Subscription based software licensing

[ncp]

I have a scenario that I'm looking for some guidance on

I have a software title that is subscription based (ex:Software A, which is cloud based)

I have setup an entitlement record and model. When the model is created the product type is coming up as "not licensed"

The process to setup Software A, for example is for the admin team to setup the account in the cloud and provide the id to the end user when the request is made.

Questions

Do I still have to source the license if the setup is done at the SaaS level?

Is it better to create Client access records if I'm obtaining the usage levels from the cloud tenant?

In the end how does the reconciliation against those client access work?

I looked at the kingston documentation below and it refers to counters, which I believe is the older version

https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/kingston-it-service-management/page/product/asset-management/task/t_CreateManageSubscriptionLicense.html

Any guidance would be helpful

Thanks

[mikewhalley]

It would be helpful if you could provide more details about the software title which your company subscribes to. Note that Kingston has the ability to track Office 365 subscriptions and a future SN release will include functionality to manage Adobe subscriptions and reconcile the subscription data with the discovered software like the Creative Cloud suite of products.

In Kingston, the only metric group that allows for the creation of a subscription entitlement is Microsoft. You would need to configure SAM Pro to create a User Subscription license metric for a non-Microsoft title, since User Subscription isn't an OOTB common metric.

Client access records are required when tracking usage-based licenses (e.g. CALs) and are not relevant for subscription licensing. The use case for subscriptions is to reconcile the number of active installations of a subscribed software title (obtained via discovery feeds) with the quantity of subscriptions purchased in order to understand the number of unused subscriptions or true-up requirements.

Regards,

Mike Whalley

ServiceNow.

[ncp]

Thanks Mike, the software could be anything that requires setup at the SaaS level and there is no discovery component. For example Evernote or Box, they are setup by the admins of that team. How does reconciliation work for those softwares when the SAM team wants to manage all the counts within ServiceNow. I'm aware of the O365 integration. This is specific to smaller vendors.

[ncp]

Mike, Maybe I used the term subscription losely. Another example might be ServiceNow, there is no component installed on the users desktop - how would be manage licensing in those scenarios?

[mikewhalley]

OK - so you just need to count the number of users/devices accessing a specific title, rather than actual named users ? If so, then client access records could be used and the user/device count in the client access record can be reconciled with the number of subscription entitlements purchased. This would require a script to ensure that the reconciliation engine pulls from the usage table when calculating license positions for your selected titles that have a User Subscription metric. I'm assuming that you have identified the data sources from where the usage data will be exported into ServiceNow.

Cheers,  Mike.