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

The June  2020 update of the Spider Software Services is now available. All components are available in our Product and License Center. Please note: We published Version 1.2006.1 some days ago. This version of the Spider Data Collector (SDC) and Spider Recognition contained an error in the setup, whereby the existing installation was not recognized. Several error messages appear during installation. If these are ignored and the setup is continued, the configuration files can be lost! The setup must therefore be canceled at this point! If it has been executed to the end, the configuration files must be checked and support contacted if necessary. The current version 1.2006.2 (June 2020 Patch) of the Spider Data Collector now contains a corrected setup and is available for download. This version can be used to update installations with version 1.2005 and older. If version 1.2006.1 of the SDC was used for the initial installation, the configuration files must be saved and the installation removed completely. Then a new installation with version 1.2006.2 must be carried out and the configuration must be transferred from the saved configuration files. If you have installed Spider Recognition or Spider Data Collector (SDC) version 1.2006.1, please contact our support team for further assistance. Highlights of the June update Additional file scan filters have been added to all database-based data connectors. Some f iles that are not required are no longer exported, which makes the export files smaller and speeds up processing. These are not carried out on the databases. This previously led to significant performance problems. The filters now are combined with the writing of the export file. In this version, the database-based connectors also support the encrypted passwords, as was already possible with the API-based connectors The Hyper-V connector has been expanded. Server hostnames of other Windows-based Hyper-V hosts can be specified via an additional configuration file so that they are inventoried one after the other with just one execution of the connector. Office 365 Enterprise F1 (Named-User) renamed to Office 365 Enterprise F3 (Named-User) Recognition Catalog The   Recognition Catalog contains normalization and recognition capabilities for more than 2.552.000 inventoried programs, 88.200 software publisher, and 5.971.000 inventoried files. For more details please check the change notes. Software and SKU Catalog TheSoftware Catalog contains more than   954.800 relevant and normalized articles (SKUs)   of software licenses and maintenances and more than 59.700 license relevant product versions.  Summary of the supplemented catalog items: Articles (SKUs): 6.613 Versions: 484 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

With the FlexNet Manager Suite 2020 R1 release we introduce the Oracle Transparency capability for all on-prem customers.  Oracle Transparency was already introduced for the FlexNet Manager Suite cloud in August 2019 fully implemented as a cloud-based service. Here is the announcement of the functionality of the cloud version.  In contrast to the cloud version, Oracle Transparency has been completely re-implemented as an on-prem version.  What it does: This feature is aimed at making it easier to investigate the results of the Oracle Database Option and Management Pack license position presented in FlexNet Manager, allowing you to take any corrective actions quicker. Now you'll see all of the pieces of evidence found by FlexNet Manager and be able to see which piece of that evidence was used to determine license positions. How it works: Within the Oracle Instance Properties on the Options tab, the Oracle Options and Management Packs of an Oracle database instance are displayed. The Used-column shows whether an option or a pack is in use and must therefore be licensed.   With the FlexNet Manager Suite 2020 R1 version, this column is displayed as links. Clicking on the Yes/No value displays a dialog with details about the option or management pack. The following screenshot shows the details of the Real Application Clusters option. All pieces of rule evidence that must be checked with this option are displayed and explained.                     Why is it important? This is a specific extension that is always needed when questions about Oracle Options or Management Packs arise. Up to now, these questions could not be answered directly. For this purpose, the Oracle LMS raw data had to be analyzed in a complex way, which requires specific expert knowledge. Our support team was also frequently consulted for more assistance. All this was time-consuming. With the Oracle Transparency functionality, the details about why an Option or Management Pack is used and subject to licensing can be answered more easily and quickly. Oracle database experts can work directly with the information and apply this knowledge to license optimization. What is needed? The functionality is available for all FlexNet Manager Suite Datacenter customers and customers with the former Oracle Blade. ARL (Application Recognition Library) updates deliver modified and extended definitions for the detection of Oracle options and packs and the associated evaluation of details. This ensures that detection updates will easily be available in the future. We regularly work on improving and extending detection for Oracle Options and Management Packs. The evaluation of the Oracle Transparency details takes place with the import and processing of the inventory data. The Oracle Transparency Details can only be displayed when a new inventory is performed for the Oracle database instances. Otherwise, no details can be displayed and a message appears stating that no detailed data is available.   Please have a look at this new feature and give us your feedback in the comments.  We are always interested in your feedback ... View more

The May  2020 update of the Spider Software Services is now available. All components are available in our Product and License Center. Highlights SCCM connector: Due to performance issues, the additional filter for files we delivered with the March update has been removed. The delivery for the data center inventory for Linux and Unix has been changed in the multi-platform inventory agent, which transfers the inventory results directly to the Spider Data Center Appliance. The previous "cis" agent has been removed from the delivery. Renaming of Citrix products: XenServer --> Hypervisor Enterprise Edition --> Premium Edition Citrix Netscaler VPX --> ADC VPX Platinium Edition --> Premium Edition Enterprise Edition --> Advanced Edition Recognition Catalog The   Recognition Catalog contains normalization and recognition capabilities for more than 2.567.900 inventoried programs, 85.900 software publisher, and 5.953.200 inventoried files. For more details please check the change notes. Software and SKU Catalog TheSoftware Catalog contains more than   948.200 relevant and normalized articles (SKUs)   of software licenses and maintenances and more than 58.200 license relevant product versions.  Summary of the supplemented catalog items: Articles (SKUs): 7.459 Versions: 169 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