ASSET ALLOCATION AND RECONCILIATION SYSTEM
Systems and methods for a software asset management, license compliance, and reconciliation techniques are disclosed. Software licenses come in many different types, including but not limited to, subscription based licenses, geographically restricted licenses, globally available licenses, production only licenses, standard shrink wrap licenses, network concurrent usage licenses, etc. With fewer applications being installed directly onto end-users machines, tools that only scan local networks and search hard drives are becoming less effective. Disclosed techniques introduce additional capabilities for software asset discovery, tracking, license allocation, and other functions as part of a comprehensive software asset reconciliation engine. For example, the disclosed software asset reconciliation engine may be configured with sub-engines to perform groupings of discovered information to allow system administrators and license administrators to properly allocate and monitor software application usage across an enterprise and ensure compliance against a purchased inventory of licenses of different types.
This application claims priority to and benefit of U.S. Provisional Patent Application Ser. 62/568,087, filed Oct. 4, 2017, entitled “Platform Computing Environment and Functionality thereof,” by Amradkar, et. al, for all applicable purposes, including a right of priority, the contents of which are incorporated by reference herein, in their entirety.
TECHNICAL FIELDEmbodiments described herein generally relate to enterprise computing and, in particular, to providing a software license management, compliance, and reconciliation system. In today's enterprise systems there may be a mix of cloud-based, traditional hardware, traditional software, and subscription based software application installations. Disclosed techniques address proper discovery, management of allocations, and compliance requirements for software installation and license management across such hybrid systems.
BACKGROUNDCloud computing relates to the sharing of computing resources that are generally accessed via the Internet. In particular, cloud computing infrastructure allows users to access a shared pool of computing resources, such as servers, storage devices, networks, applications, and/or other computing-based services. By doing so, users, such as individuals and/or enterprises, are able to access computing resources on demand that are located at remote locations in order to perform a variety of computing functions that include storing and/or processing computing data. For enterprise and other organization users, cloud computing provides flexibility in accessing cloud computing resources without accruing up-front costs, such as purchasing network equipment and investing time in establishing a private network infrastructure. Instead, by utilizing cloud computing resources, users are able redirect their resources to focus on core business functions.
In today's communication networks, examples of cloud computing services a user may utilize include software as a service (SaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS) technologies. SaaS is a delivery model that provides software as a service rather than an end product. Instead of utilizing local network or individual software installations, software is typically licensed on a subscription basis, hosted on a remote machine, and accessed as needed. For example, users are generally able to access a variety of business and/or information technology (IT) related software via a web browser. PaaS acts as an extension of SaaS that goes beyond providing software services by offering customizability and expandability features to meet a user's needs. For example, PaaS can provide a cloud-based developmental platform for users to develop, modify, and/or customize applications and/or automate business operations without maintaining network infrastructure and/or allocating computing resources normally associated with these functions.
Within the context of cloud computing solutions, software license management and compliance reporting may be complicated. Enterprise's may consist of traditional hardware infrastructure maintained by an internal information technology staff with local software application installations, cloud-based pay for use applications (e.g., SaaS), cloud-based or mainframe based pay for use software, and subscription web-based applications, among other possibilities. Disclosed techniques for a software compliance, discovery, and management system address many of the issues encountered in such a hybrid environment and allow customization capabilities for increased flexibility to insure compliance with license requirements. Additionally, disclosed techniques help to identify improper allocations of software licenses, identify improper installations of software, ensure adherence to geographical licensing restrictions, and compliance with other license management requirements for enterprise solutions.
For a more complete understanding of this disclosure, reference is now made to the following brief description, taken in connection with the accompanying drawings and detailed description, wherein like reference numerals represent like parts.
