allocate license entitlement effectively, ensuring that the correct license metrics and constraints have been applied Manage surplus licenses and have the ability to reserve them against future installs Identify non-compliance or other discrepancies and analyze the root cause Report a comprehensive audit trail of all changes made to the software and licenses associated Aggregate software versions, application suites and remove the technical attributes associated to software and replace with the licensable descriptions making it easier to allocate the correct license entitlement Effectively manage software entitlement across multiple geographical areas and the ability to publish entitlement across multiple purchasing centres without infringing the contractual agreements specified Record all license information, including terms and conditions, and cross reference to specific proof of license documentation License Dashboard. All rights reserved.

7 Verify compliance for all license agreements and report effectively to vendors in the correct format, for example the Microsoft Actual License Position (ALP) Provide an interface for managing all purchasing agreements, including associating the owner responsible for managing the terms Provide in-built license logic that ensures license entitlement is correctly archived, aggregated and allocated to software usage All of these features make License Manager possibly the most capable software license management solution available. Whether you need to create a quick Effective Licensing Position (ELP) to meet an immediate audit demand, or are thinking more strategically about cutting software expenditure, License Manager has the ability to deliver the results you need faster than any other comparable solution. 4. Why you need License Manager You need to manage your software licenses. Whether because you are now more likely than not to receive at least one audit request this year, or because you are wasting around 20 per cent of your current software expenditure (or both!), managing your software more closely will dramatically reduce both risk and costs. License Manager from License Dashboard has been designed to fit the needs of organizations with 250 PCs right the way through to 200,000 desktops and servers. No other solution is faster to implement and start delivering a return on investment. Need to create an Effective Licensing Position (ELP) in double-quick time? No problem. Want to focus on software optimization and use software metering to intelligently re-deploy licenses across the organization? No problem. From getting the basics right through to adopting a fully mature approach to Software Asset Management (SAM), License Manager will enable you through every step along the path. What s more, License Manager isn t a threat to any of your existing IT Asset Management investments. By supporting over 30 inventory solutions, it is designed to work with your incumbent solutions, rather than replace them. In most cases, License Manager will add significant value to these investments as they can now be used for additional purposes outside pure inventory or software deployment, for example. 5. Next Steps To learn more about how License Manager can help you take control of software licensing and deliver significant cost savings to your organization, please: Contact Us Speak to one of our licensing experts today: (UK/International) / (US & Canada) View a demo Visit to sign up to our regular online webinars, or contact us for a personal demo Request an evaluation Call us on the numbers above or info@licensedashboard.com to learn more about evaluating License Manager Copyright 2012 License Dashboard Limited. License Dashboard Limited is a trading subsidiary of the Blenheim Group - Blenheim House - York Road - Pocklington - York - YO42 1NS - UK - t: f: e: info@licensedashboard.com - w: License Dashboard Limited is a company registered in England and Wales, with company number and VAT number GB License Dashboard. All rights reserved.