5 things you don’t know (but should know) about managing your software assets

Knowledge is power.

Having accurate information about the license usage across your organization can help you save amountain of expenses, because software costs can represent a large part of your company’s budget. Before anything else, organizations should see the full picture of how software assets are deployed and utilized across their networks. Read about5 thingsyou probably didn’t know about managing your software licenses.

1. The financial overhead and hassles associated with managing your licenses can be enormous.

Companies overspend by around 30% on licenses that are not being used — this amount very often represents a large part of the entire IT budget. With License Statistics, X-Formation’s software license monitoring toolwhich lets you track and report software usage in real time or through log importation, you can:

  1. prevent over-deployment of software
  2. minimize maintenance and staff training costs
  3. drive down your operational costs
  4. improve your company’s ROI

Find out which licenses are under and overused and plan your ongoing management and purchases accordingly. Sounds smart, no?

2. There are different causes of over-licensing.

Over-licensing takes place when an organization purchases more licenses than needed which can be caused by a number of fluctuating users with each having different software needs. Another reason underlying over-licensing can be attributed to “buying too many licenses just in case” which is often an unnecessary step taken by IT managers. With License Statistics you can easily get a clear picture of your license usage and prevent over-licensing.

3. License Statistics is easy to be used by everyone.

License Statistics is easy to install and use — a few clicks is all it takes to get it up and running , so its installation is simple and hassle-free; you don’t need to install different modules, components, and clients anywhere, sparing yourself lots of time and effort.

License Statistics reportsgive you a high-level overview of your license usage, including most-used features, licenses nearing expiration, features checked out for over 24 hours, license servers being monitored, and other, allowing you to make well-informed budget decisions.

License Statistics is a powerful tool which in an automated way gathers usage statistics from the monitored license servers. This is a simple answer to a difficult question: “What is going on with my software licenses?”

4. Depending on your unique needs, you can generate different reports on license usage.

License Statistics reports target the usage details you need to stay on top of to be able to plan your future software purchases accordingly, including:

  1. Current Users
  2. Usage Per Feature
  3. Usage Per User
  4. Realtime Utilization
  5. Realtime User Count
  6. Expiring Features
  7. Realtime Borrowed Licenses

5. You don’t need a crystal ball to be able to precisely forecast your future licensing needs 🙂

Once you gain insight into users that were denied access to applications, identify unused licenses and get information about important events that affect users’ access to licensees, including license utilization rising above a specified rate, features nearing expiration or licenses servers going down, you will know how to plan your purchases and budget accordingly.

If you would like to find out more about our software give us a call or download a free 30-day License Statistics evaluation.

License Statistics imported usage: maximum data accuracy guaranteed

Ever since its launch in version 3.6, we’ve been thrilled with your response to License Statistics ’ ability to import log files. Just in case some of you haven’t discovered it yet: this feature lets you import and review log files from a number of license servers, including:

  1. LM-X extended log files denied requests and pay-per-use log
  2. FLEXlm/FlexNet denied request logs and encrypted report log files
  3. Reprise License Manager (RLM) denied request and report log files
  4. HASP license manager logs

How does it work and how can I benefit from it?

The obvious question you may want to ask is: “What’s in it for me?” Well, License Statistics imported usage reporting is especially useful when you need to reliably generate usage statistics for applications that run for a very brief period of time (such as compilers), and when you must havemaximum accuracyin the produced results.

Imported usage lets you import and review log files from a number of license servers, and is different from gathering realtime usage data in that realtime usage reporting refers to gathering realtime data and usage statistics from the license server at configurable time intervals, wheras imported usage reporting lets you gather all the existing information stored in the log files.

With imported usage, License Statistics doesn’t need to query the license server, so it doesn’t matter if the querying session started and stopped between two subsequent update intervals. Thus, logs record information about all activities no matter how long those activities lasted.

Since imported usage reporting doesn’t require a connection to the license server, it can be used for:

  1. Billing purposes, where the license servers are at the customer’s site and License Statistics software is at the vendor’s site, making this feature especially helpful for companies that do back-billing or pay-per-use billing.
  2. Analyzing datafromremote license serversin departments that run on separate networks.

Imported usage is another License Statistics feature that will help you unlock the doors to license optimization, letting you make sensible business decisions and allowing your company to save time and money.

We’d love to know what you think of our products so drop us a line .

Haven’t used License Statistics yet? Try our online demo or download a free trial now!

Feel that a free 30-day License Statistics trial is not enough?

We’re pleased to announce an exciting new License Statistics offer that is highly useful for monitoring the most crucial software in an organization.

Particularly attractive for small and medium businesses (SMBs), this new offer lets you purchase a 1-year subscription license and use License Statistics Realtime usage for monitoring and tracking 100 users and 2 license servers.

