Top 10 Software License Optimization Blogs from 2014

By John Emmitt

Well, its that time of year again-- time to take a look back at the most popular Software License Optimization blogs for 2014. Here are the top 10:

1. Oracle Database License Management in VMware Virtual Environments (Part 1 of 3)
2. Oracle Database License Management in VMware Virtual Environments (Part 2 of 3)
3. Windows Server 2012 Datacenter vs. Stacked Standard Edition Licenses
4. Why a SKU is Important to Software Asset Management
5. Oracle’s Magic Ratio 
6. Microsoft SQL Server Licensing Showdown -- Core versus Server + CAL
7. Oracle Database License Management in VMware Virtual Environments (Part 3 of 3)
8. SAP-- the Posterchild for Indirect Access Licensing
9. Software License Models - What You Need to Know (Part 1)
10. Update on Microsoft Downgrade Rights

As we've seen in the past, the list is heavily oriented to blogs on licensing and license management for two of the major software publishers—Microsoft and Oracle. (See this SLO Blog Top 10 List from 2012). The topic of managing Oracle in VMware virtual environments has been a favorite due to the ongoing trend of running Oracle databases on VMware virtual machines.

The blog on SAP indirect access sneaks onto the list at number 8. Indirect access has become a hot issue since SAP has started to focus more software audits on indirect usage of SAP system data in the customer's environment. (FlexNet Manager for SAP Applications can help identify SAP indirect access usage and help mitigate the associated software audit risk). 

There are 2 somewhat general purpose blogs on the list-- the one on "Why a SKU is Important to Software Asset Management" and the one on software license models. These provide good background on the importance of SKUs for automating the process of managing license entitlements and understanding all of the many license models in use today, respectively.

Along the same lines as these top 10 blogs, we have the recently published blog on Managing Microsoft Client Access Licenses (Part 1 of 3)-- check it out.

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