Spider 6.4.5 version is available! Release Date: 2021-03-31 A new update has been released for Spider. Please see the included improvements and corrections below.  To be notified of these kinds of product updates, please ensure that you have subscribed to the Spider Release blog. Highlights Spider 6.4.5 introduces installation trends in Spider. An installation trend provides information about the number of installations of a recognized software product in the past 60 days. If the current number deviates from the average of the installations over the period by at least 3%, the change is interpreted as an increase or decrease. This helps the user to quickly recognize and understand, in particular, recent changes. Furthermore, the detail page for recognized products has been expanded to include trend images. In addition, a line diagram provides information on the number of installations over the past 180 days. On recognized software products it is now possible to mark individual software products with a flag of different colors. These flags can be found in the search pages for recognized software products (above all products and below an asset) so that they can be used as filters for software products. Thus, the extension enables the categorization, identification, and tracking of software products. Use cases are, for example, the identification of software to be updated in the company network or the blacklisting of software products. The display concept of metering data in Spider has been fundamentally revised. With this version, a greater focus is placed on the detection of potentially unused installations. To this end, the metering dashboard, the subordinate pages, and metering search views have been fundamentally revised. The number fields "Installations", "Used", "Unused" and "No data" are in the new focus. These enable a significantly simplified identification of unused installations. Fields that publish usage data per user have been widely removed. For example, the "average runtime" display is only visible below a software assignment. If this data is to be suppressed completely, the form can be hidden using the form authorization. The current release enables the display and filtering of cloud providers on virtual servers and virtual clients. Cloud providers can be identified while systems are being scanned and imported into Spider Asset via the recognition module with the Datacenter Inventory agent. This enables the setting and display of the cloud provider on an asset as well as the corresponding filtering in the asset search page. The form definitions of virtual servers and virtual clients have been expanded to include the fields "Cloud provider (inventory)" and "Cloud provider (manual)". The "Cloud Provider (inventory)" field shows the cloud provider found and is read-only, the "Cloud Provider (manual)" field allows the provider found to be overwritten. The provider found is displayed in the search, provided it has not been overwritten (otherwise the provider selected by the user). The configuration is automatically supplemented by the setup on systems with full update capability. On systems without full update capability, the missing fields must be added to the form definitions manually. From Spider 6.4.5, decisions on recognized software products are logged. In this way, the user gains transparency about the decisions made, which enables a better understanding. Decisions can be commented on in the standard setting, the requirement to comment can be forced using the configuration key SoftwareRecogntion.RecognizedProducts.RequireCommentOnDecision. The new Coverage Rules function enables the user to add individual suite definitions which are then taken into account in the compliance calculation. This allows the user to create his own rules that are not included in the product catalog. Improvements Software Services Starting and monitoring the normalization process for recognized software products has been added to the start page of the Software Services - Info & Settings area. This enables the user to provide up-to-date and consistent data on the software products. In the Software Services - Info & Settings area, a new ribbon button has been added that enables the download of unclassified signatures. The generated .swrd file can be handed over to Spider Support so that the signatures are included in the recognition process. The file does not contain any user-related information. The detail page for recognized software products introduced with Spider 6.4.4 now also shows possible errors from the compliance calculation. The page for displaying program installations has been fundamentally revised. Multiple filters and groupings were made possible. The columns "Operating System", "Scan Date", "Source System" and "Business Unit" have been added. This simplifies the identification and qualification of program installations. The page for displaying recognized software products on an asset has been fundamentally revised. Multiple filters and groupings were made possible. The columns "Manufacturer" and "Flag" (of the recognized software product) enable new filter functions. The search form for unclassified programs now saves the defined search filters. License Metrics Procedures (LMP) The license metrics procedure for Linux servers now takes SuSE AddOns into account. Common Resubmissions are no longer sent