Novell ZENworks Asset Management
License Management
If a license is invisible to you, you're paying for something you're not using. With ZENworks® Asset Management, you can track and manage all of your license agreements, related entitlements, costs, consumption and compliance regardless of the platform license model or terms. It's time to replace all those spreadsheets, gain unprecedented visibility into unused entitlements and make all your licenses pull their weight.
Novell ZENworks Asset Management, running on the ZENworks architecture, provides a single license repository for all platforms and types of licenses. It can record and report complex license scenarios and adjustments in the license repository (versus cumbersome spreadsheets). It gives your organization comprehensive visibility into under-utilized and unused entitlements, and it can record and consolidate summary license data from acquisitions. Finally, it provides that all-important "complete view" of metrics and status reporting for proving license compliance.
ZENworks Asset Management includes features from previous Novell asset management solutions, but it also adds significant new capabilities. These include:
Sophisticated license allocation capabilities
With ZENworks Asset Management, you can allocate software licenses across specific departments, sites, cost centers or workstations. This allows you to purchase and allocate licenses for a specific group—rather than the larger enterprise pool.
Support for additional license models
ZENworks Asset Management supports a wide range of licensing models, including those based on inventory data:per installation, OEM and machine licensing. It also supports licensing models based on external data sources, such as qualified desktop, CPU, user, named user, server, client access license (CAL), site, enterprise and user-defined models.
Automated tracking for upgrading and downgrading rights on all licenses or a subset of licenses
Because factoring in upgrade and downgrade rights on top of base entitlements is so complex and difficult, organizations often perform those calculations manually—and separately from their license tracking systems. With ZENworks Asset Management, these license rights can be recorded and automatically figured into your compliance calculations—even when sets of licenses for the same product carry different upgrade and downgrade rights.
Record term licenses purchased under a subscription
ZENworks Asset Management allows you to record term licenses purchased under a subscription—in addition to tracking standard perpetual licenses. By supporting both perpetual and term licenses, ZENworks Asset Management provides a complete picture of your software licenses and automatically updates compliance status for expired subscriptions.
Additional flexibility in how purchasing information is recorded in the system
With ZENworks Asset management, you can enter a block of licenses purchased over time together with detailed purchase records.
These summary license purchases make it possible to add bulk license purchases that reflect real-world situations—like acquisitions or true-ups as proof of ownership—along with attached documents and supporting documentation in the License Management system.
License compliance "adjustments" that reflect special circumstances in management and vendor reporting
ZENworks Asset management allows you to make useful adjustments, including "ignore" installations (to decrement count of installations that should not consume licenses, such as training, pilot and lab installations, etc.) and additional license consumption from external sources (for subsidiaries or locations not included in the license management system).
Expanded metadata in KnowledgeBase
ZENworks Asset Management includes expanded metadata in KnowledgeBase, including current manufacturer view (vendor management), distribution model (commercial, open source, freeware, etc.) and license product type (full, evaluation, OEM).
In addition to showing the manufacturer of software products as released to market, ZENworks Asset Management adds the "current manufacturer" of software products for top manufacturers. This allows you to quickly report on all products currently owned by a given manufacturer as you prepare for vendor negotiations. Also, two other fields have been added to software products that provide information about how products are sold on the market as well as licensing information.
Talk to us about license tracking and compliance with ZENworks Asset Management +