Helps Enterprises Maintain Continual Software Compliance & Reduce Financial Exposure to IBM Software Audits

Enterprise License Optimisation solution delivers automated tools to help slash license and audit costs and provide control over IBM software estate

Maidenhead, UK. – June 30, 2011 - Flexera Software, the leading provider of strategic Application Usage Management solutions for application producers and their customers, today announced the launch of FlexNet Manager for IBM. This new product is a scalable Enterprise License Optimisation solution built on the FlexNet Manager Platform, automating IBM license management, and giving enterprises essential control over their software estates in order to slash license, maintenance and audit costs for IBM desktop and server software, and maintain continual software license compliance.

The need for an IBM software license management tool has never been greater, as illustrated in a recent industry research report, which found that IBM, the second largest software provider with annual software revenues in excess of $23 billion and more than eight percent market share, has been one of the most aggressive vendors in initiating software audits. In that report, 41% of enterprises surveyed reported that IBM has audited them in the past year.

“IBM software has a high degree of license complexity, making it difficult to minimise the risk of audit exposure without a strategic software license management solution,” said Alan Swahn, vice president of product management at Flexera Software. “FlexNet Manager for IBM is the only solution available that can provide this level of visibility into and control over the IBM software estate.”

FlexNet Manager for IBM offers enterprises the following capabilities:

Purchased Versus Installed Reconciliation: FlexNet Manager for IBM allows organisations to discover over/under licensing situations via the easy import of purchase order (PO) data from popular procurement systems. IBM Stock Keeping Units (SKUs), which have been added to the FlexNet Manager Platform SKU library, help automate the process by identifying exactly what has been purchased according to PO line item SKUs, and matching that to IBM installations.

IBM License Types: IBM-related license types including, Processor Value Unit (PVU), Authorised User, Concurrent User, and Floating User, are supported by FlexNet Manager for IBM, adding to the extensive coverage of complex license models (e.g. Oracle Named User Plus, Symantec Tiered Server, etc.) in the FlexNet Manager Suite. This makes it possible for IT organisations to effectively manage complex license agreements and metrics without having extensive licensing expertise.

Application Recognition: The FlexNet Manager Platform Application Recognition Library has been enriched with IBM software titles, enabling the product to scrub raw inventory data and provide a list of installed software per device (desktops, laptops, servers and virtual environment “devices” such as virtual machines and hardware partitions). 

Discovery & Inventory: Cross-platform (Windows, Linux, UNIX, and MAC OS) discovery, inventory, and application usage (metering) collection tools are included, eliminating the need for separate purchase of these tools. The system performs discovery and inventory of virtual machines for VMware ESX/vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V servers, as well as hardware partitions such as AIX LPAR, HP-UX nPar and vPar, and Solaris Zones. Usage and user information for Citrix application virtualisation environments is also supported.

IBM Tool Integration: FlexNet Manager for IBM is integrated with the IBM License Metric Tool (ILMT) to provide support for sub-capacity licensing. In the FlexNet Manager Platform repository, purchase orders and contracts are correlated with inventory data from ILMT, enabling purchase-versus-installed reconciliation, and identification of software licenses that are out of compliance, or over licensed (shelfware).

Common Dashboard: To quickly report an enterprise-wide IBM software license compliance position, the solution offers a rich set of pre-defined and customisable FlexNet Manager Platform reports, including compliance and audit reports, contract renewals and opportunities for cost savings.

Moreover, the trends toward virtualisation and the Cloud drastically complicate the process of optimising the software license estate, and therefore increase a company’s risk exposure further. “As a result of the explosion of software vendor audits over the past two years it is in a licensee’s best interest to ensure they have tightly managed license entitlement and compliance management processes and tools in place to minimise financial risk within their organisation,” said Jo Ann Rosenberger, Research Director at Gartner. FlexNet Manager for IBM likewise can be leveraged to track and manage software whether it’s implemented on premises or in the cloud, on physical devices or in virtual environments.

FlexNet Manager for IBM is part of the FlexNet Manager Suite for Enterprises, a comprehensive and proven solution enabling organisations to reduce the time and effort spent managing software licenses and compliance, slash on-going license and maintenance costs, minimise the risk and cost of non-compliance, minimise the downtime and delays due to denials of service, and enable more accurate planning and budgeting for future needs.