What is a license
Overview
A license is a right to use a specific software product. The license is sold by the publisher of a software product or an authorized reseller. It entitles the buyer to use license requirements that are based on the buyer's software deployments. General business terms of the publisher, specific volume licensing agreements, and end-user license agreements define the quantity and type of licenses that you need.
Legally, you should prove that you own all licenses needed for the software which is currently used in your organization. High transparency in terms of software deployments will save you the efforts that are needed to perform audits. In addition, you can avoid financial risks, which can result from under-licensing, and save costs on unnecessary purchases by using an up-to-date software portfolio.
How to create licenses
To create and update the license balance, Matrix42 License Management should "know" what licenses exist in your company. You can either create licenses and enter the respective information manually or import them to the system.
For detailed information on importing licenses, please refer to Importing licenses using the standard template.
License inventory
License inventory is a total of all purchased licenses. It plays an important part in verifying the status of compliance, i.e. understanding whether the used software products are properly licensed.
How to work with license inventory:
- Always record the complete and clear information for new licenses.
- For already purchased licenses, collect the information from centralized and decentralized purchases.
- Validate the licenses and set the current goal of compliance.
- Monitor the expiration dates for corresponding licenses.
The best way to get full information on available and missing usage rights is to view the Software Compliance report and the License Inventory report.
By checking the compliance status, you can state whether you own too many or too few licenses. Both may be true at the same time when you do not use global license pools and some of them are exhausted.
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Over-licensed (free usage rights) |
Under-licensed (missing usage rights) |
|---|---|
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Consider reducing future acquisition of updated licenses or renewing the maintenance contract |
Consider removing software deployments that are not really required or actually used |
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Consider moving licenses to other license pools where licenses are missing |
Consider moving licenses from other license pools with free usage rights |
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Sell licenses on the second hand market |
Acquire licenses to cover missing usage rights |
Settings available for a license
Each license can be set up in such a way as to configure the conditions for the assignment of this license.
License pool
You can use the Set License Pool action to define an organizational area in which the use of a purchased license is permitted.
System restrictions
By adding devices in the System Restrictions grid on the Availability page of the license dialog, you can specify consumers that can use this license exclusively. If at least one device is specified here, the license will never be assigned to any other devices that do not belong to the System Restrictions grid.
Reservations
If there are consumers in the Reservations grid on the Availability page of the license dialog, the system automatically privileges license requirements for these consumers. However, if there are no privileged license requirements, other suitable license requirements will be entitled. If the Device Restrictions grid lists at least one device, all reservations are ignored.
For more detailed information on licenses, please refer to: