Software Pricing and Licensing Webcast and 2009 Survey


Amy Konary from IDC shares findings from the Flexera Software sponsored 2009 Survey.

  • Webcast
    Learn about the key issues and trends on the minds of software vendors, high-tech manufacturers, and enterprise IT executives and managers.
  • Survey
    Get real-world data on the latest pricing and licensing trends and best practices in the software industry.

On Demand Webcast: Finding the Optimal Mix - What’s New in FlexNet Manager 14

Learn how to determine your optimal licensing mix. Centrally manage usage data, contract terms and costs. Map product-to-features and organizational structure. Plus, see how you can now report on CATIA usage.

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"We now understand exactly what our license requirements are for the whole corporation."

Dan Griffith
Freescale Semiconductor, Inc

FlexNet Manager for Engineering Applications

Cut Software Costs with Centralized Software License Management and Usage Tracking

Centrally Track Usage for Multiple High-Value Applications

Specializing in Electronic Design Automation (EDA), Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Exploration & Production (E&P) and Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) applications, FlexNet Manager centralizes software license management with the flexibility to monitor, manage, and report on the usage of a broad range of high-value software investments. More

Track and Manage FlexEnabled Licenses— FlexEnabled applications are programs that have been instrumented with Flexera Software’s FlexNet licensing technology by their respective software vendors. There are over 20,000 FlexEnabled applications on the market from software vendors such as:

  • Abaqus
  • Altair
  • ANSYS
  • Autodesk
  • Cadence
  • ESRI
  • Fluent
  • Landmark
  • MathWorks
  • Mentor Graphics
  • MSC
  • PTC
  • Rational
  • Schlumberger
  • Synopsys

As the makers of FlexNet, Flexera Software is uniquely capable of providing organizations access to the most complete and meaningful insight into the software usage of these valuable applications.

NEW! Track and Manage LUM-enabled Applications—If your organization relies on CATIA, ENOVIA SmarTeam, and other LUM-enabled applications, you can now use FlexNet Manager to report on and optimize these licenses too - all within a single interface and workflow.

Track and Manage Windows-based Applications—Track, manage, and report on the usage of your high-value Windows-based applications, such as Visio, using FlexNet Manager.

Detailed Usage Reports

Run a wide variety of license usage reports to gain a complete understanding of when, where, and how your organization uses software licenses. More

FlexNet Manager software license management capabilities allow you to track and report on actual software license usage across your organization. It catalogs all usage data in a centralized database that you can access anytime using FlexNet Manager's powerful reporting engine. This solution also offers a way to analyze usage and denial trends in relation to license terms, costs and organizational structure.

With usage reports provided by FlexNet Manager, you now have a complete understanding of your organization's actual licensing needs, so you can save money by making accurate software purchasing decisions. You can cut costs further by identifying underutilized licenses that can be shared among departments and determining which annual support plans no longer need to be renewed.

Detailed Usage Reports

Software Investment Planner

This powerful planning solution provides detailed insight into software usage and denial trends as they relate to contractual license terms, costs and organizational structure. More

Get answers to critical business questions more quickly and easily using FlexNet Manager’s new Software Investment Planner. Its flexible data model allows you to test various scenarios and get answers to any number of questions that begin with, “What if…?” Now you can better understand things like the benefits or pitfalls of new licensing models or pinpoint the most efficient way to distribute licenses across the organization.

Unlike any other tool on the market, it recommends purchase quantities based upon past usage trends and other customizable factors. This helps you to more accurately plan and budget for the future, identify the most efficient way to distribute licenses across the organization, and determine the right mix of software to purchase or retire in order to minimize software costs, effectively manage denials and address license compliance issues.

Software Investment Planner

User-Friendly Web-Based Interface

FlexNet Manager's Web-based UI makes it easy for any administrator to securely manage licensing operations from anywhere. More

FlexNet Manager provides a single console view of all the licenses and license servers in your environment, enabling a single administrator to effectively manage and maintain licenses, even from remote locations.

