A more flexible way to manage software licenses

We all know that in a perfect world the management of software licenses would be entirely linear, with every action falling neatly into the correct slot within the required process. But 15 years in the Software Asset Management (SAM) market has also taught us that all-too-often things don’t happen in the linear fashion that users hope for.

We all know that in a perfect world the management of software licenses would be entirely linear, with every action falling neatly into the correct slot within the required process. But 15 years in the Software Asset Management (SAM) market has also taught us that all-too-often things don’t happen in the linear fashion that users hope for. Capturing and recording license entitlements is a great example of this. Compared to managing licenses, the actual inventory of what’s installed on the devices across the network is a piece of cake! The initial collection and collation of licenses at the start of a SAM program can be as frustrating as herding cats.

For example, how often do you lay your hands on an upgrade license before finding the base license? Or how often do you find an agreement without all the constituent purchases/entitlements, or vice versa? Our customers are unanimous; it happens ALL the time! Under the traditional way of working, you’d have to set those upgrade licenses aside, waiting until you found the original base licenses to enter them into the system. 

Again, it’s logical but not ideal. This valuable user feedback is the driver behind one of the major new features we’ve introduced in Snow License Manager 7 – we call it the ‘Entitlement Workbench’.  Put simply, it allows organizations to enter parts of the license entitlement jigsaw as they find them, collating the pieces in-product, but only submitting them into the license repository (and thus the license reconciliation process) when they are complete. Alerts and notifications can be set so that incomplete licenses do not get forgotten. 

The License Manager 7 solution is also clever enough to be able to determine when an entitlement is not yet complete, so that it doesn’t accidentally alter the reported license position. We think it’s a much more flexible way to work with software license entitlements and is much more in-line with how organizations need to manage their SAM programs in the real world.

To learn more about Snow  License Manager 7, speak to one of our SAM experts today.