tracking software licence renewals

mrswann · ‎08-02-2016

We have a situation where some Software Licences are expiring and causing incidents as they need to be renewed.

These are "internal" but follow a similar pattern to something akin to QAS (for anyone in UK).

They are valid for 90 days and then we need to send in a techie to reactivate the licence. If we don't get ahead of this, our Clients lose functionality within their system.

So in simple terms we just need a way to track renewals, but I would prefer to do so in a more holistic way. It feels like there is crossover with Contract Management and Software Asset Management. On this occasion we are less concerned with costs, more so with end user impact and being proactive.

It is worth noting that we do have a CMDB populated with the CIs which is running the Application; so we can "see" the exposure to a point.

Simply adding an expiry date to each instance of the application would be a most crude way, but I think we should be able to attach a licence asset to the CI?

I have been reviewing demos and tutorials and wiki / docs , but there doesn't seem to be an easy fit as it transcends two areas and I probably need to use a very small amount of each??

guidance, feedback and discussion - much appreciated as always

Community Alums · ‎08-02-2016

For the components you absolutely need here just to handle the expiration date management:

Software Model - this is the basis for the Software License records, so you need to have this in place first.
Software Licenses - I would have one for each different expiration. I suggested the Warranty expiration date field that exists on this record because it probably is not otherwise being used for these software licenses and it seems to fit, but you could create a custom date field if you prefer.
CI records to 'entitle' to use this Software License record. This will allow you to have the device matched with the software and its expiration.

These are the only records required just to meet the needs of what you describe. With these records, you can easily set up a report to show what devices are coming up to their expiration.

This will not get you license compliance information. To get license compliance information, you also need:

Software Installations - this should be populated by some discovery source, such as ServiceNow Discovery or deployment tool used in your environment. These will create Software Discovery Models automatically that need to be matched to the Software Model.
Software Counters - Counters do the work to determine if you are compliant for the software with the vendor. Here you identify the License type that determines how to count the software installations as Rights used.

Another quick consideration that come to mind:

When a technician reactivates the license, does it add 90 days to the day they do the reactivation or is it 90 days from when it was originally set to expire. This could impact how you do this if all affected systems under a single Software License record cannot be updated on the same day and makes this harder to track. If this is the case, you might even consider a 1:1 for this particular software between its Software License and the entitled device. This will give you more flexibility on the dates.

Ben

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Community Alums · ‎08-02-2016

Warranty expiration is already in the Contracts form section: