Change Title Remapping MQM Evidences for Websphere MQ Class 2 Customers should be aware and be prepared Change Summary Flexera are making changes for evidence recognition for Websphere MQ on Sun Solaris to address a reported problem with false positives. Common installer evidences with display name 'mqm' have been causing false recognition for MQ Server.  This component however is shared with both Server and Client, and cannot not be relied upon for recognition purposes. Existing evidence mappings for 'mqm' are ambiguous and are being remapped to WebSphere MQ (Unknown component). Note that recognition of 'mqm' installer evidence is working as expected for the server installation recognition on Linux and HPUX platforms Impact Customers who are running Websphere MQ on Sun Solaris need to be aware that the following installer evidences are being remapped from Websphere MQ Server to Websphere MQ (Unknown Component).   This may cause Websphere MQ license consumption to change as consumption may reduce. Customers should review their licenses to ensure it is configured to charge against the highest used peak consumption.   A list of the evidences in scope for remapping are in the table below These changes will be part of the ARL Release for January 1st 2021   Evidence Application Name Version Publisher Current application mapped Proposed application to be mapped mqm 7.0.% IBM% WebSphere MQ Server 7.0 WebSphere MQ (Unknown component) 7.0 mqm 6.0.% IBM% WebSphere MQ Server 6.0 WebSphere MQ (Unknown component) 6.0 mqm 5.3.% IBM% WebSphere MQ Server 5.3 WebSphere MQ (Unknown component) 5.3 mqm 5.2.% IBM% WebSphere MQ Server 5.2 WebSphere MQ (Unknown component) 5.2 mqm 7.1.% IBM% WebSphere MQ Server 7.1 WebSphere MQ (Unknown component) 7.1 mqm 7.5.% IBM% WebSphere MQ Server 7.5 WebSphere MQ (Unknown component) 7.5 mqm 5.1.% IBM% WebSphere MQ Server 5.1 WebSphere MQ (Unknown component) 5.1 mqm 8.0.% IBM% WebSphere MQ Server 8.0 WebSphere MQ (Unknown component) 8.0 mqm 9.0.% IBM% WebSphere MQ Server 9.0 WebSphere MQ (Unknown component) 9.0 mqm.2 8.0.% IBM% WebSphere MQ Server 8.0 WebSphere MQ (Unknown component) 8.0 ... View more

Flexera are updating categories for a number of Software products that align to ITIL Service Transition & Service Design processes and capabilities, specific to Build, Test and Deploy.     Change Title Product Taxonomy Category Reclassification Class 2 Customers should be aware and be prepared Change Summary Flexera are reviewing and updating categories for a number of Software products that align to ITIL Service Transition & Service Design processes and capabilities, specific to Build, Test and Deploy. The category for the Products in the attached will be recategorized from the existing assigned Taxonomy/Categorization into category IT Infrastructure  |  Configuration Management | Software Configuration Management   Impact This change will impact customers who rely on Technopedia  product categorization to manage downstream processes and reporting in their organization.  There will be no changes to Product ID's,  Version ID's or Release ID's.   Please see attached list of the Products in scope for this change along with the current and new categorization. Customers should expect these changes to be completed by January 1st 2021 ... View more

Flexera will be making changes to Version Group and Version label attributes in Technopedia to accurately reflect SaaS Releases for Cloud Products      Change Title Version Group & Version Label Changes for Cloud Products Class 2 Customers should be aware and be prepared Change Summary Flexera are reviewing and updating SaaS releases for Cloud products. The Version Group and Version labels in the attached are being changed in Technopedia to make it more explicit which Version/Release is specific to a SaaS product.  For example BMC Software | Pulse | TrueSight is a Cloud product with Version Group label 2015 and Version label 2015.08.  These labels will be changed to SaaS (2015) and SaaS (2015.08) respectively. Impact This change will impact customers who rely on Technopedia Version Group and Version labels to manage downstream processes and reporting in their organization.  There will be no changes to Version Group / Version or Release ID's.  The impact is expected to be low. The attached list of the Products in scope for this change along with the  Version Group and Version labels to be renamed. Customers should expect these changes to have been completed within the next 2 weeks. ... View more

