Entitlements for licensable products that are free

[Todd Romansky]

Hi all,

We are just starting our SAM journey and are relying primarily on ACC-V as the discovery source for the installed software on our servers and end-points.  One of my first observations from the SAM Workspace was that the publisher "ServiceNow" was out of compliance.  Digging into this, it was because the discovered "Agent Client Collector" software, which is listed as a "licensable" product type, does not have any entitlements.  Now I am very familiar with ServiceNow licensing and I manage our contract, but I do not ever recall seeing Agent Client Collector as something we specifically purchased and are simply using it as part of our subscription to ITOM Visibility.  And if I go into the Content Library portal in SAM Workspace and lookup Agent Client Collector, there are no PPNs listed.  So my question is how do you deal with software that is identified as licensable if it is $0 cost and you don't have a PPN to create an entitlement and software model?  I'm assuming there are other scenarios of "freeware" being used that technically requires a license, but would not have a purchase contract associated with it.

Thanks in advance!

[mikew_samexpert]

Uncheck the "License under management" checkbox on the software model and this will preclude the software model from reconciliation calculations.

[Todd Romansky]

In this case, we don't have a software model defined for Agent Client Collector, since there is no entitlement and we are not automatically creating software models based on created Discovery Models.  So when I run into these freeware type situations, do I simply need to create the software model and then uncheck that checkbox as you suggested?

[ShrihariN]

I had case in recent where 'Microsoft Internet Explorer Administration Kit' product is actually freeware. It doesn't have any license, but service now was defining it as licensable. I raised the HI case to service now and they updated their content to mark that product as Not Licensable.

So, for free products or open-source products 'Product Type' should be 'Not Licensable'.

[dreinhardt]

Hi @Todd Romansky, @ShrihariN 

please us the new feature introduced with W.DC - Custom Product License Exception Rules -  to set specific products to "Not Licensable" without having a software model in place. The new feature will change the product type on discovery model level. 

Content updates for Software Asset Management (servicenow.com)

Product types can be updated on a product’s edition level using the Custom Product License Exception Rules.
[samp_cust_prod_lic_excep_rules] table. For cases where certain editions are non-licensable, the product type gets updated automatically if the exception rule is defined in the Product License Exception Rules [samp_prod_lic_excep_rules] table or the Custom Product License Exception Rules [samp_cust_prod_lic_excep_rules] table. However, if a product is non-licensable, an exception rule can’t be created for ​a licensable edition. For this case, you must raise a case with the Content Service team​ with supporting documentation and the team reviews ​whether the edition must be tagged as licensable.

Best, Dennis