How to manage entitlements with "educational" licenses
Goal
Organizations with legal entities that are eligible to entitle their software with licenses from "Educational" license programs have the challenge to automate the entitlement properly. The automation of entitlement needs to identify which license requirements are relevant for the corresponding licenses.
There are different approaches to solve that. Which approach works, depends on the organizational structure and the question, where the "educational" organizational units are located in the organizational structure regarding "non-educational" units.
Possible Approaches
License Pools
Scenario
In case that "educational" and "commercial" (non-educational) units are siblings on a high level in the organizational structure, distinct license pools provide the solution.
Example of organizational structure for this case:
- Global
- OU1 (Commercial)
- OU2 (Commercial)
- OU3 (Educational)
Implementation
- Create two license pools. One for the commercial entities, one for the educational unit.
- Assign both pools to the corresponding licenses.
The license pools will ensure that license requirements from OU3 will be entitled only with licenses purchased from educational license program. License requirements from OU1 and OU2 will be entitled with commercial licenses.
License Models
Scenario
In case that "educational" and "commercial" (non-educational) units are children of a common parental organizational unit, license pools may not be suitable. You would have to create a pool for all "commercial" units and keep them up-to-date, which requires continous monitoring and adjustments.
Instead, distinct license models provide an efficient solution here.
Example of organizational structure for this case:
- Global
- OU1
- OU1.1 (Commercial)
- OU1.2 (Educational)
- OU2
- OU 2.1 (Commercial)
- OU2.2 (Educational)
- OU1
Implementation
- Create a copy of the license model(s) that you use for commercial entitlements with a different name (e.g. use suffix "(EDUCATION)")
- Add the new license model(s) to the relevant software products .
- Assign the new license models(s) to the relevant "educational" licenses.
- Review your license requirements and change the license models of all those that belong to the relevant software product and the "educational" organizational units to the corresponding new license model.
You can automate step #4 by creating a license requirement rule. You must create one rule per relevant software product and "educational" organizational unit.