JDisc Discovery and Software License Management
I guess most of you are agree that software license management is a pretty hot topic nowadays. Organizations are threated by software audits. On the other side, there is a huge opportunity to reduce license and support cost for software that isn’t in use anymore.
Some of our competitors in the area of network inventory discovery jump on the SLM train and claim to do software license management. So why aren’t we doing the same?
There are several reasons why we do not claim to be a software license management tool.
1. Software License Management is not as easy as you might think!
When you look at software license management, then it might not be as trivial as you might think at the beginning. Most people think first about their Microsoft Office installations where often one installation corresponds to one license. So license management should be pretty straight forward. Count the Office installations, check how many you licensed and then find out whether your are over or underlicensed.
So far so good. But especially companies creating enterprise software such as HP, Oracle, SAP are very inventive in creating new licensing terms and conditions. The correlation between one installation to one license doesn’t exist in that space. Software is often licensed on the maximal number of concurrent users, on the hardware it is running on and other factors. And of course, each vendor has its own regulations and terms. And what makes things worse, they are also very creative in changing the conditions over time. Keeping up-to-date for all vendor terms is not an easy task to do.
2. There are really experienced companies out there doing Software License Management consulting!
On the other side, the enterprise software is in most cases pretty expensive and therefore offers the largest opportunity to save money. Therefore, there are software and consulting companies out there that focus on software either for one single or just two or three major vendors. Those companies have a deep knowledge and understanding in licensing conditions and they can often help to save plenty of dollars.
However those companies are lacking a solid discovery functionality that is often used to understand a customer’s environment. They often rely on self written scripts or tools. Those tools are often not easy to deploy.
3. Cooperate and do not reinvent the wheel!
So what is JDisc doing with respect to software license management? Our strategy is to cooperate with those software and consulting companies. We provide a solid network discovery product that scans both hardware and installed software. In essence, we deliver the raw data that the software license specialists can use to import into their license management tool or to consult a customer.
4. Conclusion
If you are thinking about introducing a software license management product, then check first, whether the software of choice covers all software products that are relevant for you. Especially the costly software products. You find a lot of information on the ITAM Review page about software license management…
See ya
Thomas