Flexera is planning to update the End of Life and End of Support/Obsolete dates in Technopedia for Visual Studio 2019 to follow the Microsoft Product Lifecycle and Servicing Policy       Change Title Visual Studio 2019 Lifecycle and Preview Version/Edition changes Class 2 Customers should be aware and be prepared Change Summary Flexera is planning to update the End of Life and End of Support/Obsolete dates in Technopedia for Visual Studio 2019 to follow the Microsoft Product Lifecycle and Servicing Policy as defined here.  For some Versions, the EOL/EOS dates will be changed to a date in the past indicating that Microsoft no longer provides support for that version.    In addition, the current Preview Versions of Visual Studio 2019 will be deleted and Professional, Enterprise and Community Preview Editions will be created instead. This will involve remapping of existing evidence rules to new Releases. Impact Customers need to be aware that Technopedia Lifecycle dates for End of Life and End of Support will be changing and some Versions of Visual Studio 2019 are no longer supported by Microsoft. The details are as follows:   Servicing baselines: - Versions 16.0, 16.4 and 16.7 will receive servicing fixes for 12 months after the next servicing baseline is declared. The specific EOS dates are show here   Standard Minor Versions: - For Versions 16.1, 16.2, 16.3, 16.5, 16.6 and 16.8, Microsoft offer servicing fixes only until the next minor update is released. Therefore, the EOS dates for these minor versions are determined by the GA of next minor versions. Note: the EOL/EOS dates for these versions except 16.8 will be changing to a date in the past.  The GA dates for Visual Studio 2019 are shown here   Professional Preview Editions:  Versions 16.7, 16.8, and 16.9 will be considered EOS when the next GA version is released. For example, Visual Studio Professional 16.8 Preview will be EOS when 16.9 is GA.   Preview Versions and Editions: - The current Preview Versions 16.6, 16.7, 16.8 and 16.9 will be marked as ‘to-be-deleted’.  Releases with Preview Editions which include Professional Preview, Enterprise Preview and Community Preview will be created as the replacements for Preview Versions.   The full list of changes are in the attachment below.  Note that Releases tagged To Be Deleted will be removed from Technopedia in 6 months ... View more

FlexNet Agent 2020R2 has been enhanced to capture IBM Db2 offering as part of evidence hence, a cleanup of all Db2 Applications, Bundles, SKUs and PURL has happened     Change Title FlexNet Agent enhancement for IBM DB2 offering Class 2 Customers should be aware and be prepared Change Summary FlexNet Agent 2020R2 has been enhanced to capture IBM Db2 offering as part of evidence hence, a cleanup of all DB2 Applications, Bundles, SKUs and PURL has happened. Impact The following changes are planned to take place on 11/27 537 Licensed SKUs and 211 non-Licensed SKUs have been unlinked and relinked to the correct applications in ARL. 7 'Db2 Server' Bundles have been refreshed according to IBM LIDs and have been gap-filled with respect to ARL applications and SKUs.  Db2 SKUs have been linked to its PURL templates   The following changes have already taken place and are in the current ARL New evidence for existing applications and new applications have been added to ARL. - Released 11/6   For more information on improved recognition for IBM Db2 please see the following Community post https://community.flexera.com/t5/FlexNet-Manager-Blog/Improved-recognition-of-IBM-DB2-databases-and-their-add-ons-with/ba-p/169599   ... View more

Change Title Oracle Database 12cR1 / 12cR2 Version Group changes Class 2 Customers should be aware and be prepared Change Summary Flexera has modified how Major Version groups are captured for Oracle Database. Going forwards there will be two Version Groups 12cR1 and 12cR2 for which 12.1 will be the Major Version for 12cR1 and 12.2 will be the Major Version for 12cR2.   This is to ensure that when Oracle Database 12.1 and 12.2 are installed into the same device, then they will also be discoverable and not subject to Normalize multi-version coexist deduplication rules. Impact This change will impact customers who have relied upon discovered data evidence mappings to Oracle Database 12cR1. New Release ID’s have been created for this change and all discovered evidence mappings to the new Release ID’s have been completed. The full list of changes is in the attachment below.  Note that Releases  tagged To Be Deleted will be removed from Technopedia in 6 months ... View more

