The License Manager’s Role in a Changing Environment

The software licensing environment is rapidly changing as any other field of organizational computing. The “license manager” role is not as clear as before.

As we learned in OpenLM, those who manage the software licenses in organizations come from different background and disciplines:

• Some are from the IT, specializing in license management and sometimes handling the engineering licensing is another aspect of their job
• Some are from engineering, typically the CAD Managers or License Administrators, who are handling the licensing and other aspects of CAD administration
• Some are System Administrators that also handle the engineering licensing

We are working with many customers and regardless of their position in their organization, we see a very different view of the same position:

• Counting and reporting to the management to make decisions
• Counting, reporting and trying to tune the license servers to provide the optimal solution
• Counting, reporting and implementing any possible method to enhance the usability of the licenses

OpenLM’s approach was always in favor of active license management – “Stretching Your Licenses to Their Limits”, as our slogan goes. We believe that any license manager can make a significant difference in the licensing costs and efficiency simply by caring and being active.

What one can do:

1. Collect accurate usage information (who is using what, when and where)
2. Collect usage information for Groups and Projects as synchronized with the LDAP
3. Implement cost center billing to improve the shareability of the licenses
4. Consolidate separate license server into a big pool of licenses and share it between all users
5. Allocate named or concurrent licenses to users based on actual usage information
6. Engage colleagues by automatically distributing reports to managers
7. Deeply analyze the license information using BI tools
8. Empower users by providing usage information and license availability notifications
9. Monitor how much time the users are actually using the software and how much time it is idle
10. Close idle sessions in order to release unused licenses back to the license pool
11. Use license manager based allocation capabilities to smartly allocate licenses
12. Dynamically allocate licenses to users based on IP (usage over the sun)

Here at OpenLM we can provide easy solutions for all these methods. Contact us and learn how to better manage your software licenses!