Manage compliance with 'concurrent use' license model
Introduction
Some products are licensed according to 'concurrent use' by users or devices. This means, that a license is required only during the time of using the software. As soon as the corresponding application is terminated, the used license is freed and available for the use of someone else. With this licensing principle, multiple users can share a single license.
Software that can be licensed by 'concurrent use' incorporate a technical capability to get and return the required license from a real time license server. All purchased concurrent use licenses are registered there. If there is no free license available, the software cannot be executed. Accordingly, it is not possible that a user is using the software without being properly licensed.
Implications
Tracking the status of compliance differs very much compared to 'installation based' license models. There, license are required according to existing installation (counting devices, users, processors, cores etc.). With concurrent use, the relevant information is not available in computer inventory. Only the licensing server has that information, since the server is assigning the available licenses to any use or device that executes the software.
As a fact, installations cannot be used to track license requirements. This is why the option should be disabled to create license requirements based on fingerprint classification. In addition, it also does not make sense to use Active Directory groups as a foundation for automatic creation of license requirements.
Options
There are following alternatives to deal with those implications:
- If you are interested only in tracking missing licenses, exclude those software products licensed by 'concurrent use' from reporting. The real-time license server controls compliance license usage for you automatically.
- If you want to document and manage the purchased licenses documenting in compliance report that there are no missing licenses, create a license requirement record manually with the quantity that corresponds with the purchased usage rights.
- If you are interested understanding the dynamics of concurrent use of software and possible optimizations of your license inventory thoroughly for cost savings, you then should rather invest into a solution that covers all specific requirements. This includes but is not limited to tracking the usage precisely in real-time and aggregating the results into heat-maps, user-profiling or optimization of your licenses into regional vs. intercontinental stocks.