In the following description, for purposes of explanation, numerous specific details are set forth in order to provide a thorough understanding of the embodiments disclosed herein. It will be apparent, however, to one skilled in the art that the disclosed embodiments may be practiced without these specific details. In other instances, structure and devices are shown in block diagram form in order to avoid obscuring the disclosed embodiments. Moreover, the language used in this disclosure has been principally selected for readability and instructional purposes, and may not have been selected to delineate or circumscribe the inventive subject matter, resorting to the claims being necessary to determine such inventive subject matter. Reference in the specification to “one embodiment” or to “an embodiment” means that a particular feature, structure, or characteristic described in connection with the embodiments is included in at least one embodiment.
The terms “a,” “an,” and “the” are not intended to refer to a singular entity unless explicitly so defined, but include the general class of which a specific example may be used for illustration. The use of the terms “a” or “an” may therefore mean any number that is at least one, including “one,” “one or more,” “at least one,” and “one or more than one.” The term “or” means any of the alternatives and any combination of the alternatives, including all of the alternatives, unless the alternatives are explicitly indicated as mutually exclusive. The phrase “at least one of” when combined with a list of items, means a single item from the list or any combination of items in the list. The phrase does not require all of the listed items unless explicitly so defined.
The term “computing system” is generally taken to refer to at least one electronic computing device that includes, but is not limited to, a single computer, virtual machine, virtual container, host, server, laptop, and/or mobile device or to a plurality of electronic computing devices working together to perform the function described as being performed on or by the computing system.
As used herein, the term “medium” refers to one or more non-transitory physical media that together store the contents described as being stored thereon. Embodiments may include non-volatile secondary storage, read-only memory (ROM), and/or random-access memory (RAM).
As used herein, the terms “application” and “function” refer to one or more computing modules, programs, processes, workloads, threads and/or a set of computing instructions executed by a computing system. Example embodiments of applications and functions include software modules, software objects, software instances and/or other types of executable code.
Software licenses represent legal contracts between a software vendor (sometimes referred to as a software publisher) and a purchaser of the associated software application(s). Often, the contract is between the software vendor and a corporation or enterprise for use by their employees as end-users. In some cases, software licenses are referred to as software “entitlements,” in part, because they entitle a corporation to utilize a number of copies of software across their enterprise. Terms of software licenses vary greatly and generally depend on a type of use for applications subject to a particular license. In a simple case, a software license allows specific corporate employees to use a specific software application for an undefined length of time after a single payment. Sometimes, this may be referred to as a named-user shrink wrap license. In what may be considered the simplest case, when a named-user restriction is not present the software license may simply be referred to as a shrink wrap license. Many more complicated variations of software licenses, in the form of entitlements, exist and generally describe restrictions on how a particular application may be used. Restrictions include, but are not restricted to, use over a network by a concurrent number of users (referred to as a floating license or a network license), use for a specific time period over the Internet (referred to as a subscription based license), use of a particular application on a particular server (referred to as a node locked license), use of a set of applications that are not individually licensed (referred to as an application suite license), and even Processor Value Unit sub-capacity licensing (where a portion of a processor's total capacity is licensed). There are simply too many variations to list each model as an example. However, in the majority of cases there exist common elements regarding the restrictions imposed on the purchaser or licensee. Enterprises must adhere to all applicable restrictions to be in compliance with their vendor's software license terms. Compliance is important because being out of compliance may result in substantial fines or other penalties.