for archived Spider objects. The list titles in emails from the alert & report system are now sent translated. Asset Management The dialog view of the device tile for Asset now also shows the type of the inventoried device. Furthermore, a message is displayed in the edit form of the asset if the type of the inventoried device does not correspond to the type of the asset. The comparison takes place via the AssetTypeMapping setting. Corrections License Management If product versions were moved in the product catalog, the changes were not correctly adopted in customer systems. This behavior has been corrected. In the license creation process (article catalog), an error could occur under certain conditions when an attempt was made to create a license that contains an unlimited number of usage rights. This behavior has been corrected. The manufacturer filter was not displayed correctly if the translation for "Select manufacturer" contained an apostrophe. This behavior has been corrected. An error could occur in the Spider Service if an outdated product version could not be deleted. This bug has been fixed. Under certain circumstances, an error could occur in the license splitting process that prevented the license from being split. This behavior has been corrected. License Metric Procedures (LMP) By using the Spider Oracle Database Suite, improved messages are displayed for Oracle databases. Under certain circumstances, the license metrics procedure for inactive states could not consider individual archived items. This behavior has been corrected. Common In the Spider Admin Tool, when a new password was set for a user, the date for the last password change was not set. This resulted in a further expired password. The behavior has been corrected. The deletion of contract types via the admin tool has been corrected. Special filters in searches that display images could not be used to filter "unequal". This has now been made possible again. The deletion of clients was wrongly suppressed in certain constellations. This behavior has been corrected. The creation of licenses was not possible if the dialog for selecting a business unit was previously exited via "Remove selection". This behavior has been corrected. Configuration keys could not be stored encrypted in the database with the Spider Admin Tool. This behavior has been corrected. The format of a standard filter in the alert & report system has been changed so that it can be used independently of the standard language set by the SQL user. In customer configurations, the number of parameter columns on the employee object was not sufficient to store all required fields in the system. The Employee object was therefore extended by 15 more string columns. The associated system views in the database provide the columns. Due to a missing condition in the database structure, users could not be deleted under certain circumstances. The behavior has been corrected. The database views for advanced searches have been extended so that they contain all fields for object searches. Asset Management The synchronization process between the Software Recognition Module and Spider Asset could abort if two fields refer to the same target field in the parameter mapping. This behavior has been corrected. Under certain circumstances, the synchronization process between Spider Asset and the Recognition Module could not determine the AssetNo and resulted in an error. This behavior has been corrected. Oracle Database Services The operating figures in the Oracle licensing dashboard have been revised. Contract Management Due to a misconfiguration, the contract search could run into an error if the department field was displayed in the search. The configuration has been corrected.   ... View more

The March  2021 update of the Spider Software Services version 1.2103.1.1450 is now available.  This release of the Software Services will be a prerequisite for the upcoming Spider Update Version 6.4.5. All components are available in our Product and License Center. Highlights The   vCenter connector   has been further improved. The connector will be updated automatically within the Spider Data Collector (SDC) update.  In the host-guest relationships, only the "Powered On" guests are readout. So far, all guests have been read, which could lead to problems under certain constellations. Corrections for SUSE articles with 4 CPU or 8 CPU. The number of licenses was too high and was adjusted because 2 CPUs are considered as one license. Product mapping for the Oracle Change Management Pack (DCM) was added for the Oracle Database Suite Recognition Catalog The   Recognition Catalog contains normalization and recognition capabilities for more than 2.717.300 inventoried programs, 103.400 software publisher, and 6.400.000 inventoried files. For more details please check the change notes. Software and SKU Catalog The Software Catalog contains more than  1.026.000  relevant and normalized articles (SKUs)   of software licenses and maintenances and more than 62.900 license-relevant product versions.  Summary of the supplemented catalog items: Articles (SKUs): 1.045 Versions: 188 Spider Data Collector The   Spider Data Collector (SDC) provides a set of connectors to 3rd party inventory for an out-of-the-box collection of computers, software, users, virtualization, and many more. Please check the Spider Data Collector User Manual for a full reference of all connectors. ... View more