Flexera are introducing the Virtual Processor Core (VPC) metric for IBM Cloud Paks to support IBM VPC Licensing capability. Content libraries are changing to support this.  NOTE THAT THE PREVIOUSLY ANNOUNCED DATE OF 11/27 HAS CHANGED TO 11/20.   THE USUAL SCHEDULED SKU/PURL MONTHLY RELEASE WILL STILL CONTINUE TO BE RELEASED ON 11/27.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               Change Title   Introduction of Virtual Processor Core (VPC) metric for IBM Cloud Paks to support IBM VPC Licensing capability Class 1 Customers should take action Change Summary IBM now sells software licenses through ‘IBM Cloud Paks’, a new form of multi-product bundle license which is primarily licensed on a Virtual Processor Core (VPC) metric. The FNMS 2020 R2 release of FlexNet Manager Suite includes a new IBM Virtual Processor Core (VPC) license type for non-containerized infrastructure in order to support IBM Cloud Paks and other software licensed on a VPC basis. FlexNet Manager Suite SKU, PURL, and bundle library content will be updated to support IBM Cloud Paks. Impact Content libraries are changing to supplement the new VPC metric. The current ARL with Build #2566 released on 7 th Nov 2020 contains changes specific to VPC in the Points Rule Set in the FNMS user interface.  The SKU, PURL and bundle licensing content libraries will be released on 20 th Nov 2020. Changes include: 74 existing IBM Cloud Pak SKUs are being updated from ‘PVU’ to the new metric ‘VPC’. Eight new SKUs are being added to the SKU library for ‘Information Server Extension for IBM Cloud Pak for Data’. The IBM PURL will be updated with VPC license templates linked to the new points rule set. Eight new Cloud Pak bundles are being published: 1.      IBM Cloud Pak for Automation 20.0 2.      IBM Cloud Pak for Applications 4.2 3.      IBM Cloud Pak for Integration 2020.3 4.      IBM Cloud Pak for Multicloud Management 2.1 5.      IBM Cloud Pak for Data Standard Edition 3.0 6.      IBM Cloud Pak for Data Enterprise Edition 3.0 7.      IBM Cloud Pak for Security 1.4 8.      IBM Information Server Extension for IBM Cloud Pak for Data 11.7 Customer action may be required – please read the FlexNet Manager Blog article announcing the VPC update for details. https://community.flexera.com/t5/FlexNet-Manager-Blog/IBM-Cloud-Pak-s-and-Non-Cloud-Pak-Products-Sub-capacity/ba-p/168820   ... View more

Flexera have undertaken an effort to refine the discovered evidence mappings for Open Source products in Technopedia. This has involved reviewing and changing evidence mappings for Distro Publishers which had been previously been mapped to the Original Publisher.  This notification serves to inform our customers about which product evidence mappings have been changed.      Change Title Original Publisher / Distro Publisher evidence remapping Class 2 Customers should be aware and be prepared Change Summary Flexera have undertaken an effort to refine the discovered evidence mappings for Open Source products in Technopedia. This has involved reviewing and changing evidence mappings for Distro Publishers which had been previously been mapped to the Original Publisher. As this is an ongoing effort, future product evidence remappings for Original Publisher to Distro Publisher will be advised on this channel in advance of the changes being made to Technopedia Impact This change will impact customers who relied upon discovered data that was previously mapped to the Original Publisher but has now changed to map to the Distro Publisher. Typically this may result in Lifecycle dates changing for the mapped products since the Distro Publisher provides specific support terms to the Distro version of the product. Also, for some of the Products, Flexera has reviewed and changed the Taxonomy Categorization. The spreadsheet OSS Example Remapping V1.xlsx shows an example of evidences remapped from the Original Publisher to the Distro Publisher Red Hat.  The spreadsheet OSS_Distro_Remappings.xlsx contains the Open Source and Embedded products which have already been changed as part of this effort.           ... View more

Change Title Publisher Name changes in Technopedia Class 2 Customers should be aware and be prepared Change Summary Flexera are unifying Publisher names to be consistent across our internal repositories. The Publishers names in the attached are being changed in Technopedia Customers should expect these changes to have been completed within the next few weeks Impact This change will impact customers who rely on Technopedia Publisher ID’s and Names to manage downstream processes and reporting in their organization.  The impact is expected to be low. The attached list of Publishers are in scope to be renamed ... View more

Flexera are introducing a new sub-category into Technopedia which will involve a realignment of existing products. The new sub-category will be called Accessibility and Assistive Tools and will come under the existing  Taxonomy | Category grouping  Tools and Utilities | Utilities Taxonomy   Change Title Content Taxonomy Category addition for Technopedia Class 2 Customers should be aware and be prepared Change Summary Flexera are introducing a new sub-category into Technopedia which will involve a realignment of existing products. The new sub-category will be called Accessibility and Assistive Tools and will come under the existing  Taxonomy | Category grouping  Tools and Utilities | Utilities Taxonomy Impact This change will impact customers who currently use the Technopedia Taxonomy for managing downstream processes such as application alignment to Service Managers and internal reporting.  In addition to introducing the new sub-category, 103 Products will be realigned from their existing Taxonomy Category into Tools and Utilities | Utilities | Accessibility and Assistive Tools.  These Products are provided in the attachment Assistive Technology Product List V1.xlsx ... View more