License enforcement methods used by software vendors vary greatly and industry trends change over time. Some methods completely lock down a system and prevent unlicensed software from loading. Other systems allow software to execute, possibly in a degraded operational state, when out of compliance. Some vendors rely on a paper license with no automatic enforcement. This disclosure includes embodiments to cover all current and possibly future cases, in part, by allowing customization capabilities discussed later. When a company runs in a non-compliant environment a “true-up” cost may be calculated. The true-up cost represents an additional cost (paid by the corporation to the software vendor) to purchase enough additional licenses to correct non-compliance issues (with or without additional fees or penalties). Purchasing additional licenses (e.g., rights or entitlements) is one remediation option. Other remediation options are discussed throughout this disclosure. Some disclosed embodiments recognize a plurality of remediation options and allow a software license administrator (corporation employee) to adjust an enterprise's allocations to regain a compliant environment. In some cases, compliance may be achieved without purchasing anything new. Obviously, these cases result in bottom line savings for the enterprise. Metrics made available in compliance reports may also assist an enterprise or corporation with future budget planning. Planning may be assisted by the system because identification of non-compliant (or fully allocated) software may indicate a future purchase requirement at the corporate, enterprise, cost center, or country level. Also, some cases may not allow simple re-allocation of licenses. For example, existing licenses may be restricted by country or may not match requirements for desired use of the software application(s). In this case, an enterprise may need to interface with the software vendor to trade their excess licenses of one type and acquire more appropriate licenses. Again, the enterprise or corporation may save money because the software vendor may give a credit toward new licenses if other licenses are relinquished. Disclosed embodiments also include reports that allow visibility into an enterprise's actual needs and may assist in making business decisions regarding software use across the corporation or enterprise.
Restrictions appearing in software licenses have some common attributes. Restrictions, at a very high level, may be thought of as placing a limit on user, location, duration, amount, etc. for a specific application (or suite). Each software application may have its own restrictions imposed and these restrictions may change over time. Reasons for change may include, but not be limited to: enterprise growth; changes in usage patterns; re-negotiation of license terms; availability of new or different applications; end of life of applications; and technological or business factors.
It is clear from the discussion above that management of software entitlements (licenses) for a corporation may be complicated. Systems have been built to assist in managing compliance and identifying methods to regain compliance once a non-compliance has been identified. Regaining of compliance may be referred to as “reconciliation” and may require one or more “remediation” operations to achieve. Existing systems have limitations in their ability to flexibly manage the vast variety of restrictions appearing in license contracts. Particularly, flexibility is needed with respect to discovery of virtual, subscription, global, and cloud-based applications. To address these and other issues, this disclosure presents several embodiments of systems designed to handle new methods of grouping, tracking, discovering, and applying defined restrictions to software applications in use by a corporation. Disclosed embodiments include the ability to assign departments, cost centers, locations, and other groups to Software Entitlements so that rights may be accordingly assigned to the correct group during reconciliation. Disclosed systems also offer a variety of remediation options previously unavailable to assist software license managers in their goal of running within a compliant system and quickly performing reconciliation to address any non-compliance issues.
In some disclosed embodiments, a system has the ability to track any number of attributes and associate them with software applications and their licenses. Tracking at the level of department, country, cost center, company within organization (e.g., subsidiary), may all be important aspects to ensure compliance. These same four attributes may be tracked on individual software installations so as discovery runs and identifies that a user has a software application (in one example a particular version of an application), those attributes may be tied to that particular installation. When software reconciliation is performed, calculations across a plurality of engines may be performed and their results correlated to consider a compliance position. Group attributes may also be considered so that rights are properly applied. If, for example, rights are purchased for a particular department, users only in that department are part of the allocation of those rights. Similarly, if rights are purchased for a particular country, software application licenses will only be allocated where the user or device exists in that country. The disclosed reconciliation framework also supports global entitlements, rights that have been purchased across any department, cost center, company. Further, multiple subgroup classifications may be performed. For example a compliance report may be generated that sorts by country and then by department.
In addition to the grouping reconciliation noted above, some embodiments include an ability to define a custom license metric calculation. Custom license metric calculation represents the ability for customers to enter a custom script or program that defines how to calculate the number of rights that need to be applied to a software installation or a set of software installations. For example, as part of discovery process. Then, when reconciliation runs information identified by any custom script or program may be included in the overall reconciliation logic. In this manner, anything that the customer has decided may be important to track may be maintained and utilized across the entire reconciliation framework.
