IT managers play a pivotal role in ensuring the smooth operation of their organization's technology infrastructure. One often overlooked yet essential aspect of their responsibilities is managing software licenses. While it might not always grab the spotlight, effective software license management is crucial in IT operations.
As an IT manager, you understand that managing software licenses is not just a mundane task but a strategic imperative. Software license management (SLM) is a crucial part of software asset management (SAM). It helps your organization optimize costs. Without proper oversight, you might overpay for licenses or face hefty fines for non-compliance. Effective license management ensures you only pay for what you need.
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Moreover, efficient software license management allows you to allocate software resources more effectively. You can track which licenses are in use, which are redundant, and which need upgrading or downsizing, eliminating the software wastage in your organization. Have a look at The State of SaaS Management 2024 report to understand the industry benchmarks.
Below mentioned are the common types of software licenses.
Proprietary Licenses: These licenses are sold by software vendors and come with various terms and conditions. Examples include Microsoft Office, Adobe Creative Cloud, and Oracle Database licenses.
Permissive Licenses: These licenses allow access to the source code and are often free. Examples include GNU General Public License (GPL) and Apache License.
Freeware: Software provided at no cost but often with limited functionality. Freeware typically doesn't grant modification rights. Examples include Skype and Dropbox.
Shareware: Software distributed on a trial basis, often with the option to purchase a full license. WinZip and WinRAR are common examples.
Subscription-Based License: In this common type of license, users pay a recurring fee to access the software. It often includes regular updates and support. Microsoft 365 and Adobe Creative Cloud follow this licensing approach.
However, managing the various types of software license can be tedious for your IT team. Therefore, leveraging dedicated software license management (SLM) tools can streamline the entire process. These tools provide a centralized platform to track all software licenses, making it easy to monitor compliance and usage.
The software license management solutions help your team automatically track license usage, alerting you to potential issues like license expirations or overuse. Further, by identifying unused or underutilized licenses, you can eliminate unnecessary expenses and avoid hefty fines. Now, let's discuss the features that make the SLM tools efficient.
Here are the key features of software license management (SLM) tools.
There are many software license management tools that can help your IT admin ensure that your organization does not take unnecessary risks when it comes to managing all their software licenses. Here are some software license management tools.
Zluri offers a SaaS management platform (SMP) that provides you with software license management capability. It helps you to gain complete visibility on all your software assets and their licenses, and eliminate shadow IT in your organization.
Zluri uses nine powerful methods to find every single software license in your organization. It includes MDMs, IDPs & SSO, direct integration with apps, finance & expense management systems, CASBs, HRMS, directories, desktop agents (optional), and browser extension (optional).
Zluri’s nine discovery methods
Software License Management: With Zluri, you can view your software stack, who's using them, what type of licenses you have, how many you've got, and how much you're spending, all in one place. Further, you can monitor software usage that helps you optimize your software licenses and reduce your software spend, empower your team to manage software assets efficiently.
Licenses
And it's not just for your team. You can also track software licenses that your external partners, like freelancers, consultants, and vendors, are using.
Also Read: Want to understand more about tracking licenses, kindly read How to track software licenses.
Vendors
License Renewal: Zluri is your trusted partner when it comes to managing renewals of licenses. Zluri's Renewal Calendar reminds you of when it's time to pay and when contracts are about to expire.
You'll get alerts at 30 days, 15 days, and 1 day before contracts end, and 7 days and 1 day before payments are due. You can even set your own reminders for the really important stuff. With Zluri, you're in control of your software licenses, and you can focus on what matters most to your organization.
Also Read: Want to explore the other renewal management tools, you can skim through Renewal management software.
Automate License Requisition, Approval, & Revocation: Zluri can do three important things automatically: request licenses, get them approved, and remove them when needed.
When an employee joins or leaves, Zluri efficiently automates the process of users’ provisioning and deprovisioning, ensuring software licenses are utilized efficiently and eliminating software wastage.
Onboarding
Offboarding
Zluri even provides contextual-based app recommendations and in-app suggestions that the employees might need based on their job role, seniority level, and department.
Note: Zluri’s in-app suggestions require no-code, making it easy-to-use the workflows.
Context-based app recommendations
Also Read: Interested in knowing about zero-touch provisioning? Read How to implement zero-touch provisioning.
