Author: Srinivas Ramanujaiah
ServiceNow SAM helps SAM managers solve complex licensing problems, including full support of software suites and bundles. This blog provides an overview of how software suites can be effectively managed on the NOW Platform, providing accurate compliance results and optimization opportunities.
Software Suites are collections of individual software components that are sold as a bundle. Examples include:
- Microsoft Office (Includes PowerPoint, Excel, Word, Outlook, etc.)
- Office 365
- Microsoft CIS Suite (Includes Windows Server and System Center)
- Adobe Creative Cloud
ServiceNow SAM provides content to automatically identify suite definitions, allowing for quick configuration of your Software Models. Content is regularly updated as new product suites are offered by publishers. This can be easily found on discovery maps related to the Software Model.
Figure 1: Suites identified by ServiceNow
Selection of a discovery map for a software suite, automatically adds the child components related to the suite as we can see below for Core Infrastructure Server Suite.
Figure 2: Software components automatically added
We can observe that ServiceNow SAM has added the Inference Percentage as 75% for this software. SAM uses Inference Percentage and Mandatory fields to infer whether to count the software component found is an individual component or a software suite.
Inference Percentage specifies what percentage of the components in the suite must be installed for the software to be identified as a suite. Mandatory field enforces whether a specific component in a suite must be installed to infer that the suite is installed. Choices are: Optional, Always Mandatory, Mandatory Group.
The combination of these features allows flexibility on how an organization would like their licenses to be consumed and provides the ability to apply licensing in the most cost-effective way possible.
Although by default ServiceNow specifies the Inference Percentage to be 75 %, this can be changed by SAM Manager to optimize your results.
During the reconciliation process, software installs will be tagged as part of a software suite for license compliance determination. You can observe below that the inferred suite for a software install- Microsoft Power BI is Microsoft Office 365 Enterprise E5.
Figure 3: Inferred suite from software installation
Details of license compliance for software suites can be easily seen in the License Workbench as below:
Figure 4: License compliance for Office 365 Suite
Here, are some helpful tips when configuring your software suites:
|
Configuration |
Value | |
|
1 |
Validate Inference Percentage Settings |
Raise or lower inference percentage for optimized results |
|
2 |
Auto-populate Suite Components |
When creating SW Entitlements, if you use a Publisher Part Number, it will assist in the automatic creation of the suite components. If Software Models are being manually created, ensure to select a Discovery Map with Suite Definition = True. |
|
3 |
Auto-populate Downgrades |
Downgrade definitions are also set through the SAM Content Library. Use the Publisher Part Number, or manually select a DMAP to auto-populate the information. |
|
4 |
Control consumption of suite licenses versus individual components |
SAM Manager can allocate suite or single component licenses to ensure proper consumption during reconciliation. |
|
5 |
Handle complex use cases such as cluster with DRS enabled or a suite of suites (Core Infrastructure Server) |
ServiceNow SAM handles complex licensing scenarios such as licensing CIS Suites when DRS is enabled, by calculating the rights required based on peak capacity of the VMs running on the cluster. |
For more information on ServiceNow Software Asset Management please visit www.servicenow.com/SAM.
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