Publisher specific discovery plugins (e.g., IBM or VMWARE) may also be applied. Publisher specific discovery plugins may be provided by software vendors or as part of the reconciliation framework for popular vendors as needed. In yet another example, a software vendor's raw inventory feed may be processed by the reconciliation framework. A software vendor's raw feed may be data maintained as part of applications monitoring their own license status (e.g., license file information, run-time license checking, license server information, etc.). Subscription services may also be discovered and monitored via specialization logic implemented as either a custom script of publisher specific add-on. Subscription based monitoring for compliance has special factors to consider because often the use is on-line across a network and there may be very little software installation foot print or other usage information by which to track subscription software and perform reconciliation.
A discovery map, as used in this disclosure, refers to a configuration or rules file that provides information about attributes of one or more software applications. The information from a discovery map may be used as part of discovery to aid in proper application of rights as part of reconciliation. An attribute referred to as an “installation consideration” may be also tracked as an attribute of each discovered software application installation. For example, the “installation consideration” may define an installation as part of a system used for testing or disaster recovery backup. This attribute may be important because some software agreements count only production use. In these cases, any test or disaster recovery backup site need not be monitored for compliance. Accordingly, added attributes for each software installation may be used to further refine how information from each identified software installation is tracked for compliance. Further information about a reconciliation framework to ensure license compliance is discussed below with reference to
Cloud computing infrastructure 100 also includes cellular network 103 for use with mobile communication devices. Mobile cellular networks support mobile phones and many other types of mobile devices such as laptops etc. Mobile devices in cloud computing infrastructure 100 are illustrated as mobile phone 104D, laptop 104E, and tablet 104C. A mobile device such as mobile phone 104D may interact with one or more mobile provider networks as the mobile device moves, typically interacting with a plurality of mobile network towers 120, 130, and 140 for connecting to the cellular network 103. Although referred to as a cellular network in
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To utilize computing resources within cloud resources platform/network 110, network operators may choose to configure data centers 112 using a variety of computing infrastructures. In one embodiment, one or more of data centers 112 are configured using a multi-tenant cloud architecture such that a single server instance 114, which can also be referred to as an application instance, handles requests and serves more than one customer. In some cases, data centers with multi-tenant cloud architecture commingle and store data from multiple customers, where multiple customer instances are assigned to a single server instance 114. In a multi-tenant cloud architecture, the single server instance 114 distinguishes between and segregates data and other information of the various customers. For example, a multi-tenant cloud architecture could assign a particular identifier for each customer in order to identify and segregate the data from each customer. In a multitenancy environment, multiple customers share the same application, running on the same operating system, on the same hardware, with the same data-storage mechanism. The distinction between the customers is achieved during application design, thus customers do not share or see each other's data. This is different than virtualization where components are transformed, enabling each customer application to appear to run on a separate virtual machine. Generally, implementing a multi-tenant cloud architecture may have a production limitation, such as the failure of a single server instance 114 causing outages for all customers allocated to the single server instance 114.
