Content Change Notification - ARL and Technopedia Eligibility and Coverage Updates

[bcurran1]

Change Title	ARL and Technopedia Eligibility and Coverage Updates	Class 1	Customers should be prepared and take action
Change Summary	In order to provide consistent, curated, high quality software and hardware coverage, Flexera will be aligning coverage eligibility criteria between Technopedia and the Application Recognition Library (ARL).   We plan to remove numerous applications from the ARL that should not have been created as independent products under either existing or proposed eligibility criteria. In addition, we plan to add numerous software releases to Technopedia to increase coverage of relevant software. Finally, we will be making a technical update to Technopedia hardware eligibility criteria in order to clearly communicate that we no longer curate hardware products in separate industry-vertical-specific subscriptions. We are planning to begin making these changes on January 24, and plan to publish the updated eligibility criteria and proposed applications for the first phase of ARL cleanup and deletion by January 10.
Impact	These changes will impact all customers of Technopedia (including Flexera One, IT Visibility, and Data Platform customers) as well as all customers of FlexNet Manager Suite (both Cloud and On-Premises). Flexera plans to update the Technopedia software eligibility criteria and apply a single set of eligibility criteria to both Technopedia and the ARL. This is required in order to provide all our customers with unified, consistent, curated, high-quality software normalization. While investigating unification, we recognized that the ARL has been inconsistently curated historically. Numerous drivers, updates, patches, fixes, and other artifacts have been added to the ARL, while other similar items were correctly ruled ineligible for inclusion. This inconsistency makes coverage unpredictable and not aligned with normalization in other Flexera solutions. On the other hand, Technopedia does not have the same level of current coverage as the ARL for open source software, games, and beta or prerelease software. In order to unify and focus coverage and normalization results, Flexera plans to 1) remove ineligible ARL applications and 2) add newly eligible Technopedia releases that match eligible ARL applications. We will mark evidence for the removed ARL applications as “ignored” so that you do not experience any spike in unrecognized evidence. (Certain exceptions may occur as we review affected applications.) The Technopedia software eligibility criteria are currently documented here: https://community.flexera.com/t5/Data-Platform-Knowledge-Base/Technopedia-Software-Eligibility/ta-p/548 No ARL eligibility criteria are formally documented in the Knowledge Base today. In addition, we no longer manage Technopedia hardware content in industry-specific subscriptions, but instead provide a centralized catalog. We will be making a small update to Technopedia hardware content to reflect this change. The Technopedia hardware eligibility criteria are currently documented here: https://community.flexera.com/t5/Data-Platform-Knowledge-Base/Technopedia-Hardware-Eligibility/ta-p/544 The attached spreadsheet Sample_ARL_for_removal.xlsx provides a sample list of ARL applications proposed for deletion beginning on January 25. Next Steps: You should be prepared for changes in your metrics, KPIs, or other indicators pertaining to the number of recognized software applications, releases, or installations in your Flexera environment due to changes in the underlying content libraries. While we are always adding new applications, deletions from the ARL have historically been rare and may cause unexpected results in analysis if not accounted for. Technopedia customers will likely not see deletions as a result of this alignment but will experience similar changes in metrics or KPIs due to the addition of open source, game, and beta/prerelease software releases. No commercial applications or applications linked to SKU, PURL, or bundle content will be deleted as part of this alignment and refocus. As we continue to apply the updated criteria going forward, we plan to continue ARL refurbishment and cleanup for several release cycles, and will provide further updates on applications planned for removal. We welcome your feedback on these changes!

[mag00_75]

Really good, especially setting ignored on all various linux OS components.

[Povilas]

The article says "No commercial applications or applications linked to SKU, PURL, or bundle content will be deleted as part of this alignment and refocus.", however, there are 178 commercial applications in the sample file.

At least some of them (i.e. RAD Studio XE8, RAD Studio 10.1 Berlin, Tableau Desktop 2019.4) and probably more than that are licensable applications. Versions are also important in cases where maintenance has been stopped at some point in the past.

If they are deleted, will some other applications replace them instead? 

[Natalie]

Hi @Povilas ! You're absolutely correct - I apparently made a significant error (errant filtering during creation, maybe) in creating this sample file. As you say, the intent was to exclude commercial applications, and there are 178 commercial applications in the file. 

In the next couple of days, we will be publishing the full list for the first round of ARL cleanup, and I can confirm that there will be no commercial applications on that list.  

So sorry for the mixup!

[Natalie]

Hi everyone! I was sick at the end of last week (I'm all better now!) and so we are running a little behind on this activity - we have some technical attributes we need to check before we can publish the draft for the updated criteria.  Please stay tuned! 

[shspann]

Happy Wednesday!  Any thoughts on when the data set will be available?   Will there be a new target date for the implementation date of January 24th?  thanks!

[Natalie]

Hi everyone! We have published the list and draft KB article. https://community.flexera.com/t5/FlexNet-Manager-Content-Blog/UPDATE-Content-Change-Notification-Technopedia-and-ARL/ba-p/176606

We are currently still planning to begin the cleanup on January 24 - I apologize for the delay in publication. 

[kfindlay]

In the note above there is reference to "we no longer curate hardware products in separate industry-vertical-specific subscriptions".  Can you explain why you mean by this please?  Maybe a quick example to help clarify?

[Resnofendri]

Hi @kfindlay !

In Technopedia, we have this notion of 'non- IT' verticals, essentially capturing hardware products (along with their categories) which are not necessarily the traditional 'IT' type hardware. We have 'Building and Facilities' vertical (things like elevator system, fire alarm, HVAC system, etc.), 'Banking and Financial' vertical (things like ATM machine, bank note and coin processor, teller assist device, etc.), and 'Medical and Healthcare' vertical (things like the CT-Scan machine, ECG device, patient monitor, etc.).

Those devices (along with their categories) are hidden from the majority of Technopedia users (the 'IT' vertical) and accessible only with a separate license. We're planning to open them up to all customers because there are cases where certain products may fall under both IT and non- IT verticals. Currently, we capture some of such products in IT vertical with a generic 'Unclassified' category. Opening those vertical- specific items to wider customers will allow us to assign more appropriate categories.

Going forward, all customers can see those products and categories (with proper identification to allow them to filter them out if they don't care for them). However, to request new curation (adding new products/models/categories) will require them to have a separate maintenance contract.

Hope that answers your question.

Let me know if you have any further questions.