Enhancements help automate software license compliance as companies migrate to new technologies and implement sophisticated enterprise apps

Maidenhead, UK – January 8, 2013 Flexera Software, the leading provider of Application Usage Management solutions for application producers and enterprises, announced today a significant upgrade to FlexNet Manager Suite for Enterprises, its market leading Software License Optimisation solution. The release provides substantial new capabilities empowering enterprises to manage complex licenses, maintain software license compliance and optimise license usage in virtual environments, the cloud, and across enterprise software estates.

Ensuring Software License Compliance in Virtualised & Cloud Environments
Enhancements to FlexNet Manager Suite provide powerful new capabilities to help ensure license compliance in virtualised and cloud environments.  A new FlexNet Manager Platform inventory adapter enables companies to collect the necessary data and optimise desktop software licenses for applications running in the Citrix XenDesktop virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) environment.  Access rights and usage data are now captured by the product to establish a license position, helping companies ease the license management burden and reduce their license compliance risk when implementing VDI.

“Companies increasingly are demanding that business applications be readily available across a wide variety of devices, and as a result they are adopting Citrix Virtual Desktop Infrastructure to facilitate easier distribution and consumption of software,” said David Moxey, Senior Director of Marketing and Strategy at Citrix. “Companies implementing this new user paradigm must consider the software license management implications. FlexNet Manager Suite enables proactive license management and compliance for Citrix customers deploying our XenDesktop VDI offering, making license management of virtualised applications significantly easier.”

Moreover, FlexNet Manager Platform now encapsulates the license mobility product use rights of major vendors such as IBM, Oracle, SAP, Microsoft, Symantec and Adobe, to help ensure companies can maintain license compliance both on-premise and in the cloud. License mobility use rights dictate how a software product can be moved across devices within the organisation, or to a service provider hosting applications in a public or private cloud.  This new capability reduces the risk that companies moving to public or private clouds will be hit with unbudgeted software audit true-up expenses.

“Very few organisations understand the complex and varied rules that software vendors have put into place for applications moving into virtual and cloud environments.  Moreover, these rules are fluid and constantly evolving as cloud-based computing gains in popularity,” said Alan Swahn, Vice President of Product Management at Flexera Software. “FlexNet Manager Suite now provides the most comprehensive solution in the marketplace for organisations seeking to optimise licensing and maintain license compliance in a wide variety of on-premise and cloud scenarios.”

Additionally, FlexNet Manager for IBM now offers enhanced functionality to calculate IBM Processor Value Unit (PVU) consumption in VMware server cluster environments.  License consumption can fluctuate depending on the location of the virtual machines on physical hosts – creating license compliance challenges for organisations running IBM software.  FlexNet Manager for IBM can now calculate a maximum consumption figure to help ensure customers are always compliant with their IBM license agreements.

Managing Complex License Models from SAP and Oracle
FlexNet Manager Suite also contains significant new enhancements providing powerful license optimisation capabilities for complex enterprise application licenses.  For instance, FlexNet Manager for SAP® Applications now automatically collects licensing metrics for SAP packages, such as CRM, Environment, Health & Safety Management (EHS), Governance and Recruiting, etc., and uses its product use rights library to calculate SAP package license consumption.  Unexpected true-up costs can arise from lack of visibility into SAP package license consumption – so these enhancements, in combination with existing functionality to manage SAP named user licenses, provide the most comprehensive approach available for optimising a SAP software estate.

In addition, the FlexNet Manager Platform now provides a new Oracle Application User license model.  This enhancement enables easier license management for most Oracle E-Business Suite applications and gives enterprises a more comprehensive solution for controlling costs for their Oracle software licenses.  E-Business Suite license management complements the Oracle database license optimisation capability already built into FlexNet Manager Platform. It is verified by Oracle to provide an accurate, independent assessment of database inventory and usage, and its reports can be used to support an organisation’s compliance position in an Oracle software license audit.