In another embodiment, one or more of the data centers 112 are configured using a multi-instance cloud architecture to provide every customer its own unique customer instance. For example, a multi-instance cloud architecture could provide each customer instance with its own dedicated application server and dedicated database server. In other examples, the multi-instance cloud architecture could deploy a single server instance 114 and/or other combinations of server instances 114, such as one or more dedicated web server instances, one or more dedicated application server instances, and one or more database server instances, for each customer instance. In a multi-instance cloud architecture, multiple customer instances could be installed on a single physical hardware server where each customer instance is allocated certain portions of the physical server resources, such as computing memory, storage, and processing power. By doing so, each customer instance has its own unique software stack that provides the benefit of data isolation, relatively less downtime for customers to access the cloud resources platform/network 110, and customer-driven upgrade schedules. An example of implementing a customer instance within a multi-instance cloud architecture will be discussed in more detail below when describing
To facilitate higher availability of the customer instance 208, application server instances 210A-210D and database server instances 212A and 212B are shown to be allocated to two different data centers 206A and 206B, where one of data centers 206A and 206B may act as a backup data center. In reference to
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Reconciliation engine 310 represents a second engine of reconciliation framework 300. Reconciliation engine 310 incorporates several sub-engines or operational units to perform functions associated with reconciling information obtained by discovery engine 305 against information pertaining to software licenses (e.g., a license data base). Software suites sub-engine 340 represents a sub-engine configured to manage software applications that may be made available to devices as part of a suite license as opposed to individual application licenses. Some software applications are available both individually and as part of a suite. Allocation sub-engine 342 may be configured to make a determination as to which type of license to allocate to a device as part of reconciliation. License metric sub-engine 346 represents a sub-engine configured to manage information collected by custom license metric logic as may be designed by a customer (See
Remediation engine 315 contains multiple functional components to assist in performing remediation options to maintain or achieve overall compliance. Allocation creation component 360 allows a user to create allocations for software installations and assign licenses to particular users or devices. Allocation removal component 362 allows removal of licenses previously assigned to user devices. For example, a license may have been assigned to a device and but not be installed thereon. Accordingly, that allocation may be moved to a device that requires a license to address an out of compliance situation. Software uninstallation component 364 represents functionality to automatically initiate uninstallation of software from a target device within the customer network. After uninstallation from that device an allocated license may be reassigned to another device that may have been identified as non-compliant. Allocation purchase component 366 represents functionality to initiate purchase of additional licenses and “true-up” an out of compliance situation. An enterprise may want to exhaust other options to become compliant prior to paying a true-up cost to a software vendor. In one example, allocation purchase component 366 may automatically generate a purchase order containing information appropriate to address non-compliance and submit the purchase order to a purchasing system to facilitate acquisition of additional licenses.
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Persons of ordinary skill in the art are aware that software programs may be developed, encoded, and compiled in a variety of computing languages for a variety of software platforms and/or operating systems and subsequently loaded and executed by processor 1105. In one embodiment, the compiling process of the software program may transform program code written in a programming language to another computer language such that the processor 1105 is able to execute the programming code. For example, the compiling process of the software program may generate an executable program that provides encoded instructions (e.g., machine code instructions) for processor 1105 to accomplish specific, non-generic, particular computing functions.
After the compiling process, the encoded instructions may then be loaded as computer executable instructions or process steps to processor 1105 from storage 1120, from memory 1110, and/or embedded within processor 1105 (e.g., via a cache or on-board ROM). Processor 1105 may be configured to execute the stored instructions or process steps in order to perform instructions or process steps to transform the computing device into a non-generic, particular, specially programmed machine or apparatus. Stored data, e.g., data stored by a storage device 1120, may be accessed by processor 1105 during the execution of computer executable instructions or process steps to instruct one or more components within the computing device 1100.
A user interface (e.g., output devices 1115 and input devices 1130) can include a display, positional input device (such as a mouse, touchpad, touchscreen, or the like), keyboard, or other forms of user input and output devices. The user interface components may be communicatively coupled to processor 1105. When the output device is or includes a display, the display can be implemented in various ways, including by a liquid crystal display (LCD) or a cathode-ray tube (CRT) or light emitting diode (LED) display, such as an OLED display. Persons of ordinary skill in the art are aware that the computing device 1100 may comprise other components well known in the art, such as sensors, powers sources, and/or analog-to-digital converters, not explicitly shown in
At least one embodiment is disclosed and variations, combinations, and/or modifications of the embodiment(s) and/or features of the embodiment(s) made by a person having ordinary skill in the art are within the scope of the disclosure. Alternative embodiments that result from combining, integrating, and/or omitting features of the embodiment(s) are also within the scope of the disclosure. Where numerical ranges or limitations are expressly stated, such express ranges or limitations may be understood to include iterative ranges or limitations of like magnitude falling within the expressly stated ranges or limitations (e.g., from about 1 to about 10 includes 2, 3, 4, etc.; greater than 0.10 includes 0.11, 0.12, 0.13, etc.). The use of the term “about” means±10% of the subsequent number, unless otherwise stated.