The February  2021 update of the Spider Software Services version 1.2102.1.1417 is now available.  All components are available in our Product and License Center. Highlights Improved Microsoft 365 Enterprise E3 recognition: For Customers who do not see Microsoft 365 E3 subscriptions in the Azure data, but have licensed them, Spider creates the Microsoft 365 E3 subscription entries for the user who meets the requirements. With this recognition, Spider can now assign the Microsoft 365 E3 to the assigned user (employee) and process the products it contains at the device level. Background: Microsoft provides the data for Microsoft 365 E3 only under certain circumstances and with newer contracts. Older contracts do not have this subscription in the portal. Furthermore, the Microsoft 365 Enterprise E3/E5 coverage definitions have been extended. The vCenter connector has been further improved. The connector will be updated automatically within the Spider Data Collector (SDC) update.  The new run parameter OnlyWindows controls that details are limited to running virtual instances with Windows as an operational system. Other virtual instances (e.g. Linux based system) are not included. The enabled details enable that Spider creates an Asset, based on the provided data. The vCenter connector no longer delivers IP addresses based on identified problems. For VDI infrastructures the vCenter connector only provides the hostname for device identification for Windows client operating systems (Windows 7, Windows 8, or Windows 10)  A problem with the HEAT connector has been fixed. Spider Oracle Database Suite:  The  product mapping for GoldenGate (CPU) was added. The Device Type Identification process has been extended. Nuantix was added to ensure that virtual servers and virtual clients can be identified accurately. Recognition Catalog The   Recognition Catalog contains normalization and recognition capabilities for more than 2.713.200 inventoried programs, 100.300 software publisher, and 6.378.800 inventoried files. For more details please check the change notes. Software and SKU Catalog The Software Catalog contains more than  1.025.000  relevant and normalized articles (SKUs)   of software licenses and maintenances and more than 62.700 license-relevant product versions.  Summary of the supplemented catalog items: Articles (SKUs): 10.009 Versions: 178 Spider Data Collector The   Spider Data Collector (SDC) provides a set of connectors to 3rd party inventory for an out-of-the-box collection of computers, software, users, virtualization, and many more. Please check the Spider Data Collector User Manual for a full reference of all connectors. ... View more

The January  2021 update of the Spider Software Services version 1.2101.1.1371 is now available.  All components are available in our Product and License Center. Highlights The processing of metering data from SCCM has been further improved. SCCM partially supplies metering data but not the associated separate file scan. Then the metering data was not linked to the recognized products and did not result in any evaluation or display in Spider. The procedure for reading in and interpreting the metering data has been extended so that the file signatures from the metering of the last 90 days are now also included in the rule calculation. This will lead to more recognized applications with metering values. When uploading inventory data to the Recognition Center, the file paths can now be excluded. Therefore the EnableFilePathExport key can optionally be added to the configuration file of the SoftwareRecognitionManager service. If the key is set to false, the following values are no longer exported for the center: FilePath, FilePathNormalizationVersion, and PathFilter. <add key= "EnableFilePathExport" value= "false" /> Recognition Catalog The   Recognition Catalog contains normalization and recognition capabilities for more than 2.708.000 inventoried programs, 99.900 software publisher, and 6.348.100 inventoried files. For more details please check the change notes. Software and SKU Catalog The Software Catalog contains more than  1.016.500  relevant and normalized articles (SKUs)   of software licenses and maintenances and more than 62.500 license relevant product versions.  Summary of the supplemented catalog items: Articles (SKUs): 11.639 Versions: 272 Spider Data Collector The   Spider Data Collector (SDC) provides a set of connectors to 3rd party inventory for an out-of-the-box collection of computers, software, users, virtualization, and many more. Please check the Spider Data Collector User Manual for a full reference of all connectors.   ... View more

