Flexlm License Servers Consolidation Drive to Large Savings

By: Oren Gabay

OpenLM - Stretch Your Licenses To Their Limit

www.openlm.com

(ArticlesBase SC #410376)

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/ - Flexlm License Servers Consolidation Drive to Large Savings

As the world economy is going through a major turmoil and the budget for hardware and software purchasing is shrinking, managers all over the globe are searching for innovative ways to lower their expenses without hurting workers productivity. One of the "black holes" in every budget at every organization or company that use software (and who doesn't?) is the cost for software maintenance fees, which are paid annually to the software vendors. This article discusses the possibility of phenomenal savings to any budget, by performing a restructuring of the way costly software products managed via floating licenses are being used.





The promise of Floating Licenses: A floating (concurrent) license allows multiple users to share the use of a software application. However, a single license can not be used by multiple users simultaneously. When a user completes his work with the software, another user can begin using it. The promise of the Floating License concept is that shared software assets can provide for less spending, without hurting production. In reality it is rarely achieved and most organizations purchase more floating licenses than are actually needed, for lack of management tools and knowledge.





Acresso Software FLEXnet (FLEXlm) is the leading software in the field of floating licenses. FLEXnet is used by more then 2000 software vendors. Examples are: Autodesk, Borland , Cadence, EDS, Macromedia , Mathsoft, Mathworks , PTC, Rational, Softimage, Solidworks, Sybase, Synopsys, WindRiver, FreeScale, ICS, Foundry, VSNi, Tri-Pacific





Additional source of information for software vendors that use FLEXlm licensing is flexlm.wiselm.com





One of the most important principles when using floating licenses, is that as the number of license servers at use goes down, the efficiency of the network grows. In other words, when a license pool is being split between a growing amount of servers, there is a substance loss of efficiency and less users can take advantage of available licenses. So why does so many organizations use floating license servers in inefficient way?





Reasons for inefficient use of expensive floating licenses

• Historical reasons - A department bought the licenses long ago and managers tend to think of the software as the department's property.

As a result, in many organizations different departments buy duplicated licenses before exploring the option of sharing available licenses.

• Lack of good management tools - FLEXnet (FLEXlm) does not supply management tools as part of the basic package. The lack of good management tools does not allow managers to manage the licenses for best results.

• The need to keep redundant license servers, in order to avoid down time when users are unable to access licenses.

• Sometimes wide area networks are too slow to allow a user to access license servers over the WAN.

Successful license server consolidation require the right tools





A successful consolidation process requires careful planning and has to be based on a detailed usage information database, collected over time. Organizations that go forward with the consolidation process are often involved in difficult situations, when trying to manage the combined license pool. However by choosing the correct software tool and some careful planning, will assure the success of the consolidation while providing good license availability and savings of software maintenance fees.





Important features in management tools for license server consolidation include:

• Support for multiple servers

• Support for multiple time zones, for any of the servers or users

• Detailed usage reports

• Alerts for important events

• Billing reports for total time of usage

• Convenient web based interface







• Automatic idle license release - easy timeout setup (advance OpenLM feature)

In conclusion, for a good implementation of a floating license server consolidation program, companies require advance management tool such as Acresso FLEXnet Manager or OpenLM Utilizer.

About the Author

Oren Gabay

CTO

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