Handling license subscriptions and other license types

Christopher_Carver

Between Microsoft's O365 and Adobe's license subscription model I have been finding it a bit difficult in modeling this under the Cireson Asset Mgt. solution. The License Type is a static list of only two options that hearken back to the days of boxed licenses of 10 years ago; Temporary and Permanent.

We have 11 different license types across the enterprise right now. I expect more to come considering vendors constantly thinking of new ways to charge us.

• Individual
• OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturers)
• Named User License
• Volume
• Client Access License (CAL)
• Trial License
• Perpetual
• Concurrent License
• Free License
• Subscription
• Node Locked

So what's the best way to handle this?

As an example. We have multiple enterprise subscriptions with Microsoft with O365. Within each of the Enterprise subscriptions we have multiple service plans. Each service plan has varying and overlapping software products within each service plan. Check the "it's complicated" box.  

Tony_Collett

Ahh, Licensing - make it as complicated as possible so when the Audits come around you have no idea if you are compliant. 

Thankfully Cireson Asset Management tries to help alleviate these concerns. While it's not perfect, it allows basic understanding of how to store Licenses. 

The License Type unfortunately cannot be modified, this is mainly due to the fact that it changes the form dynamically based on the response. 

There are a couple of options:
You could try using the License Name to add in what kind of license the product is covered by. 
You could also use the notes section within the License class and put all the information required in there. You can then expose that field in a column and filter it, if you have the right terms/standards in place. 
You could extend the License class using the Authoring tool to include an additional tab with Licensing type information

That's a small handful of what I can think of. Maybe there's other options. 

You are also welcome to raise a feature request to have this modified and come out of the box.

Regards, Tony

Ingrid_Glatz

I'm also struggling with Adobe licenses but not because of their license type, but the products themselves.

There are individual installations of single Adobe products (InDesign, Illustrator,...) and Adobe Complete Suite or a bundle that includes some of their products.

Each individual product gets installed the same way, so SCCM can only inventory the individual product, but has no knowledge of the Suite or a bundle. I can figure out how many individual installation I have, but no idea how to figure out which ones were installed by a suite or bundle distribution or individual software.

Any idea how to handle this except to maybe set a separate registry key in Programs and Feature for each distribution to get it inventoried by SCCM and be able to sort it out in Software Asset Management?

Regards

Ingrid