Can I create a custom license metric to count the installs a software had into a same device?

[Angel Pineda1]

Can I create a custom license metric to count the installs a software had into a same device? Scenario. I found 5 installations of "acme_app" into "host101" computer & I found 2 installations of "acme_app" into "host201" computer.

So, I hope to find 5 rights used of "acme_app", in 2 computers.

Thanks in advance.

[Joe Ryder · Accepted solution]

Good day. First, I would caution making any custom license metric that counts the number of installs on a given host. Most typically, the number of installs do not matter. Most software is licensed either by user - which means no matter how many installs are present, the user that controls those installs is the one that consumes the license - or by device - no matter how many installs are present, the device (or potentially a set number of devices) will constitute a license consumed.

The reason you see multiple installations, in most cases, is that each installation is a different version. You would need to look at your license agreement to see if versions are licensed separately and therefore you would consume multiple licenses per device where multiple versions are present. As well, the version vs subversion is important: version 5 compared to version 6 may include version-limited licensing, but version 5.6 version 5.8 may not.

Lastly, downgrade and upgrade rights are important to track in your software models. Often, you can use newer or older versions of software based on the license terms as long as you hold a specific license or active maintenance plan. Nearly all software that carries maintenance or subscriptions allows for version-agnostic use, which inherently means you don't count anything but the device or user.

As a side note, even if per-install is the license metric, what you described would be 7 rights used, assuming the installs are all major versions or otherwise defined in the license agreement as individual licensed versions.

TBH, in 8 years, I've never had a software product count multiple installations on the same computer. I'd be interested in the scenario details. If too sensitive to post in the comments here, I'm available on LinkedIn.

To answer your question, you would need to modify the Entitlement table in the License Metric under Custom in the Metric Groups. But it would not consume based on installs as that is not a standard function of ServiceNow. You'd need to script the consumption logic to identify all software installation records (with any criteria involved), which, depending on the versioning definitions could be a major undertaking. That part, perhaps, if necessary, someone here can help start you on the right path. If it's a true use case, I would focus more on allocations than the optimized consumption logic. If you need the optimized consumption logic in Workspace/Workbench and you do not use allocations, I would further recommend posting the idea to the Idea Forum so that ServiceNow can release a feature in the future that allows for installation licensing. It's so rare though, I don't know that they'd prioritize it.

Hope that helps. Good luck! Let us know here any details that might help clarify the scenario.

[Angel Pineda1]

Hello Joe,

That was a very useful explanation! In my scenario, the multiple installation is due to different versions.

I'll look to the license agreement.

Thank you!