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New vCenter data connector removes any guesswork from managing virtual license use

York, England, 3rd July 2012: License Dashboard, the developer of solutions that help organizations manage and optimize their software licenses, today announced enhanced support for enterprises using VMware virtualized environments. Through its new VMware vCenter data connector, License Dashboard’s License Manager solution can now accurately identify the configuration of physical hosts and virtual guests across the network, ensuring that any applications hosted in a virtual environment are correctly licensed.

Prior to the development of the VMware vCenter data connector, establishing an accurate view of the licensing position of virtual machines could prove a challenging and highly manual task.  The vast majority of network auditing (or Discovery) solutions are not capable of accurately identifying the configuration of physical hosts and their virtual guest machines. This therefore made it difficult for organizations to comply with the numerous and growing afrray of licensing rules governing virtual machines, such as the ‘mobility’ of Microsoft licenses or the number of processor cores in operation per virtual SQL server. With the VMware vCenter data connector on License Dashboard License Manager, IT managers can easily determine how many data center or enterprise operating system licenses are running per physical server, how many ‘cores’ are being used in each virtual SQL server and also accurately identify VMware ESX Servers.

License Dashboard Director, Sean Robinson, commented: “Managing the software licenses for virtualized applications has, until now, required a mix of manual effort and guesswork.  By automatically importing the relevant configuration data from VMware vCenter, we can now dramatically improve the efficiency of managing virtual license entitlements, by identifying the configuration of both the physical host and virtual guest machines. This will make it easier for organizations to optimize the availability of their licenses while also remaining compliant with usage conditions.”

With increasing numbers of software licensing schemes being based on the number of processors or cores on the physical host (rather than CPUs allocated to any virtual guests, for example), understanding the full hardware configuration of both the physical and guest machines is now just as important as the software installation itself. Without understanding the configuration, it is often difficult to ensure applications are correctly licensed.

When combined with software discovery information provided by an audit solution, such as Microsoft’s SCCM or License Dashboard Discovery, organizations can now have an enhanced understanding of all the critical factors associated with software licensing in VMware environments.

“Organizations are turning to virtualization as a means of extracting greater efficiency and flexibility from their IT infrastructure,” comments Ed Dolman, Head of Channel, UK & Ireland. “Across the board, however, there’s a recognition that vendors, organisations and developers must work together to ensure every application and operating system running off a virtual machine is properly licensed. With this in place, the benefits of virtualised environments can be fully realised and embraced.”

Filipa Preston, CEO at License Dashboard partner, Software Optimization Services, commented: “More and more of the licensing projects we undertake now include virtualized environments.  With this in mind, solutions such as the VMware vCenter data connector on License Dashboard License Manager are invaluable in streamlining the mandatory management of virtual licenses. What would have taken days to achieve can now be completed in a matter of hours, which can add huge value in an economy as competitive as today’s.”

The VMware vCenter data connector is available at no extra cost to existing License Dashboard customers and partners. For more information, please visit www.licensedashboard.com.