In-app suggestions
In addition, Zluri provides a self-serve solution - App Catalog & Access Request - for your employees. So if an employee needs a new app in their mid-lifecycle, like for a special project or if they get a new role, they can get it themselves.
Zluri’s EAS eliminates the ticketing system and reduces your employees' waiting time for software licenses, freeing-up your team's time to focus on other important tasks and maximize overall software investments.
Also Read: To know more about Zluri’s access requests, self-service access requests.
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ManageEngine AssetExplorer helps to track software licenses from the planning to the disposal phase. This tool enables the management of all software license contracts and ensures that all licenses comply with regulatory standards.
AssetExplorer acts as a centralized repository for all software licenses. It allows you to store and organize license information in one place, making it easy to keep track of licenses and associated details.
Asset Explorer goes beyond tracking and helps you optimize license usage. Identifying underutilized or unused licenses enables your team to reallocate resources effectively, potentially saving significant costs.
FlexNet Manager by Flexera helps to manage and rightsize an organization's software assets. Their IT asset management, scaled for enterprises, enables better license management to save time and money through software license optimization.
Moreover, FlexNet Manager provides a comprehensive view of your software licenses across your organization. It automatically discovers software installations, ensuring you accurately understand what's deployed.
Further, your IT teams can achieve remarkably better results by efficiently managing vendor relationships and contracts with Adobe, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, and more.
Software Asset Optimization (SAO) is an advanced tool by Altair for software asset optimization. It is built to rightsize your organization's software portfolio by providing a centralized repository and using real data to make informed decisions.
With software asset optimization, your IT admin gets an easy-to-use data collection, analysis, and visualization solution with 70+ software usage and analytics reports. SAO also predicts to tune your organization's current software stack and guides future capacity planning for effective software license management.
AssetSonar helps in comprehensive software license tracking. It ensures license compliance, optimizes software spending, and helps the organization to become audit-ready.
AssetSonar’s software license management capability helps you manage all software license agreements and license data of your organization in an all-in-one solution. You can avoid unnecessary purchases and penalties by maintaining license compliance, reducing software spending by tracking license usage, and mitigating adult risks with up-to-date license information.
Snow License Manager enables your team to gain an accurate view of software usage and entitlements. The tool continuously scans your network to identify installed software and ensures you have real-time visibility into your software assets.Your team can also effortlessly track licenses for various software vendors, versions, and editions in a single dashboard.
With its user-friendly interface and powerful features, Snow License Manager empowers IT managers to regain control over their software assets, optimize costs, and ensure compliance.
Quick License Manager by Soraco technologies is a powerful tool that protects your organization's applications with secure symmetric license keys. These license keys are bound to a specific computer or mobile device.
With Quick License Manager, your IT admin can create time-limited trial license keys or a fully automated workflow for subscription-based products. This tool helps activate licenses online or offline.
Reprise License Manager provides all the features your organization needs and expects from an enterprise-class license manager and is easy to administer on-premise or in the cloud.
RLM's user-friendly interface simplifies the management of licenses. You and your team can easily navigate through the dashboard, generate reports, and make informed decisions about licensing strategies.
RLM seamlessly integrates with popular software, enabling your team to work easily while maintaining license compliance.
Ivanti license optimizer acts as a software license manager that helps to optimize your software licenses by reclaiming unused licenses, helping to stay compliant, anticipating true-ups, and curbing IT overspending. This tool discovers what software exists in your organization's software stack, tracks usage, and identifies areas where the IT assets can work better for the company.
Moreover, the tool consolidates data from various sources, including hardware and software inventory, purchasing records, and usage data. This comprehensive visibility empowers you to understand the software license landscape thoroughly.
License Manager by License Dashboard (software asset management tool) allows you to manage software licenses. This tool offers advanced licensing automation, speeds up day-to-day tasks for software asset managers, and ensures that complicated license metrics are properly calculated.
The License Manager ensures that your organization receives the maximum software investments on your software purchases, often saving your business up to 30% of the software spend.
License Manager integrates with the existing IT infrastructure of your organization, and importing inventory and entitlement data into the tool is also quick and easy.
A software license management tool is a subset of software asset management. It helps to keep track of the software licenses, creates records, and ensures that your organization uses the software in the right way. It also helps you follow the rules laid out in your software agreements, such as those end-user license agreements.
The different types of software licenses
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