What are license models

Overview

License models represent sets of rules according to which a software manufacturer grants the use of one or more copies of a software product. A license model provides the metric that is used to calculate the required quantity of usage rights. For desktop applications it will be one usage right per installation in most cases, but number of usage rights might be different and calculated as complex formulas, for example, in cases with server software (e.g., counting processors or cores with specific criteria).

License models are downloaded from the LIS server and can also be created manually if necessary. LIS generated license models are non-editable.

In Matrix42 Enterprise Service Management, a license model governs the conditions of assigning licenses to license requirements. A software product has a default license model and can also have several relevant license models, which are listed on the License Models tab. When licenses and license requirements are created for a certain software product, the default license model is used for them.

You can change a default license model of a software product, license, or requirement by using a corresponding action. Only relevant license models can be set as a default model. Under certain conditions, the system may change the license model of a license requirement automatically in order to entitle it with a license.

Assignment and metric

If you create a license model manually, you need to specify the following settings which define the rules of assignment:

• In License Assignment you need to select the type of consumer for licenses. This value may differ from the actual technical consumer that underlies the creation of a license requirement. In such cases, the system will create a dedicated license requirement for an eligible consumer and bind it to the technical consumer's requirement that will be consolidated and thus not suitable for compliance. The following values are available for selection:
  • Select Device when licensing per endpoint device.
  • Choose Device with Second Copy when licensing is "per device", but it allows a second copy on portable devices.
  • The Named User option is used for licenses granted per user.
  • Set the Operating System Environment value if the relevant software product is licensed per computing environment (either physical or virtual).
  • Select None if a technical consumer is equal to an entitlement consumer in all cases.
• Select the Automatically created license requirements are effective checkbox if all automatically created license requirements must be valid for license entitlement and compliance. Otherwise all license requirements created for this license model will be consolidated and thereby rendered ineffective. In this case the value in the Calculation Expression field will not be considered, and the quantity of required licenses in such a requirement will equal zero. This option can be used when licensing is controlled by the application itself, e.g., for concurrent user licensing.
• Use Calculation Expression to specify the expression (either static numeric literal or dynamic ASQL formula) that will be used to calculate the quantity of required usage rights for a specific software product that uses this license model.