At DAC, What's new about D&R Software License Manager ? More intelligence and More Efficiency
For a number of years now, Design & Reuse (D&R) is delivering an industry-leading integrated solution for corporate global Software License Management covering license administration, license remix/renew, finance and purchasing management.
In the last years D&R added more intelligence in management decisions based on license usage reports provided by a license monitoring engine. The goal when adding intelligence in the system is to decrease the global cost of Software licenses while increasing user satisfaction.
In its new version of the Software License Manager, D&R adds significant advances for both facets by adding respectively
• An "Adjust" primitive in the synchronized panels or dashboards when needing to modify /adjust retroactively a variable value and measure consequences
• An Option File Manager including a Remix of User Groups for optimizing reserved tokens assignment to user groups.
Software License Administration Management
The Software License Manager's Global Administrative View is a set of interconnected synchronized panels (intelligent dashboards) which displays key information such as license status (distribution and cost), new license requests, license remix, and support for assisted license renewal.
In this version, the renewal process has been made easier by providing a "Switch to Next year" command initializing the selected panels for next year by cloning the panel formats including the synchronization links (next year cost has for instance to point to next year license product cost...) as well as the panel data of the present year. This will allow the manager to freeze data of previous years, to refrain from wasting time in "creating" the next year infrastructure, to make promptly decisions for next year purchase possibly incrementing/decrementing what he ordered the current year based on monitoring results or intelligent decision afforded by the platform.
The new release also demonstrates efficient and easier "Adjust" primitive which aims at tracing the effect of changing a value in panel. It is easy to understand that the change of one variable (number of license requests by a cost group, cost of a license etc.) which can be an update or a correction will affect several successor or dependent panels. The platform will display the successor panels to be refreshed and visualize sensitive data changes. This is also important to measure the consequences of decisions or error correction (even introduced in the previous years)
License Usage Monitoring and Option File Manager
Flexnet commands are used in the platform to record user's behavior and provide configurable "intelligent XML dashboards" or "panels" collecting the views selected by the Admin.
In the last release it has been shown that real time alerts can be emitted by the Admin or automatically triggered when detecting misuse of license tokens (keeping a license overnight),This may cope with user complains and overall improve the usage of floating licenses.
In this version an Option File Manager optimizes the composition of the user group based on the license usage, with the objective being higher end user satisfaction. An option file defines groups of identified members to whom reserved tokens are granted for a specific software license feature. The "Option File Manager" can modify the members of the groups based upon usage statistics, project planning or any other criteria.
As an example a "Remix of user groups" command modifies the members of the group with an unchanged number of users). Configurable and automated Remix strategies are provided in the platform such as the replacement of inactive or slightly active members for a given period (remix period). The most active non-members could also be for instance
• The members suffering from repeated queuing
• Priority members (project planned ahead), etc.
In fact any algorithm process described in Python can be integrated to make dynamically the decision about whom should be listed as group member and the tool will create automatically a new option file to be refreshed in the license server.
"D&R's continuing goal is to reduce the global cost of purchasing and managing Software licensing. Adding more and more intelligence to our products helps us to continue to move in that direction and delight our customers" said Gabriele Saucier, CEO of D&R.