The December  2020 update of the Spider Software Services version 1.2012.2 is now available.  All components are available in our Product and License Center. Corrections SCCM connector has been improved by the following issues: SQL Server 2019 version detection Windows 10 build versions  File export for Visual Studio Due to an error in a connector instance with an import prioritization below 100, it could happen that devices were not updated. This has been now fixed. The product mappings for the Oracle database dashboard have been completed.  The VCenter connector has been further improved. Only connected hosts are queried, disconnected hosts are ignored. Guests with an empty hostname could lead to an error. This has been fixed.  We have identified and fixed an error in Software Services December version 1.2012.1 that we uploaded earlier today.  Recognition Catalog The   Recognition Catalog contains normalization and recognition capabilities for more than 2.701.100 inventoried programs, 96.680 software publisher, and 6.307.371 inventoried files. For more details please check the change notes. Software and SKU Catalog TheSoftware Catalog contains more than  1.005.200  relevant and normalized articles (SKUs)   of software licenses and maintenances and more than 62.300 license relevant product versions.  Summary of the supplemented catalog items: Articles (SKUs): 5.790 Versions: 350 Spider Data Collector The   Spider Data Collector (SDC) provides a set of connectors to 3rd party inventory for an out-of-the-box collection of computers, software, users, virtualization, and many more. Please check the Spider Data Collector User Manual for a full reference of all connectors. ... View more

November 2020 About the relocation In the coming weeks, Flexera will be relocating its servers including Recognition Center from our office and data center in Hamburg, Germany to our facility in Dublin, Ireland. This change is being made as part of Flexera’s commitment to continuous improvement. Some of the benefits of relocating for you will include: Double the level of network redundancy which will contribute to up to 10 times faster links New and improved hardware which will contribute to improved resilience moving forward Improved levels of physical security and process control What will the impact be for me? At the present time, we are still coordinating this relocation, however it is anticipated that there may be a small amount of downtime when the transfer takes place. We are working to ensure that any downtime is minimal and that the transfer takes place without any impact on you. If we are unable to avoid this, we will notify you further nearer the time and keep you updated during the transfer. There is nothing that you need to do at this time. Further questions Please do look out for further communications in the coming weeks which will provide an update on when the relocation will take place and potential impact. If you have any questions in relation to  above server relocation, please reach out to us so that we can address these. ... View more

Spider 6.4.4 R3 update is available! Release Date: 2020-10-12 A new update has been released for Spider. Please see the included improvements and corrections below.  To be notified of these kinds of product updates, please ensure that you have subscribed to the   Spider Release blog . Improvements Common The behavior of searches and reports when the number of results is unknown has been improved: The time for determining the number has been increased to a maximum of 15 seconds. The behavior of the pager when the result set cannot be determined has been improved. In addition, the meaning of the unknown hits is now explained in a dialog window. Corrections Common An XSS vulnerability in the function that determines the browser type has been removed. Asset Management The Asset type change led to errors in Spider systems based on a non-Unicode database. This has now been fixed. The import priority for a connector could not be adjusted if exactly one connector was known in the Spider system. This has now been made possible. This can be important in order to prioritize this connector higher or lower since new connectors are assigned a default value of 100. ... View more

Spider Datacenter version 12.2 is available Release Date: 2020-07-31 A new update of Spider Datacenter has been released. This includes the following items: Spider Oracle Database Suite Spider Datacenter Module (Appliance) Columbus Datacenter Inventory (Linux/Unix) All components can be downloaded from our  Product and License Center . To be notified of these kinds of product updates, please ensure that you have subscribed to the   Spider Release Blog . General  Improvement: new version of mariaDB Improvement: new version of Apache Improvement: Performance enhancements on database design Improvement: added new CPU types and HW model Correction:       Fixed bug on Oracle Clusterware command set Oracle Database Engine: Improvement: Regarding new license rules for Spatial and Advanced Analytics Improvement: Regrading new license rules RAC on SE2 Improvement: since V19 Multitenant Option will be counted for more than 3 PDB Improvement: Oracle DB version 20 ready Improvement: filter out ASM/APX instances for license count Improvement: New feature detection for ActiveDataGuard und Partitioning Improvement: Reduces  SQL result block size for Partitioning and Advanced Compression Spider Interface Improvement: Export extension of VMware Cluster to host relationships Improvement: Export extension for Oracle license scope with additional attributes ... View more