With this new option you can gain insight into the deployment of licenses across your organization and easily identify underused or even untouched licenses.Understanding your license usage will help you make smart business decisions regarding your software purchases, maximize software investment, and improve your company’s ROI. The price of this offer is very competitive, making it easier for start-ups and SMBs to start benefiting from all that License Statistics has to offer: simplicity of use, intuitive UI, robust functionality, and the best support in the industry. Act now and get your company to start saving!

Open the door to license optimization with License Statistics

If you’ve been tasked with reducing your company’s IT costs, improving your organization’s efficiency, or maintaining software license compliance, look no further. X-Formation’s complete solution for tracking and reporting software license usage, License Statistics , is the key toall doorsfor your company’s sound license management.

Door No. 1: Reduce software costs by 30%.

Why? Software purchases comprise from 20% to 35% of the typical IT budget. On average, companies overspend on software license agreements and maintenance by nearly 30%. Don’t let your company be average!

How? With License Statistics it’s as easy as opening a browser to see monthly usage percentages for chosen licenses. Once you gain insight into the number of licenses used during the periods of highest usage, as well as which licenses were underused or even untouched, you will quickly discover areas for potential savings. And savings can be enormous!

Door No. 2: Improve productivity.

Why?Employees are the cornerstone of each company. If they cannot access the software they need, they simply cannot do their work.

How?Thanks to License Statistics’ Denial Requests report, you can determine how many denials occurred in a given time period, which users were denied, how often denials took place and when they occurred.

Door No. 3: Plan your future licensing budget accurately.

Why? Many companies are not knowledgeable about their present software usage or their future software needs. Knowing which users use a given feature greatly helps you anticipate renewal costs and negotiate the cost of new licenses. Such knowledge also contributes to gaining meaningful insight into trends, costs and contract entitlements.

How? License Statistics makes it possible for you to be in the know about the features that are most utilized, license usage longer than 24 hours, features that are nearing expiration, and information on users using features on more than one host.

Knowing the doors you must unlock to find your path to license optimization is crucial to effective license management. If you want to have the key that will help you increase your company’s ROI, simply try the demo , see how well this key fits in, and open the door to success!

How many license managers does your solution track?

When deciding upon a tool for tracking license usage, there are several important considerations to take into account. Perhaps one of the most important of these is license manager support.

A good solution will have the flexibility to monitor thousands of different software applications. Naturally, many of these will fall under FlexLM, FlexNet Manager, IBM LUM, and Sentinel RMS (which typically are supported by most license usage tracking solutions). But what about the others? There are a number of license managers out there that are not necessarily so popular (and which not all solutions can track), but nonetheless prevalent in use. This would include, for example, Dassault Systemes License Server (DSLS).

Their licenses can be quite expensive, so there really is no option for not tracking them. On the other hand, using several tools for tracking different license managers is not feasible. What is needed is one license management solution torule them all.

Then there is also the question of real-time monitoring vs. importing log files. Whether you will need one or the other very much depends on the license manager itself. However, because many of the most popular managers do both, you will more than likely want a solution that supports real-time monitoringandlog importation. Log importation also comes in handy when you want to view usage statistics from data that was gathered from remote license servers running on separate networks, or just even analyse old data that was gathered years ago.

By now you might be wondering if there is a solution out there that can actually handle the above-mentioned requirements. The answer is yes, and it’s License Statistics .

License Statistics does both real-time monitoring as well as log importation, including encrypted report logs, denied request logs, pay-per-use log files, and other report log files.

And as for license manager support,there’s no one on the market that does it better. License Statistics currently supports the following list of license managers. Please note this list is continuously being expanded.

  • LM-X License Manager
  • FLEXlm/FlexNet
  • IBM LUM
  • Reprise License Manager (RLM)
  • Sentinel LM/RMS
  • beta_lm
  • LS-DYNA
  • LICMAN
  • Mathematica License Manager (MathLM)
  • Dassault Systemes License Server (DSLS)
  • GNS
  • HASP License Manager
  • SmartPlant License Manager (SPLM)
  • RSoft
  • Felics
  • Sentinel Hardware Keys
  • CodeCollaborator

For more information on gathering type (real-time or imported) for any of the listed license managers, please see our documentation, Supported License Managers .

On top of that, License Statistics also lets you track license usage for custom applications by using an XML file .

So… how many license managers canyoucurrently track and monitor usage for?

New License Statistics offer for universities and other academic institutions

We’re pleased to announce an exciting new offer in our License Statistics educational licenses. Eligible universities and other academic institutions can now purchase anunlimited1-year subscription license for 3000 EUR. The key word here is, of course, unlimited, meaning both License Statistics Real-time and Imported Usage can be used for monitoring and tracking an unlimited number of users and license servers. Knowing how many thousands of students and faculty staff there are at a typical university, not only is this offer huge, but so are the potential savings from discovering all those unused or underutilized software licenses. Act now and get your school to start saving! Download a free trial or try the demo!