The documentation of software licences is important for all client and server systems. For IT administrators, an overview of existing licences is essential to ensure legally compliant licencing of all systems in use. Licences that are used more than once should be identified quickly and possible reassignments should be made easily.
By documenting the licences, not only are action competencies built up, but costs are saved. Due to the rapid growth of the infrastructure, the licence pool grows at the same rate. Hardly anyone keeps track of which licences are still in use. i-doit offers support here by identifying unused licences at the click of a button and removing them from the licence pool. i-doit as a central effective tool ensures that your company always has the licences that are actually needed.
Each new license is created in i-doit via the “Licences” object type. In addition to a unique name, the CMDB state of the licence can be defined here. This depends on whether the licence has just been ordered, delivered or is in operation. The entire asset lifecycle is thus also mapped for licences in i-doit.
All important payment and delivery information is recorded in the “Accounting” category. The calculation of the guarantee is done automatically based on the entered values and can be used in individual reports.
In the case of licences, queries can arise. Often, the search for information on old invoices and delivery notes begins then. In i-doit, you store important contact persons in the category “Contact assignments”. You also equip these contact persons with various roles.
A licence object can have different keys. Often, not only one Windows server is operated, but a large number. Accordingly, different licence keys are used, which are created separately in i-doit. A distinction is made between single licences and volume licence keys. In addition, it is possible to specify a beginning and expiration date for the licence. This information is especially helpful for notifications and reporting in order to be able to act before licences expire.
The licence assignment takes place directly in the asset (e.g. server or client) and is made in the category Software Assignment or Operating System. In addition to the licence assignment, the respective version and variant of the software can also be configured here. IT administrators thus always have an overview of the patch level of the various systems and can use this information in any reports.
All information on software, licences and systems supports specialists and managers in planning and implementing tasks. For the regular evaluation of the information, i-doit provides the tools Notifications and Report Manager. With these, you automatically create notifications and evaluate existing information granularly.
Use case: Evaluation of licences used by department or location
It is often necessary to determine which licences are used and deployed by individuals or entire departments. For this purpose, a report can be created via the Report Manager that displays all systems with an assigned licence. This report can be individually extended with information on the location, model, user and much more.
As a condition, the report specifies that all systems below a location should be displayed. In this example, we have selected the Vienna office. The second condition is that only systems with an assigned licence in the “Operating System” category should be displayed. This combination of conditions now only displays systems below the Vienna location with an assigned operating system licence.
After the conditions have been defined, we now want to output various information in the report. To do this, we select the desired attributes and check the output.
Instead of a location, the affiliation to a department, a certain user or a certain device type can be selected.
There are several ways to determine the allocated and free licences. The simplest variant is to simply call up the licences and activate the “Free licences” category via the object lists.
In the Report Manager, the standardised “Licence Utilisation” report is available in the online repositories. This can also be used to display all licences with licence keys, total existing licences and the licences actually used.
i-doit has an integrated tool for notifications. This can be accessed via Tools -> CMDB -> Notifications. Here you can now precisely define when persons and departments are to be informed about licences which will expire soon expiring or licence underruns. In addition, it is possible to define the threshold value (e.g. 30 days) from which the responsible persons should receive a notification.
The infrastructure is subject to constant change. New clients and servers are put into operation and old systems are switched off. And in the meantime, a user needs specific software at short notice to complete a task. Documenting all these changes can easily be forgotten in the hectic day-to-day of work. This can easily lead to duplicate licencing and under-licencing, which can be costly in the worst case scenario. It often makes sense, especially in the area of software and licences, to regularly check this information directly on the systems in an automated manner.
Whether to control licence usage or to relieve your employees and colleagues: With a discovery tool you can reduce the amount of effort needed for documentation. Professional tools for the discovery of networks are e.g. JDISC, Lansweeper and Monitos Inventory.