Using FlexNet Manager's Web-based interface, you can view in near real time which licenses are in use and who is using them, making it easy to determine and resolve license availability and compliance issues.

User-Friendly Web-Based Interface

Custom Reporting

Create your own custom reports with Report Designer powered by Cognos. More

Use several chart and graph options to make data more meaningful and easier to digest. Import your LDAP organizational structure to quickly identify software usage by business unit or user.

Custom Reporting

At-a-Glance Summary View

The Summary page has an extra section listing the general status of all license servers, so you can see at a glance which servers are up, down, or experiencing an error. More

Get a summary view of the current state of licenses across your organization, including the real-time status of servers and vendor daemons, the most heavily used application features, the most active vendor daemons, and more. The Summary page has an extra section listing the general status of all license servers, so you can see at a glance which servers are up, down, or experiencing an error.

At-a-Glance Summary View

Real-Time License Availability Monitoring

FlexNet Manager allows you to see current license usage and availability, so you can quickly resolve issues before they impact end users.

Report Scheduler

Schedule reports to automatically run whenever you want them on an ongoing basis.

Proactive License Alerts

Automatically receive alerts notifying you of potential licensing problems—such as downed license servers, license expirations, license usage thresholds exceeded, and license overdraft situations. Alerts can be set globally across all license servers in your organization and customized to only alert administrators responsible for a subset of license activity.

Automate License Management Tasks

Eliminate the need for time-consuming maintenance scripts by scheduling routine tasks, such as lmgrd license server reread, log file rotation, and automatically restarting any license server, from within FlexNet Manager, allowing administrators to spend more time on other valuable tasks.

Managing Roles and Permissions

Easily define each user’s access rights to FlexNet Manager, ensuring personnel never perform unauthorized tasks, such as deleting or canceling the reports of others. You can also group users into different roles with specific access rights and assign them responsibility for server and agent subsets.

Cross-Platform Support

FlexNet Manager's cross-platform architecture runs on virtually every OS, including the latest versions of Windows, Solaris, AIX, Red Hat, and HP-UX. It also runs on VMware Workstation, ESX Server, and Windows Server 2008.
License Usage Analysis and Reporting

Centrally Track Usage for Multiple High-Value Applications

Specializing in Electronic Design Automation (EDA), Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Exploration & Production (E&P) and Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) applications, FlexNet Manager centralizes software license management with the flexibility to monitor, manage, and report on the usage of a broad range of high-value software investments. More

Track and Manage FlexEnabled Licenses— FlexEnabled applications are programs that have been instrumented with Flexera Software’s FlexNet licensing technology by their respective software vendors. There are over 20,000 FlexEnabled applications on the market from software vendors such as:

  • Abaqus
  • Altair
  • ANSYS
  • Autodesk
  • Cadence
  • ESRI
  • Fluent
  • Landmark
  • MathWorks
  • Mentor Graphics
  • MSC
  • PTC
  • Rational
  • Schlumberger
  • Synopsys

As the makers of FlexNet, Flexera Software is uniquely capable of providing organizations access to the most complete and meaningful insight into the software usage of these valuable applications.

NEW! Track and Manage LUM-enabled Applications—If your organization relies on CATIA, ENOVIA SmarTeam, and other LUM-enabled applications, you can now use FlexNet Manager to report on and optimize these licenses too - all within a single interface and workflow.

Track and Manage Windows-based Applications—Track, manage, and report on the usage of your high-value Windows-based applications, such as Visio, using FlexNet Manager.

Detailed Usage Reports

Run a wide variety of license usage reports to gain a complete understanding of when, where, and how your organization uses software licenses. More

FlexNet Manager software license management capabilities allow you to track and report on actual software license usage across your organization. It catalogs all usage data in a centralized database that you can access anytime using FlexNet Manager's powerful reporting engine. This solution also offers a way to analyze usage and denial trends in relation to license terms, costs and organizational structure.

