Publisher part numbers and SAM

sarahdunn · ‎03-18-2021

In the past we have not used PPN's for most of our software entitlements. Now we are being encouraged to do so. What would be the advantages of using PPN's rather than leaving that field blank? We are particularly concerned because it is a read-only field and publisher part numbers are constantly changing.

Alikutty A · ‎03-18-2021

@sarahdunn Publisher part number or PPN is provided by your software vendor and it uniquely identifies all the details of your software model (publisher, product, edition, version) and its licensing information (type, metric) etc. When you use a PPN number instead of directly selecting a software model, the system will automatically populate all related information of your software and license in the entitlement form. While importing data for your entitlements, you only need to collect or provide the PPN and never worry on the other information like software or license information. The ServiceNow content library will take care of it and it will have the part numbers which are full. This saves a lot of effort in gathering the entitlement data for your customer.

In case you dont see a part number listed, you can open a HI ticket to get it added in the content library or create a custom part number for the same. I dont understand why you need to change a part number as this is something that your purchase once as part of your PO. If you made a new purchase, then you will need to create it as new entitlement with its related part number.

Thanks!

MLemieux · ‎03-19-2021

@Alikutty Abdulrazak I wanted to echo @sarahdunn 's comments about PPNs changing. We were advised by our ServiceNow implementation partner to not rely on PPNs because there is a potential for them to be duplicated between different publishers (ie - Foxit and Microsoft using the same PPN for obviously different software, for example).

Despite this, our organization has continued to push forward with the use of PPNs, but unfortunately we find that at least 9 out of 10 are not recognized by ServiceNow, or the software vendor does not have one for the software. Our implementation partner did recommend (as you said) to submit a HI ticket for missing PPNs, but our ServiceNow leadership is hesitant to do so (they have to submit HI tickets on our behalf). To further complicate things, most of the software purchases being made are for renewals, so before we can enter that renewal entitlement, we have to find the purchase for the original software entitlement, which may be 10 years old or more, have no PPN, and has changed in name/version etc - making it difficult to match the renewal to the original purchase.

Do you have any recommendations for communicating better with our software vendors regarding PPNs/entitlement data or PPN best practices in general? We currently rely on the sourcing department to gather this data on the purchase order, and they have been resistant to changing the data they ask for as well.

Thank you!

Alikutty A · ‎03-19-2021

@MLemieux If you need to deal will large number of software license models, then PPN is best suited for you. It definitely will save lot of efforts from your asset or purchasing team in gathering the required data from the vendor. I have just completed an implementation for a large enterprise customer completely using the PPN approach. The content library is not that mature at this point but it is improving slowly. We did not have 40-60% of our PPNs in the content library but we got them added using a HI support in 2-3 months time. Initially we thought this as a big issue but realized it is an continous process and you will benefit in future as there wont be a need to keep adding new PPNs since you would have covered most of them in your initial phase itself.

I have not come across a case where PPN is duplicate but if that exist then thats something ServiceNow has to deal and fix in the platform. As a workaround, you could use custom PPN for such cases.

Are you talking here about maintenance license? If Yes then it would be an issue to deal with. For the PPN, that's vendor owned, so you would need to keep them bugging which is the primary thing if you are planning to go with the PPN approach. Make sure you have an agreement that this information is provided in the PO going forward for better handling it.

Note: You could get customer access to HI portal and raise tickets on your own.

YASHIK RAMMOHAN · ‎04-27-2023

Hi there, howdy? i want to know which attribute or field links the PPN added when entitlement data is added into SNOW, with the discovered software model found within companies' network environment, is it PPN or DMAP Number? Can i get your thoughts on this query thanks? I am curious about technicalities involved in how a software entitlement and software installation achieve compliant status.