How are software models, application models, maintenance models, contracts, software entitlements, and software assets related?

[AskingMammoth]

Hello!

I am relatively new to the Asset Management field and would value insight into how software models, application models, maintenance models, contracts, software entitlements, and software assets are related. Does anyone know where I might be able to find a diagram (preferably) that defines the relationships between these different models? I'm also curious what the standards are related to these different data points - in other words, how should I/my team use these different asset attributes to organize our software inventory properly?

Any feedback or provided resources would be VERY helpful - thank you!

[Omeir Yusuf]

Hi Craig

To my knowledge Application and Maintenance Models do not factor into Software Asset Management so I will side-step those for now.  

Software Entitlements represent information about rights to the software licenses you own i.e. publisher name, title, part number, quantity, PO, user or device allocation etc.

Software Models are a profile of the software, to which one or more Entitlement records are related. In almost all cases, Software Models are automatically created upon ingesting/creating Software Entitlements. Think of Software Models as the normalized parent record to several entitlements. These normalized records also get enriched with other attributes from ServiceNow's content library, e.g. Downgrade Rights, Product Classification (Word Processing, Games etc.), Product Type (Licensable, Freeware etc.).

If you are familiar with Software Installations and Discovery Models, the concept is very similar: Just like Software Installation records get 'grouped' and normalized into Discovery Models, Software Entitlements are 'grouped' and normalized into Software Models. In both cases, there is minimal effort on your part in creating either model as the majority are automatically created upon ingestion of source data (license records and software discovery).    

Hopefully that paints a mental picture of the link between the two. 

Contract Management is a different application on the platform. It allows you to link/relate Software Entitlement records to a contract i.e., within a newly created Microsoft SQL Server contract allows you to associate all the applicable SQL Server Standard and Enterprise entitlement records. If you navigate to the entitlement record within the SAM application, you will see that it relates to the Microsoft SQL Server contract and vice versa in the Contract Management application.  

[karinmolly]

I keen on Statistic and I understand your concern when you are searching for extra data to check your models. I gamble in my leisure time and I use data I collect during the game for my Stat projects. Depends on your goals and plans. Maybe my way can work out for you as well. I found a great website with a list of different casinos that's TerraCasino where I can filter and visit the casino category I'm interested in at this moment. I read a professional review and make some notes. Then I visit chosen website and play to check and train my model. Some data I add to my SQL table to manage and analyze further.

[Omeir Yusuf]

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