Release announcement for Flexnet Manager Suite On-Premises 2020 R2

[mrichardson]

I'm excited to announce that Flexnet Manager Suite 2020 R2 for our On-Premise customers is just around the corner, in this article I'll be summarising the key updates included in this release.

The 2020 R2 release is already available in FNMS Cloud and will be available to On-Premises customers on December 10th 2020.

What is included?

This latest release includes a number of major features as well as several key changes:

IBM Cloud Paks

As one of the leading alternatives to ILMT, our commitment to keeping current with key IBM changes remains strong and so we are pleased to introduce support for IBM Cloud Paks which is a new approach to licensing IBM applications based on Products and Virtual Processor Cores (VPCs).

For more details you can either view the features by release page or view the dedicated blog on this topic - Cloud Paks blog.

IBM DB2 Editions and Options

We have improved the accuracy of the inventory we collect for DB2 Editions by modifying the FlexNet Inventory Agent to use the db2licm utility as recommended by IBM auditors.  This will increase the trust level in the installed edition for IBM DB2 installations in FNMS.

In addition, we have also added the ability to view the DB2 options are installed on these DB2 editions and display whether these options are Used or not; this allows you to identify candidates for optimization by uninstalling the options which are not Used and this will in turn mean these no longer require licensing.

For more details you can either view the features by release page or view the dedicated blog on this topic - DB2 Editions and Options blog  

User License Restrictions

The Restrictions tab has now been extended to the User license type. For these licenses, group assignments of the user are checked, rather than group assignments of the inventory device. The user may be:

• The primary user of the device (either the assigned user or the calculated user), or
• A user identified by application usage tracking.

*As always, an inventory device for which there is no user record also counts as consuming an entitlement from a User license, and in this rare case, the group assignment of the device is still relevant.

For more details you can view the features by release page - User License Restrictions feature page 

Citrix Transparency

If your enterprise makes use of either Citrix virtual applications or Citrix Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) or both, four new reports in this release help provide you visibility into the raw inventory coming from those connections. These reports are called:

• Citrix Virtual Apps File Evidence
• Citrix Virtual Apps Installer Evidence
• Citrix Virtual Desktops File Evidence
• Citrix Virtual Desktops Installer Evidence.

For more details you can view the features by release page - Citrix Transparency Feature page 

Inventory Device Transparency

A new management view available in the Discovery & Inventory menu lets you investigate how and why overlapping inventory records from multiple different inventory sources were matched and merged into the inventory device records in your compliance database, making the devices visible (for example) in the All Inventory page.

This view provides inventory device properties, inventory device matching rules (set of inventory device properties) used to match devices to one inventory device, and RAW inventory device properties to provide a complete picture of how overlapping devices are merged into one inventory device that a user sees in the WebUI.

For more details you can either view the features by release page or view the dedicated blog on this topic - Inventory Device Matching transparency blog 

Analytics

In our new Analytics update for 2020 R2 there are 3 major updates:

• Configurable Management Dashboard - Configurable Management Dashboard feature page 
• Scheduling Reports via email - Scheduling reports 
• Sharing reports and Dashboards - Shared Content 

Integrations

Key updates on our major integrations:

• Our ServiceNow integration is now certified for ServiceNow Paris and is available on the SerivceNow store.
• We have a new ServiceNow inventory adapter - ServiceNow Inventory adapter 
• Our Tanium adapter has been updated to use the latest APIs - Tanium feature page 

Agent Updates

These agent updates and more are covered on the Agent Change Log 

• Agent updated to gather inventory from Docker containers on Windows
• Improvements to file scanning on Docker containers
• Instances running on Google Cloud identified
• MacOS agent now collects logged on user data
• MacOS Big Sur / ARM support added
• Windows 64 bit agent now available

Security Updates

JQuery component updated to the latest version - JQuery Feature Page 

Scanning of Malicious Content - Malicious Scanning feature page 

Additional Information

For more information, the following pages will provide more details:

• Features by Release - 2020 R2 
• Agent Change Log 
• Beacon Change Log 

[mag00_75]

@mrichardson 
Always exciting to wait for new downloads, has it been pushed to download section now?
It's like when everyone are waiting for Apple releases, that usually comes at 19:00CET.

[ChrisG]

@mag00_75 - yes, the 2020 R2 On-premises release is now available for download from the Product Access > Product and License Center menu option available in Flexera Community when you are logged in with appropriate access rights. Enjoy!

[MmabotseN]

Are there plans to add more applications/products to the VMWare Inventory which currently only has data for vCenter  and vSphere. I remember a much older release had Site Recovery Manager.

I currently have to rely on VMWare scripts (not ideal) or going into individual vCenters to reach all the licensing data for the rest of the VMWare catalogue we have in the organisation.