Use of the term “optionally” with respect to any element of a claim means that the element is required, or alternatively, the element is not required, both alternatives being within the scope of the claim. Use of broader terms such as comprises, includes, and having may be understood to provide support for narrower terms such as consisting of, consisting essentially of, and comprised substantially of. Accordingly, the scope of protection is not limited by the description set out above but is defined by the claims that follow, that scope including all equivalents of the subject matter of the claims. Each and every claim is incorporated as further disclosure into the specification and the claims are embodiment(s) of the present disclosure.
It is to be understood that the above description is intended to be illustrative and not restrictive. For example, the above-described embodiments may be used in combination with each other. Many other embodiments will be apparent to those of skill in the art upon reviewing the above description. The scope of the invention therefore should be determined with reference to the appended claims, along with the full scope of equivalents to which such claims are entitled. It should be noted that the discussion of any reference is not an admission that it is prior art to the present invention, especially any reference that may have a publication date after the priority date of this application.
The subject matter of this disclosure may be applicable to numerous use cases that have not been explicitly discussed here but are contemplated by this disclosure. For example, the provisional applications filed by the same applicant on May 4, 2017 and May 5, 2017 entitled “Service Platform and use thereof” have further examples. The U.S. Provisional applications given filing Ser. Nos. 62/501,646; 62/501,657; 62/502,258; 62/502,308; and 62/502,244 are hereby incorporated by reference.
Claims
1. A cloud-based computer system, comprising:
- a memory partition;
- a network interface communicatively coupled to one or more processing units and the memory partition, wherein the memory partition comprises computer instructions that when executed by the one or more processing units cause the cloud-based computer system to: initiate a probe of one or more computer systems of an enterprise, the probes configured to determine software application usage statistics for each of the one or more computer systems, the software application usage statistics comprising information for identifying compliance with license requirements for software applications corresponding to the application usage statistics; obtain license information identifying software application license availability across the one or more computer systems of the enterprise; correlate the software application usage statistics with a first grouping selected from at least one of a department of the business, business unit of the enterprise, cost center of the enterprise, and a country of use; prepare a compliance report indicating discrepancies between the software application usage statistics and the software application license availability, the compliance report including information about the country of use for at least one software application having license information indicating a restriction of use based on country; and identify a plurality of remediation options available for non-compliant usage of at least one of the software applications, the remediation options including purchase rights and at least one of: creating allocations, removing allocations, removing unallocated installations, and removing unlicensed installations.
2. The cloud-based computer system of claim 1, wherein the compliance report provides information restricted based on an identified publisher or set of publishers.
3. The cloud-based computer system of claim 1, further comprising instructions to cause the cloud-based computer system to:
- correlate the software application usage statistics with a subgrouping different from the first grouping and selected from at least one of a department of the business, business unit of the enterprise, cost center of the enterprise, and a country of use.
4. The cloud-based computer system of claim 3, further comprising instructions to cause the cloud-based computer system to:
- apply a right of entitlement only to users or devices that have a software installation and match the first grouping and the subgrouping as defined in the right of entitlement.
5. The cloud-based computer system of claim 4, wherein the requirement of matching the subgrouping increases a number of dimensions that must be matched between the user or device prior to applying the right of entitlement.
6. The cloud-based computer system of claim 4, wherein users or devices that have a software installation and do not match the first grouping and the subgrouping as defined in the right of entitlement are considered unlicensed installations.
7. The cloud-based computer system of claim 1, wherein the compliance report comprises a true-up cost to correct for at least one identified discrepancy.
8. The cloud-based computer system of claim 1, wherein the software application usage statistics identify use of a subscription based software application.
