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Flexera is proud to announce the deployment for EMEA and US tenants of ITAM 2022R2!
The recording of the November SAM Best Practice Webinar provides all details and demos on these new features. The Features by Release online documentation provides you incremental changes between versions.
SAM Optimization Hub
This version brings this first Hub of a series
- SAM Optimization Hub
- SAM Operations Hub
- SAM Data Transparency Hub
You can find all details on these Hubs and published best practice in the SAM Best Practice Hub.
The SAM Optimization Hub is the first step into a user experience change. You don't need to navigate through screens and reports that you already know, the Hub gives you visualization, explanation and links addressing a Business need. We have started with a high value item: License Optimization. What optimization did I realize? What could I realize by taking action?
Just go to Dashboards / SAM Optimization Hub and discover the Hub.
The SAM Optimization Hub summarizes the financial saving information and gives the explanations and links to 9 optimization reports released since ITAM 2021R1 that provide bits and bytes details (What VM to move to a specialized Oracle VMWare Cluster, what Adobe or Microsoft 365 subscription to downgrade or reclaim, what is the best Red Hat license for a Red Hat Cluster given its RHEL VMs density etc.).
Please note that the trend widgets will be introduced in 2022R2.1.
Intelligent license restriction
As a SAM Manager or licensing consultant, you have probably faced situations where you had to allocate 100% of a population of devices consuming licenses to influence which license would cover what device in sophisticated licensing or optimizations scenarios.
This is the case for Production / Non-Production licenses (IBM, Tibco), Desktop / Server (Oracle Java), NUP / Processor (Oracle Database and Options), Managed Services Provider (MSP) contracts (for instance, Windows Server or Windows Server + SQL server covered by a contract of services), MSDN (a non production Cluster is accessed only by IT operators that have an active MSDN subscription but some other are not. Exemption by role is not sufficient).
With this new feature, you can define the scope of a license with a "Device Group" or a "User Group" depending on the license type. This group is defined in a report that has all the advanced filtering capabilities. The group is dynamically recalculated for each license reconciliation.
New Citrix Cloud Inventory Connector for Non-Persistent VDIs
After the VMWare Horizon inventory connector released in 2022R1, 2022R2 version brings connection to Citrix Cloud for collecting non-persistent VDI templates, related evidence, assigned user groups and users. The inventory import duplicates the applications authorized through VDI templates on the users' devices for accurate license consumption calculation.
Enhancement of the some Optimization reports
The SAM Optimization Hub uses 9 SAM Optimization reports. Some reports have been enhanced to better compute optimization data or handle new optimization strategies.
The two Windows Server Optimization reports include the possibility to use the new "Per VM" licensing for Windows Server Standard adopted by Microsoft for customers with Software Assurance in October.
The Optimum Virtualized Architecture for Oracle Options now computes the financial savings allowed between the current architecture and the recommended architecture for Oracle Database Enterprise and Oracle Options.
The two reports that make a "what if" analysis on soft partitioning: Oracle Consumption Summary by Partitioning Rule and the Oracle Partitioning Rule Impacts have been extended to include a new angle: Partitioning applied taking into account the VMs affinity rules.
Risk and Gap Analysis Reports
The coming SAM Operations Hub planned for 2023 Q1 will provide all the information and KPIs to understand the SAM data / processes quality and the gaps to fill to reach a better SAM performance.
This 2022R2 version brings the first three risk & gap analysis reports
The Licenses Compliance And Unlicensed Products Risks mixes in a single pane of glass the license consumption (including financial information) and the unlicensed installations, rolled up at product level.
You no longer need to switch between the "All Licenses" and the "Unlicensed Installations" screens to understand the full picture for a publisher.
The VMs Inventory Gaps From vCenters gives full details on the vCenter inventory identifies the VMs reported by vCenter but not yet inventoried. You know where to deploy agents!
Finally, a more technical report: Remote Usage For Streamed Commercial Applications joins the usage on Windows Server streaming servers with the remote client usage for each user over the last 90 days. It gives a view on the risk for device licensed applications on streaming servers.
16 Web Reporting Columns have been added
Reporting quality is key for the complex Software Asset Management data.
The Report Builder exposes new columns for the Device, Installation, Purchase Order, contracts and Cluster objects
- Numerical values for dates. For instance the Inventory date (days) attribute allows to build reports like: "all computers inventoried more than 45 days ago". Other new columns include Purchase Expiry Date (Days), Contract End Date (days).
- Application Life Cycle date for installations: Release Date, End Of Support Date, End Of Support (days) and all other Applications Life Cycle Management attributes can now be added on reports that display your software installations.
- Hidden gems: IsServer flag, vCenter IP address on clusters, Installation date on installations, Affinity enabled on VMs, Primary Inventory Date, Primary Inventory source...
All of this is exposed through the ReportsExecute REST API that allows to return the result of any report created in the web client.
These new columns will extend the possibilities for creating clever "Device Groups" used by the Intelligent License Restriction.
For on premise customers
FlexNet Manager on premise customers will enjoy on December 12th these features and all the features that have been added since March 2022 in Flexera One ITAM
- Named user optimization reports
- Windows Server Optimization Flat reports
- Enhancement in the way file evidence is imported for enhanced inventory import performance...
Expect another post on the FlexNet Manager Release Blog!