With usage reports provided by FlexNet Manager, you now have a complete understanding of your organization's actual licensing needs, so you can save money by making accurate software purchasing decisions. You can cut costs further by identifying underutilized licenses that can be shared among departments and determining which annual support plans no longer need to be renewed.

Detailed Usage Reports

Software Investment Planner

This powerful planning solution provides detailed insight into software usage and denial trends as they relate to contractual license terms, costs and organizational structure. More

Get answers to critical business questions more quickly and easily using FlexNet Manager’s new Software Investment Planner. Its flexible data model allows you to test various scenarios and get answers to any number of questions that begin with, “What if…?” Now you can better understand things like the benefits or pitfalls of new licensing models or pinpoint the most efficient way to distribute licenses across the organization.

Unlike any other tool on the market, it recommends purchase quantities based upon past usage trends and other customizable factors. This helps you to more accurately plan and budget for the future, identify the most efficient way to distribute licenses across the organization, and determine the right mix of software to purchase or retire in order to minimize software costs, effectively manage denials and address license compliance issues.

Software Investment Planner

Database-Powered Reporting

Quickly get the accurate license usage data you need with FlexNet Manager's database-powered reporting engine. More

Powered by Cognos 8, you can run queries against the FlexNet Manager database to quickly generate detailed, accurate licensing reports. You can also use third-party or custom reporting tools of your choice to query the database.

If you're currently using SAM products, you will instantly notice how the speed and accuracy of this new database-powered engine makes FlexNet Manager reporting far superior to SAM.

Database-Powered Reporting

Custom Reporting

Create your own custom reports with Report Designer powered by Cognos. More

Use several chart and graph options to make data more meaningful and easier to digest. Import your LDAP organizational structure to quickly identify software usage by business unit or user.

Custom Reporting

New Contract Management Repository

FlexNet Manager’s centralized software license management capabilities now offers a central place to store all the complex terms of your contracts so you can more easily identify compliance issues and see the cost of changes in your license environment. More

Many organizations have multiple orders with any given vendor, and those orders are made up of several applications that are deployed in various ways. With such complexity, there may be times when organizations aren’t really sure what they own.

Software Investment Planner can serve as your system of record for this complex data. You can input all the terms of your contracts and replicate real-world structures by grouping terms under multiple pools. For example, pools may be associated with different regions or a vendor may want to separate their newer technology with their legacy technology. Vendor acquisitions may also drive unique terms. Now you can easily see how your complex contract terms and costs map to usage trends in order to address compliance issues and test different scenarios to identify the optimal way to purchase and allocate licenses.

Contract Management Repository

New Product-Based Reporting

Map complex product-to-feature relationships so you can provide procurement with reports on how your organization is using the products listed on your software contracts. More

Your procurement team understands the contract terms that refer to products, not features. But your usage reports are based on features, sometimes with cryptic naming conventions that even license administrators can’t decipher or understand.

Rather than rely on time-consuming manual spreadsheet manipulation, use the power of centralized software management in FlexNet Manager to map complex product-to-feature relationships so you can provide procurement with reports on how your organization is using the products listed on your software contracts.

Product-Based Reporting

Improved Organization-Model Maintenance

FlexNet Manager now offers an easier way to maintain your user data so you can report on how individuals are using software by organization, geography, project, or time zone with current information. More

With FlexNet Manager v. 14, you can now fully leverage the power of centralized software license management to maintain user data in two ways. You can make major updates by importing XML files or make minor updates using a new GUI. This new interface makes it easy to keep this important information updated by providing you with greater visibility into your hierarchical structure.

Organization-Model Maintenance

Report Scheduler

Schedule reports to automatically run whenever you want them on an ongoing basis.

More Report Formats

Export reports into multiple file formats, including Excel, PDF, CVS, TXT, PNG, JPEG, HTML, and RIF.

Scripting Support

Enter script commands in the FlexNet Manager UI during report configuration to perform custom actions after the reports are generated. Custom report configurations are stored in the FlexNet Manager database for reuse at any time.