The July  2020 update of the Spider Software Services is now available. All components are available in our Product and License Center. Highlights of the July update Following Microsoft products have been renamed: Office 365 Business (Named-User) into Microsoft 365 Apps for Business (Named-User) Office 365 Professional Plus (Named-User) into Microsoft 365 Apps for Enterprise (Named-User) Office 365 Business Essentials (Named-User, Win) into Microsoft 365 Business Basic (Named-User, Win) Microsoft 365 Business (Named-User) into Microsoft 365 Business Premium (Named-User) Office 365 Business Premium (Named-User) into Microsoft 365 Business Standard (Named-User) The Microsoft Office and Microsoft 365 recognition rules have been improved and extended to have better coverage of installed single apps. Some IBM products moved to new manufacturer HCL Technologies. Some Symantec products moved to new manufacturer NortonLifeLock. Recognition Catalog The   Recognition Catalog contains normalization and recognition capabilities for more than 2.628.600 inventoried programs, 88.600 software publisher, and 6.085.600 inventoried files. For more details please check the change notes. Software and SKU Catalog TheSoftware Catalog contains more than   981.000 relevant and normalized articles (SKUs)   of software licenses and maintenances and more than 60.000 license relevant product versions.  Summary of the supplemented catalog items: Articles (SKUs): 26.180 Versions: 290 Spider Data Collector The   Spider Data Collector (SDC) provides a set of connectors to 3rd party inventory for an out-of-the-box collection of computers, software, users, virtualization, and many more. Please check the Spider Data Collector User Manual for a full reference of all connectors. ... View more

Spider 6.4.4 version is available! Release Date: 2020-07-17 A new update has been released for Spider. Please see the included improvements and corrections below.  To be notified of these kinds of product updates, please ensure that you have subscribed to the   Spider Release blog . Highlights Extended SKU-Catalog Settings For the SKU catalog, it is now possible to restrict the selection to certain licensed programs. In addition, all government or education articles can be hidden. This makes it easier to select the right article when creating a license. When importing a license, the article is only determined based on the specified SKU within the restricted selection. Extended License Creation Process The fields "Purchase Quantity" and "Quantity Per Unit" for Licenses and Maintenance have been introduced. The goal of this extension is to simplify and improve the license import. By specifying the number of Articles purchased (PurchaseQuantity), the number of Licenses (number of usage rights) is automatically calculated. The num-ber per Article (Quantity Per Unit) is automatically derived from the assigned Article. The extension is backward compatible. Existing imports that set the Quantity field of Licenses or Maintenances will continue to be supported. The use of the new field "Purchase Quantity" for importing licenses and maintenances are recommended. For example, imports of Windows Server licenses can be simplified this way. In the future, only the purchased quantity must be specified. Depending on the SKU, it is then automatically identified whether it is a 2-core or 8-core item and the resulting number of Licenses is calculated. In the past, this had to be done before the import or had to be re-qualified afterwards. The configuration of both Spider editions (including Flex installations) is supplemented in the configuration. In addition, quality reports have been added that can be used to improve data quality. Improved "Lic+SA" Handling The behavior in Spider has been adjusted for items that lead to a combined License and Maintenance (Lic + SA). The Maintenance object inherits data from the License and cannot save any different data in these fields. This Maintenance is then also coupled with the License and cannot be decoupled. Improvements License Management From now on, Licenses and Maintenance will no longer be updated automatically if changed information is delivered in the Article Catalog. The synchronization now requires a separate step, which can be done either via the web interface or via the importer. Quality reports show any deviations and help to compare them. The main reason for this function change is the introduction of the "Quantity Per Unit" field on the Article. An accidental data matching would otherwise change the license number without consent. In addition, the user can now see when synchronization takes place. Deviations, if any, are displayed in an area of the license processing page. The import for Maintenance objects has been improved. An existing License (License identifier) can be specified so that the Maintenance is automatically coupled with this License. This significantly simplifies the import process, since the Maintenance had to be assigned to a License in an additional step in the past. License and Maintenance have been expanded to include the "ExternalNumber" field. The field has been added to the configuration for all Spider editions (only for full update installations). In order to give the user a view of the data quality in Spider, the new report category "Quality Reports" was introduced. It contains the new reports "Licenses with inconsistent quantities", "Maintenances with inconsistent quantities", "Maintenance without end date", "Subscriptions without end date", "Licenses with deviations from the article catalog" and "Maintenance with deviations from the article catalog". When specifying an Update Product Version for a License, it is now also possible to cross grade to the Product Version of another Product. The