| Floating License Usage Billing - Its Implementation in | | | | the reason for which is that the maintenance costs |
| OpenLM Version 1.5.5 | | | | are evenly distributed between the subsidiaries. In |
| The implementation of the usage billing policy in many | | | | order to solve the problem, the company decided to |
| organizations has proved to be a very profitable step. | | | | implement a billing policy based on the actual usage of |
| This article discusses the concept of FLEXlm billing | | | | licenses by each subsidiary. The "Groups and |
| and the usage of OpenLM Software in order to | | | | Projects" extension to OpenLM System provides this |
| implement such a policy. | | | | solution. The company has created a Group for each |
| Many organizations use software systems that are | | | | subsidiary using the OpenLM Users Management |
| licensed by Floating (concurrent) licenses. This type of | | | | software. |
| license facilitates the organization to install an unlimited | | | | |
| number of seats of the software. The number of | | | | In order to avoid the need to manually relate users |
| licenses used concurrently are limited to a predefined | | | | to the Groups, the system manager decided to utilize |
| number (i.e. set during the purchase). Many of the | | | | OpenLM's ability to synchronize Active Directory |
| software systems licensed this way, use Flexera | | | | users and groups with OpenLM Server database. |
| FLEXnet Publisher (commonly known as FLEXlm | | | | Since the organizational belonging of each user is |
| software). This type of licensing method is commonly | | | | based on the structure of the organizational tree in |
| used by software vendors that produce high-end | | | | AD, the manager chose the OU's option and set the |
| software systems. | | | | system to constantly synchronize the information |
| In many cases, such projects are initiated as a part | | | | with AD. This way, each new user will automatically |
| of a License Server Consolidation project. In order to | | | | be related to the correct subsidiary. OpenLM |
| explain the project, let us use an imaginary company | | | | automatically updates the user's belonging to a |
| "Green Energy Ltd." from the USA that has 3 | | | | subsidiary, according to any change in the position. |
| subsidiaries worldwide: UK, Australia, and Japan. Each | | | | Thus, the information now looks the same both in |
| subsidiary manages several license servers with | | | | AD and in OpenLM Users Management interface. |
| different software systems. Let us assume the | | | | |
| following software inventory: | | | | After a month, the team was able to produce a |
| Software | | | | usage report according to the different groups, thus |
| USA UK | | | | easily producing a fair billing report for each group. |
| Australia Japan | | | | |
| ESGRI ArcGIS 55 | | | | The UK subsidiary has decided to further enhance |
| 34 46 | | | | the accuracy of their project's pricing. By |
| 21 | | | | implementing a project usage policy, they have |
| Autodesk Autocad 56 26 | | | | measured their license usage of each project. They |
| 15 | | | | have created all their projects using OpenLM Users |
| 21 | | | | Management application, and have assigned each user |
| PTC 24 | | | | to one or more projects. Users that were assigned |
| 24 12 | | | | to only one project did not have to report the active |
| 31 | | | | project. Users that belonged to more than one |
| Solidworks 35 | | | | project, report the active project using the |
| 11 | | | | capabilities of OpenLM Agent software. |
| 36 41 | | | | |
| The usage diagrams produced from OpenLM | | | | The information collected this way allowed Green |
| EasyAdmin show that utilization of some of the | | | | Energy UK to price their projects better, taking the |
| licenses is high, while other licenses are practically not | | | | cost of expensive software usage into account. |
| in use, depending on the time and location. | | | | |
| This chart demonstrates usage of ESRI ArcGIS | | | | This example provided an insight to the basics of |
| licenses in USA alone: | | | | Floating License Billing that can be implemented by |
| | | | OpenLM system. We can see that the capabilities of |
| The first step the company took was to consolidate | | | | OpenLM actually enabled the server consolidation |
| all the licenses so that a single license server will | | | | project, and also provided all the information needed |
| serve all users worldwide. This table shows the | | | | for billing. |
| license availability worldwide after the consolidation: | | | | The highlights of OpenLM functionalities demonstrated |
| Software Total Licenses | | | | in this article are: |
| ESGRS ArcGIS 156 | | | | - OpenLM's ability to monitor the usage level of the |
| Autodesk Autocad 118 | | | | organizational resources. |
| PTC | | | | - OpenLM's ability to synchronize OpenLM information |
| 91 | | | | with Active Directory in order to avoid manual work |
| Solidworks 123 | | | | and to ensure data accuracy. |
| After the consolidation, the company checked the | | | | - OpenLM's ability to easily provide usage information |
| usage level of their licenses and found that the | | | | for different groups of users. |
| utilization is more balanced. But, some software | | | | - OpenLM's ability to track the usage of licenses for |
| systems are heavily used while others have a very | | | | specific projects. |
| low usage rate. | | | | We have to emphasize that this is not a real world |
| | | | example. In reality, there are many other problems |
| Thus, the licenses were better utilized when the | | | | that were not taken into consideration here, for |
| company adopting the following two steps: | | | | example, network limitations and many other factors. |
| - Utilizing the consolidated license server now allows | | | | Summary |
| users to use the same licenses over the 24-hour | | | | The implementation of a license usage billing policy |
| period. | | | | allows organization to distribute the costs of |
| - The creation of a bigger pool of licenses provides a | | | | software usage between different parts of the |
| higher license availability. | | | | organization. The need to implement such a policy is |
| Based on the usage reports, the company decided to | | | | shared by companies that use expensive software |
| purchase more licenses for some of the software | | | | system that is usually license by FLEXlm, Safenet |
| systems, while cutting down themaintenance fee for | | | | RMS, Safenet HASP, IBM LUM and others. OpenLM |
| other licenses that are under utilized. | | | | allows organization to collect usage time according to |
| The managers of some of the subsidiaries have | | | | groups or projects. |
| complained that they pay for licenses they don't use; | | | | |