BYOS

[ITWorld]

RE Bring your own software within FNMS

Hello everyone,

Has anyone any best practice suggestions or any feedback he/she wants to share? We currently have version FNMS2018R2 and would appreciate some feedback as how other companies handle licensing in public and private clouds.

Thanks for your feedback.

Best regards,

Michaela

[mfranz]

Hi Michaela,

In my opinion, this is really to be looked at case by case. I guess there are cases of BYOSL you cannot depict in FNMS in a useful way, while others might work. To evaluate if it is feasible and if you want/need to go that way at all, I would start with some questions:

• What is your policy on BYOSL?
  • Is it allowed at all?
  • Are applications whitelisted?
  • Are there requirements to be met, like specific paperwork?
  • Are there specific management processes regarding this in place already?
• What is the application?
• How is it licensed (license type, e.g. per user, per device)?
• How is it used (installation, SaaS)?
• Can it be recognized? Like:
  • Can an installation be found?
  • Can usage be tracked?
  • Can a user be assigned?
• Can you distinguish between "internal" and "external" devices/installations/use?

Depending on your answers, you might

• decide that the specific application does not need to be tracked at all.
• decide that it would need to be tracked, but data is missing.
• decide that it would need to be tracked, but the effort would just be too high.
• decide that you have every you need and move on from there.

From there you could design a business import to process the data. For example you could create allocations or exemptions from where private licenses are consumed (or not consumed).

Best regards,

Markward

[ChrisG]

The phrase "Bring your own software" could be used to cover all sorts of scenarios. One common use of this phrase is in cloud environments (Azure, AWS, etc) where you (i.e. your organization) provides licenses for software that is running on some cloud instances, while for other instances the license comes from the cloud provider. The challenge here is to effectively manage the two scenarios - especially when the installation footprint of the software is identical between when you have provided the license and when the cloud provider has provided the license.

One way to do this in FlexNet would be:

1. Create a "node locked" license covering the application(s) in question. Identify all cloud instances where a license comes from the cloud provider (this will often be based on the instance type), and explicitly allocate the inventory device records for those instances to the license.
2. Create another license (probably of type "device" or similar) that will cover installations on all other inventory device records.

Functionality introduced in recent FlexNet releases to connect to AWS and Azure APIs and gather details of cloud instances that are running can help gathering data that will help with this analysis. In particular, it can help to identify cloud instances of appropriate types where a license for the software you're managing comes from the cloud provider.

[ChrisG]

Here are some words from the Flexera Software License Optimization Practice Guide which discusses some BYOSL considerations:

The Bring Your Own Software License (BYOSL) model is a key transition area for most customers that are considering hybrid environments or want to gradually move to a SaaS-only model. From a licensing perspective, vendors are creating new rules to protect their IP in the public cloud and they may only consider certain cloud providers as “authorized” (such as Oracle for AWS and Azure). This means new licensing rules (which typically involve moving away from the physical core calculation to a vCPU one) will only apply to software being run on those defined platforms. The rules can also be different from one cloud service provider to another. For example, IBM rules can be different for AWS, Google, Azure and IBM Cloud Managed Services or Bluemix. As a rule, modeling the correct rules to calculate vCPUs instead on physical ones saves licensing costs.

The first step is to identify the software running in the public cloud and properly manage the licenses using the correct rules and conditions. FlexNet Manager Suite has capabilities to manage license requirements in the public cloud. Well-known cloud service providers are included by default in FlexNet Manager Suite, with the option to manually configure others if required. Users can identify and assign the devices that are coming from Cloud providers:

• In the System Settings page, there is a Cloud Service Providers tab, where additional cloud service providers may be specified.

• In the License Properties, under the Use rights & rules tab, there is a License Consumption Rules section for Cloud service providers that enables you to limit where devices must be hosted before they can consume from the license.

• In Points Rule Set Properties, look for additional settings in the Points Rules tab that ensure the correct points rule is used for consumption calculation. You may also define your own points rules. Each point rule may be linked to one or more cloud service providers, where the vendor specifies differences; or a single points rule may apply to any cloud service provider. FlexNet Manager Suite includes by default points rule for IBM PVU licenses that applies to the default set of cloud service providers. A virtual machine can be linked to the cloud service provider where it is hosted.

Note: The Located in the Cloud and Service Provider properties need to be managed by the end user for the inventory devices. Setting these properties via a Business Adapter is recommended.

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[ChrisG]

Here are some further comments I've come across to share:

Another consideration to keep in mind is where a license for an application is sometimes provided as part of the cloud instance, and other times provided as BYOSL. For example, you might have a cloud instance running SQL Server where the SQL Server license is covered by the instance costs; but you may install SQL on another instance where you are responsible for the SQL Server license as it’s not covered by the instance costs. In current FlexNet versions this will typically need to be managed with allocations and exemptions. For those instances already covered by the cloud instance, you can allocate those instances to the license (in this case SQL Server) then set an exemption reason of ‘covered by cloud license” or something similar. Then those that are exempted will not consume a license while those not exempted will consume as normal.