FlexNet Manager Suite On-Premises 2023 R2

[jborchers]

FlexNet Manager Suite On-Premises 2023 R2 is available

We are excited to announce the FlexNet Manager Suite on-premises 2023 R2 release.
This article briefly highlights the new features, enhancements and refers to further documentation. 

Related Links

Features by Release - FlexNet Manager Suite 2023 R2 (on-premises)

FlexNet Inventory Agent Change Log (on-premises)

FlexNet Inventory Beacon Change Log (on-premises)

FlexNet Manager Suite Known Issues - fixed with 2023 R2

FlexNet Manager Suite Online Help

New Features

Item	Description
IBM Turbonomic integration	The FlexNet Manager Suite REST API integration with IBM Turbonomic allows you to make savings on licensing costs by exposing licensed and non-licensable workloads running on virtual machines and computers in your organization. The IBM Turbonomic integration operates seamlessly within FlexNet Manager Suite, and requires no special configuration. As licensed and non-licensable workloads are rearranged for optimal performance and value, data flows automatically into FlexNet Manager Suite to help track licensing implications.
Accurate visibility and licensing of production and non-production instances for IBM Cloud Pak licenses	FlexNet Manager Suite can now differentiate between production and non-production instances of IBM Cloud Pak licenses. The new Inventory Device Roles page gives you the ability to view inventory device roles and decide whether or not they are counted as production or non-production roles for application recognition. To recognize non-production IBM Cloud Pak instances, all non-production application suites have been added to the Application Recognition Library (ARL). Customers don't need to create non-production suites and assign applications to the suites themselves. Each of the added suites require a non-production role.
New IBM Unlicensed Installations report	A new IBM Unlicensed Installations report is available and included in the digitally-signed IBM sub-capacity audit reports package. This report displays the persisting unlicensed installations of the licensable IBM products, for a given reporting period.
Enhanced Oracle Coherence inventory	FlexNet inventory agent can now collect inventory for Oracle Coherence. This will enable customers to get more accurate recognition for Coherence and the edition information (where possible) as part of Oracle Fusion Middleware for their license position.
Support for BMC Helix Discovery	FlexNet Manager Suite now supports the latest SaaS-based product offering from BMC - BMC Helix Discovery. The BMC Helix Discovery adapter works in complete parity with BMC Helix Discovery and older on-prem technology offered by BMC.
SAM Publisher Hub	The SAM Publisher Hub provides visibility and insights about application publishers are being managed by consolidating publisher-centric data into one page in the form of various widgets, pie chart and trends' diagrams.
New Application Publishers screen	The Application Publishers screen shows you the number of active licenses and other metrics for each application publisher against all application publishers listed in the Application Recognition Library. At a glance, the Application Publishers screen contains column data pertaining to licenses, contracts, processed purchases and provides quick indication on what publishers are currently being managed in your organization.
Intelligent License Allocation and Exemptions	The Intelligent License Exemption and Allocation feature automates the process of allocating or exempting users and devices to licenses as defined by a report. This allows SAM managers to better influence the scope of license coverage in a more automated way and minimizes the time needed to manually allocate or exempt users and devices to licenses.
New Active Directory reporting object	Custom reports can now include a new AD Group object. The AD Group object is extremely useful, as it allows you to report on users and their corresponding AD Groups, letting you see the applications that users are permitted to access by way of AD Groups. Creating a report with an AD Group object and applying the Intelligent License Restriction, allows you to influence the scope of license coverage in a more automated way. For example, you can create a Microsoft CAL license report to count all users from a specific AD Group, meaning the license can consume based on user application assignments, rather than recognizing applications on devices.
Support for inventory collection from Windows on ARM devices	Windows has traditionally run on devices that are powered by x86/x64 processors. But more recently, it has also run on devices powered by ARM processors, which offer benefits such as longer battery life and cellular data connections. From this release, the FlexNet inventory agent also supports inventory collection from Windows systems running on ARM-based devices.
Support for gathering inventory from Linux running on ARM64/AArch64 (Amazon Graviton, Azure ARM)	From this release, the FlexNet inventory agent also supports inventory collection from Linux operating systems running on processors of the ARM64 architecture (also known as the AArch64 architecture), such as Amazon Graviton processors.

Enhancements

Item	Description
Citrix Cloud Adapter Enhancement - Citrix Cloud App and VDI user restriction handling	The Citrix Cloud adapter has been further enhanced to now recognize entitlement access for virtual desktops and application level access for streamed applications, giving users better visibility into their Citrix estate. With this new capability, FlexNet Manager Suite can account for application license consumption for scenarios where Desktop Entitlement is present for a delivery group, or where Application-Level User restriction is present for application(s) for a delivery group, or both desktops and applications are delivered from a delivery group. In Citrix Cloud, desktop and application user access is one level below the delivery group level (the delivery group level is the parent level above desktops and applications).
Resource ID is now collected from Azure instances	The Flexera inventory agent and Microsoft Azure adaptor can now collect Resource IDs from Microsoft Azure instances. This is beneficial for cloud cost management system customers, as the Resource ID is a key data element used to uniquely identify Microsoft Azure instances for billing, costing and cost allocations. With this enhancement, Resource IDs for Microsoft Azure instances currently running in your Microsoft Azure environment, will populate the Cloud Service Provider Inventory page after Microsoft Azure virtual machine data is collected by the Flexera inventory agent or the Microsoft Azure adaptor and imported into FlexNet Manager Suite. For creating custom reports, Resource ID has been added to the Cloud Service Instance database object in the Report Builder.
Restriction by operating system change of behavior	When applying a restriction by operating system, only operating systems that are locally installed on a device will now be considered when applying the restriction. As a result, consumption numbers may reduce.
Licenses and Application Publisher Tabs added to Vendor Properties	Two new tabs called Licenses and Application Publisher have been added to Vendor Properties. The Licenses tab displays the licenses authorized and provided by the vendor. The Application Publisher tab displays the application publisher associated with the vendor.
New method to perform business adapter imports	Previously, for cloud-connected inventory beacons, users could only perform business adapter imports from the FlexNet Beacon console, either manually or by using the scheduling function. From this release, users no longer need to only rely on the FlexNet Beacon application to perform business adapter imports.
Oracle Optimization Reports Enhancements for Named User Plus (NUP)	Oracle Named User Plus minimum values per server are shown in the "Entitlements consumed" column in the Oracle Optimization reports.
Oracle Server Worksheet (OSW) shows also Oracle database instances and used options that are not covered by a license	The Oracle Server Worksheet has been changed. The worksheet now also shows the Oracle database instances and used options that are not yet covered by a license.