9. A cloud-based computer system, comprising:
- a memory partition;
- a network interface communicatively coupled to one or more processing units and the memory partition, wherein the memory partition comprises computer instructions that when executed by the one or more processing units cause the cloud-based computer system to: obtain information describing attributes of one or more computer systems of an enterprise, the attributes identifying software application usage statistics for each of the one or more computer systems, the software application usage statistics comprising information for identifying compliance with license requirements for software applications corresponding to the application usage statistics; obtain license information identifying software application license availability across the one or more computer systems of the enterprise; correlate the software application usage statistics with a first grouping selected from at least one of a department of the business, business unit of the enterprise, cost center of the enterprise, and a country of use; correlate the software application usage statistics with a subgroup selected from at least one of a department of the business, business unit of the enterprise, cost center of the enterprise, and a country of use, wherein the subgroup is different from the first grouping; prepare a compliance report indicating discrepancies between the software application usage statistics and the software application license availability, the compliance report including information pertaining to users or devices not matching the first grouping and the subgrouping as defined in the license information; and identify a plurality of remediation options available for non-compliant usage of at least one of the software applications, the remediation options including purchase rights and at least one of: creating allocations, removing allocations, removing unallocated installations, and removing unlicensed installations.
10. The cloud-based computer system of claim 9, wherein the compliance report comprises a true-up cost to correct for at least one identified discrepancy.
11. The cloud-based computer system of claim 9, wherein users or devices that have a software installation and do not match the first grouping and the subgrouping as defined in the license information are considered unlicensed installations.
12. The cloud-based computer system of claim 9, wherein the compliance report provides information restricted based on an identified publisher or set of publishers.
13. The cloud-based computer system of claim 9, wherein the compliance report comprises information regarding potential upgrades of software applications identified in the software application usage statistics to address at least one identified discrepancy.
14. The cloud-based computer system of claim 9, wherein a global right of entitlement may be applied during correlation and considered to match any value of the first grouping or the subgroup.
15. A non-transitory computer readable medium storing instructions that when executed by a processor cause the processor to configure a computer system to:
- obtain information describing attributes of one or more computer systems of an enterprise, the attributes identifying software application usage statistics for each of the one or more computer systems, the software application usage statistics comprising information for identifying compliance with license requirements for software applications corresponding to the application usage statistics;
- obtain license information identifying software application license availability across the one or more computer systems of the enterprise;
- correlate the software application usage statistics with a first grouping selected from at least one of a department of the business, business unit of the enterprise, cost center of the enterprise, and a country of use;
- correlate the software application usage statistics with a subgroup selected from at least one of a department of the business, business unit of the enterprise, cost center of the enterprise, and a country of use, wherein the subgroup is different from the first grouping;
- prepare a compliance report indicating discrepancies between the software application usage statistics and the software application license availability, the compliance report including information pertaining to users or devices not matching the first grouping and the subgrouping as defined in the license information; and
- identify a plurality of remediation options available for non-compliant usage of at least one of the software applications, the remediation options including purchase rights and at least one of: creating allocations, removing allocations, removing unallocated installations, and removing unlicensed installations.
16. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 15, wherein the compliance report comprises a true-up cost to correct for at least one identified discrepancy.
17. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 15, wherein users or devices that have a software installation and do not match the first grouping and the subgrouping as defined in the license information are considered unlicensed installations.
18. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 15, wherein the compliance report provides information restricted based on an identified publisher or set of publishers.
19. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 15, wherein the compliance report comprises information regarding potential upgrades of software applications identified in the software application usage statistics to address at least one identified discrepancy.
20. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 15, wherein a global right of entitlement may be applied during correlation and considered to match any value of the first grouping or the subgroup.
Type: Application
Filed: Oct 26, 2017
Publication Date: Apr 4, 2019
Inventors: German Bertot (San Carlos, CA), Colby Blakeman (San Jose, CA)
Application Number: 15/794,906