By Cyndi Tackett
There’s a lot of talk in the industry about the size of libraries when it comes to application recognition, SKU’s, etc. This is all well and good and it’s important on one level (and, for the record, we have extremely comprehensive and large libraries), but it seems to miss the most important part. And that is the business value. What business value do these libraries provide in managing your software assets? Let me give a couple examples:
- Product Use Rights Library – content in a Product Use Rights Library provides critical insights into how you can use a given application, answering key questions such as whether an application consumes a license in a non-production environment, how you count applications on virtual machines or clusters, whether you can move an application to the cloud, or how you need to count applications accessed through bring-your-own-device (BYOD) programs. These are all product use rights that greatly affect your license position.
- Stock Keeping Unit (SKU) Library - SKUs reveal everything you need to know about your entitlement including the license model or how you need to count it, whether you bought a bundle and whether the license purchase includes maintenance. For example, the SKU library automatically knows that a purchase of IBM’s Websphere should be counted by Processor Value Units (PVUs), if it includes other bundled products, and how long it is covered under maintenance.
As you can see, these libraries provide critical information on the software throughout your estate. Now think about the value that can be derived by reconciling this information with knowledge about the software installed, its usage and the entitlements you own for all of this software. When you have the ability to automatically reconcile this data, you not only are able to determine an accurate license position for your valuable software assets, but you’re also able to manage software compliance, defend against software audits and have laid the foundation for optimizing software spend.
So, the next time the discussion turns to “how big is the library”, redirect the conversation to what you can do with the data in the libraries to better manage your software assets. The business value is derived from leveraging these rich insights to better manage your software estate.