You might try approaching the problem differently. Bear in mind that what
really counts is software license entitlements, which is a function of both
(1) what you've purchased and (2) the terms and conditions of any applicable
software maintenance contract.
For example, you purchased Visio 2007, but since it's under maintenance
you're entitled to actually install Visio 2007 or 2010.
Works backwards too, in case your company standards haven't kept pace with
Microsoft product releases. For example, the company standard is Access
2003, but all you can purchase is Access 2007. No problem, as your
Microsoft maintenance agreement allows downgrade installations. When your
company finally recognizes Access 2007 as the new standard, you are entitled
to install (or upgrade to) 2007.
The way to solve the issue is simply count Visio entitlements and Visio
installations, without worrying about which version.
So you see, everything to do with entitlements -- little to do with
purchases.
We could also launch into a discussion of when entitlements in no way
resemble purchases -- Microsoft Office second installs on the same user's
mobile device, or how an OEM license becomes legally retired after you
retire the associated hardware device -- but that's for another day, as is
any discussion about patch management.
(Am smack in the middle of a large software license management and
compliance initiative involving 200K+ devices and 5M+ software products.
Happy to share issues and discuss problems/resolutions, if anyone's
interested.)
-- Bing
Bradford Bingel ("Bing")
[email protected] (email)
925-260-6394 (mobile)
_____
From: Action Request System discussion list(ARSList)
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Pierson, Shawn
Sent: Thursday, October 08, 2009 1:31 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Asset Management Software Licensing Issue
**
Tauf,
This almost works, except that in this case, the .exe files are going to be
exactly the same. The really difficult part of this is that both machines
will have identical software. It's just in the record of what we paid for
that there is a difference. In setting up the contracts in Asset Management
I guess we can set up the same products for multiple contracts, and manually
relate them instead of using the cool SRM form with automated lookups that
we've built.
Thanks,
Shawn Pierson
Remedy Developer | Southern Union
5444 Westheimer Rd. Houston, TX 77056 | 713.989.7226
From: Action Request System discussion list(ARSList)
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Chowdhury, Tauf
Sent: Thursday, October 08, 2009 2:59 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Asset Management Software Licensing Issue
**
Shawn,
>From an amateur at this (since we are like 2 steps behind you in
implementing asset management), you may be able to modify the PDE to look
for a specific .exe in 2007 but categorize it as 2010. That way, if you
relate that specific PDE to the 2010 contract, the 2007 installs will be
categorized as 2010. Make sense or did I confuse it more?
Tauf Chowdhury
Analyst, Service Management
Office: 631.858.7765
Mobile:646.483.2779
From: Action Request System discussion list(ARSList)
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Pierson, Shawn
Sent: Thursday, October 08, 2009 2:03 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Asset Management Software Licensing Issue
**
Good afternoon,
This may be more of a business process question than an application
question, but I wanted to see if anyone out there has a solution.
The scenario that causes the problem is that we have transition periods for
software between version updates. The basic flow of this is:
1. We have Visio 2007 as a standard and track our licenses for 2007.
2. Visio 2010 becomes available, and we begin purchasing licenses for
2010, but because we are in a transition period, we install Visio 2007.
3. Once the transition period is complete, we upgrade all users from
2007 to 2010.
This approach has a few problems, though. The first is that it makes it
difficult to track owned licenses versus installations. Basically, the
situation like this is what would cause the problem:
1. User A requests Visio, and he purchases and gets Visio 2007
installed.
2. Later on, User B requests Visio, and because Microsoft has made 2010
available, User B purchases Visio 2010.
3. I.T. is not yet ready to upgrade the enterprise to 2010, so they
install Visio 2007 on User B's machine.
4. In Asset Management, we track our Visio 2007 licenses in one
Software Contract, and our 2010 licenses in another. The 2010 users have
downgrade rights to 2007, but the 2007 users do not have upgrade rights to
2010.
5. When we perform a discovery, we see that both User A and User B have
Visio 2007 installed, and in our reconciliation, we appear to be out of
compliance on Visio 2007 by one license, and we appear to have a free Visio
2010 license.
The other problem with this is that we won't be able to quantify what we
really have available when we do queries against the Software Contracts.
Based on the scenario above, when a new user goes to request Visio 2010, the
system will think we have a license available, when in reality it is used
for User B's 2007 installation.
So if anyone has any suggestions on how to deal with this, we would greatly
appreciate it. We are on ITSM 7.0 so any answers of how to track these
related licenses better in 7.5 will be appreciated, but not as much as
things that work on 7.0.
Thanks,
Shawn Pierson
Remedy Developer | Southern Union
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