November 09, 2009, 12:07 PM — Conventional product recognition in software asset management utilizes a 1 license to 1 product (1:1) rule to map the license to the software product. In other words, each license provides the use rights for only one product. But this is not always true. When suites and bundles are purchased, the company receives one license that entitles use rights for multiple products. This 1:1 methodology no longer applies to these types of licenses. They require 1:n product recognition.
This shortcoming has a snowball effect and causes serious issues in the compliance check. Because licenses are traditionally mapped 1:1, the software asset management tool cannot, by rule, map more than one product to a license. Inevitably, the company will appear to be under licensed. As a direct result the enterprise purchases more licenses than it needs and contract managers are not equipped with accurate information to negotiate enterprise agreements.
To fix this shortcoming software asset management tools need to understand the complexity of suite and bundle licenses. The multiple product use rights must be recorded in the license inventory. What’s more, the tool needs to have flexible rule-based product recognition (1:n) to map the multiple software products to the suite/bundle license.
Flexible rule-based product recognition allows the input of various types of signature data (ARP, File, Exe, MSI) to identify software installations. Utilizing the different signature data the flexible rules are manipulated by “must include”, “must exclude”, and “must have one of” conditions to distinguish between point solutions and suites/bundles.
Entitlement-centric software license management solutions that utilize a SKU catalog, know which entitlements provide product use rights for multiple products (suite/bundles) or for individual products. Because these tools are built around the entitlement, they recognize the need to have 1:n product recognition. The difference between conventional software asset management tools and entitlement-centric software license management tools, isn’t knowing what software you have installed and what licenses you own. It’s knowing the product use rights your organization is entitled to and being able to prove it.
