How to manage Software bundled with other publisher's software?

[Brigham]

I have software installed in my environment, that is licensable software from PublisherA. However we never purchased licensing for it because is it packaged and installed with software we did purchase from PublisherB. Effectively PublisherB pays PublisherA for redistribution as part of their software.

My first thought was to make PublisherA's software model a suite component of PublisherB's software model. But apparently Suite Components must be the same publisher as the Suite Parent.

So I am looking for solutions to allow us to capture this relationship both to help clean up reconciliation, but also because it is important to understand where PublisherA's software is coming from.

Yes, I can set Software Model.License Under Management = FALSE on PublisherA's software model. Though I do need to determine if there are installs that may legitimately be purchased by us and require licensing (under separate use case.) And that still doesn't negate the desire to capture the relationship between PublisherA's software model and PublisherB's.

I suppose a great example of this might be Oracle Java which may be licensed by us, but also might be installed in our environment as part of some other purchased solution where those installs of Oracle Java are covered by redistribution licensing by third party.

[sascha_pudenz]

We have seen this issue as well and the proper way would be a change by ServiceNow to allow multiple publishers within one Suite. This can also be seen if publishers have been merged (VMware --> Broadcom). Older SW Models (VMware) could not be included in a Suite of Broadcom as well.

 A workaround is to change the publisher of the Software Model, which is still an ugly solution.

You could create a second Software Model for the PublisherB and set the PublisherA  as publisher. You could assign the newly created SW model to the Suite of PublisherA now. By working with install conditions in the SW model you could limit the scope. 

This workaround still leaves you with a lot of maintenance and it is likely to lose track of such cases in a bigger environment.

[dreinhardt]

@SrinivasRamanu1, could you add your comment from a PM side. Is there anything planned for the next releases to help us. Maybe you could use the case provided by @Brigham to share your best practices.

I suppose a great example of this might be Oracle Java which may be licensed by us, but also might be installed in our environment as part of some other purchased solution where those installs of Oracle Java are covered by redistribution licensing by third party.

Thanks