License Management

Legal certainty should be one of the main pillars of every company. However, practice has shown that nobody can design a perfect initial strategy, especially for the productive usage of software. Productive firms are affected by constant fluctuations. Existing projects are cancelled, while others are set up for a new start. Companies acquire assignments and require new resources. They purchase additional software or install it on the fly, and licensing issues become secondary concerns. Perhaps a service provider is asked for a quote preventively to somehow cover the missing licenses.

Why we get into License Trouble

As a company grows, its license delta grows
New projects require additional resources
Conceptional mistakes in the initial strategy
Incompetent consultants concerning license usage
Established license model changes on a version upgrade
Wrong application of special licenses
Wrong usage of upgrade / downgrade licenses

After all, everyone hopes purchasing some licenses will surely prevent any harm. In most cases, purchase actions like these make software providers have a closer look at you.

Every business-oriented company focuses on production, not on serving the best supporting software producers, in order to reach their sales targets. As stated before: it is only natural that licensors are supposed to earn money for supplying their products but finding an ideal compromise takes additional time and energy. To achieve this, companies need active License Management.

Setting up your License Management

Running a license management system is a continuous process that can be very individual depending on the company and the software products required. However, it can be set up systematically by following a few clear rules as follows:

Analyze the IT strategy concerning the targeted goals
Eliminate any source of straight failures in licensing
Install an inventory software like the Lan-Inspector
Find the as-is state of all software installations
Survey purchased licenses (license pooling)
Reconcile your licenses and determine the delta

Companies are changing all the time. Their IT landscape grows and changes constantly. It is adjusted to new requirements in order to enable optimum productivity. Consequently, the amount of used software installations changes, as well as the need for new licenses. Therefore, license management has to be a continuous process. You will have to execute your inventory discovery and license reconciliations frequently. In the case of being under-licensed, you will be able to quickly respond to the situation. You can order additional licenses or adjust your volume agreements.

Advanced License Management

Depending on the size of the company and its complexity, it may be necessary to extend the simple concept of license management introduced before. A role system will be established that will control responsibilities. Detailed definitions of tasks, processes, and interfaces will enable smooth cohesion of the actions of all participants. Following this approach, costs can be reduced and minimized. After all, you can achieve legal certainty even in complex environments.

Upon approval of the staff association you can also incorporate more features of the Lan-Inspector. For example, you can use the Software Usage Analysis to find out what software is installed without being used sufficiently to justify the consumption of a license.

We will develop a fitting concept based on the information you provide. Please contact us on this subject!