selection list of possible downgrade versions is now sorted. Expired Licenses and Maintenance are now automatically set to an inactive status. Three new reports indicate which product versions have which ECCN (Export Control Classification Number): ECCN overview, ECCN product report, and ECCN installation report. The Article clearing was outsourced from the License object search to the new system report "Article Clearing for Licenses". The Article clearing was outsourced from the Maintenance object search to the new system report "Article Clearing for Maintenances". Software Services For the software products recognized by the Recognition module, a new detail page shows more information about the recognized product, evaluations of the installations, and compliance data. It is now possible to set the priority of the import processes in the Recognition module via the Spider user interface. This function is only available from version 1.2003.1 or higher of the Recognition module. The manufacturer of the software found is now also displayed in the results of the software detection. It is also possible to filter according to the manufacturer or SAM priorities. On the "Info & Settings" page of the Software Services, an information area now shows whether a calculation is currently running in the Recognition module or when the last calculation was carried out. In addition, the duration of the calculation is output and whether there were any errors. This function is only available from version 1.2006.2 or higher of the Recognition module. In order for the info area to be displayed, at least one calculation must have been carried out for the selected client after the Recognition module update. Oracle Database Services The presentation of the Oracle inventorying and recognition results has been extended. The result of the Oracle database search now shows the date of the last scan (LastScanDate). The value of the license unit is displayed in Oracle License Scope details. The value for the License Unit is also displayed in the "License Scope" area in the Oracle database details. Asset Management The Asset editing page has been expanded to include a function for managing the main user. The new "Manage users" button opens a dialog that shows the current main user. If other users use the device, they will also be displayed. The "Delete history" button deletes the login history up to the last 14 days. This makes it possible to define the new user as the main user on a device on which a user change has taken place, without having to wait for a longer period. The "Oracle Java Installations" report has been extended to include the columns "Operating System" and "Date of the last scan" Contract Management For Volume License Contracts without an anniversary, the field is initialized once in accordance with the applicable calculation rule: The anniversary is defined as the date that is one year from the start date in the future. If the end of the contract is earlier, the anniversary is this date. Corrections Common When changing form configurations or user profiles, user authorizations were not always recalculated correctly, so that users could not access individual functions and forms, even though they were authorized to do so. When using the Excel export function, an error occurred which caused the order of the columns in the Excel file to differ from the configuration of the columns in the search result. When a report was called up using URL parameter filters, the existing filters from the respective user settings were given priority, so that the URL parameter filter might have no effect. Asset Management The synchronization between Spider Asset and the Recognition module has been revised so that changes to the reported devices can be determined more efficiently and the processing speed is increased. At the same time, a status change, which results from the last scan date and the preset waiting time, is now enforced in every case. Similarly, a change in the asset number is now generally enforced, provided that they should be automatically formed from the domain and hostname and a change found here. There had previously been exceptions to both change scenarios so that occasionally changes were not transferred. License Management Due to an error, it was not possible to change the field SAM priority on the manufacturer via the multiple changes. An error message was displayed instead. Due to an error, it was not possible to set an effective global filter for the SAM priority. If the selection page was called up during the License creation without specifying a search parameter, the previous filter was loaded but not displayed. As a result, the user could not see why and after what the selection list was filtered. Now in such a case, all previous filters are discarded. Software Services If a Software Product for a device is no longer reported by the inventory, it is now deactivated instead of deleted. In this way, the selected settings for the Software Product are retained if it is reported again later. When viewing Software Assignments for a cloud user, an error could occur if no Employee was assigned to the Cloud User in Spider. As a result, no Software Assignment could exist. This case is now taken into account. For a subscription, for which a standard has been already selected, the selection could not be corrected.   ... View more