Peak Usage and Denial Reporting

Anticipate and prevent license denials using this report that helps you predict when denials are most likely to occur. More

FlexNet Manager includes a built-in report that makes it easier for you to anticipate and prevent license denials.

The report displays trends in your license usage, showing you the days and times when it's at its maximum and minimum, so you can see when the probability of denials will be high and take appropriate action.

Peak Usage and Denial Reporting

Unique Users Report

FlexNet Manager generates reports on the number of unique users running specific features at a given time. More

Whenever upcoming maintenance could cause server downtime, you can use this report to only notify people using the impacted features.

Unique Users Report

Usage Over Time Reports

See the maximum number of licenses in use over a period of time to determine which licenses to renew and which to drop. More
Usage Over Time Reports

Usage Summary Reports

More accurately forecast future purchases by viewing per-license usage data by feature and user.

Summary Barchart Reports

Compare license utilization across users, features, and more based on calculations made in a Usage Summary report.

Usage Efficiency Reports

See the amount each license is being used in order to determine the proper number of licenses needed on an ongoing basis.

High Water Mark Reports

Understand peak usage of licenses over time, so you can optimize license purchases and more effectively manage peak demand. More
High Water Mark Reports

Drill Down on Data Points

Get the exact data you need to answer your licensing questions quicker than ever before by drilling down on data points to get the precise transaction-level data you need. More
Drill Down on Data Points

Server Coverage Reports

Document the time period a particular license server was serving licenses, as well as any significant periods of downtime.

Raw Reports

Improve analysis and troubleshooting of lmgrd license server activity by seeing individual usage events for every license checkout.

Deleting and Canceling Reports

To help improve security, now only the owner of a report has permission to delete or cancel it.

Customized Report Management

Save combinations of report parameters that you can run again and again.
Global License Server Management

Centrally Manage License Servers

FlexNet Manager offers a single console view that allows one administrator to manage licenses and lmgrd license servers across the enterprise. More

FlexNet Manager’s software license management system allows you to track and process your licenses globally.

Centrally Manage License Servers

Agent Management

Get more visibility into and control over your license environment with agent support, which includes views into agents' health and the ability to remove or unregister a specific agent.

Better Manage License Server Subsets

FlexNet Manager now makes it easy for specific administrators to be assigned responsibility for server and agent subsets. More

FlexNet Manager now makes it easy for specific administrators to be assigned responsibility for server and agent subsets.

You can customize FlexNet Manager so each administrator only sees activity and receives alerts for their assigned server and agent sets, no one else’s. It helps improve security while saving administrators the hassle of filtering through the activities of every server to find their own.
 Better Manage License Server Subsets

Activatable and Detachable License Support

FlexNet Manager can track both activatable licenses (user- or machine-specific licenses controlled from a server) and detachable licenses (concurrent licenses that can be used away from the network for a time).

User-Friendly Web-Based Interface

FlexNet Manager's Web-based UI makes it easy for any administrator to securely manage licensing operations from anywhere. More

FlexNet Manager provides a single console view of all the licenses and license servers in your environment, enabling a single administrator to effectively manage and maintain licenses, even from remote locations.

Using FlexNet Manager's Web-based interface, you can view in near real time which licenses are in use and who is using them, making it easy to determine and resolve license availability and compliance issues.

User-Friendly Web-Based Interface

Vendor Daemon Status

View the current, in-depth status of each vendor daemon in your environment, including their individual report and debug logs.

Flexible License Status Updating

Define how often you wish to be proactively updated on the status of different licenses.

Automate License Management Tasks

Eliminate the need for time-consuming maintenance scripts by scheduling routine tasks, such as lmgrd license server reread, log file rotation, and automatically restarting any license server, from within FlexNet Manager, allowing administrators to spend more time on other valuable tasks.

Automatic License Reread

Set time for automatic reread of license files to ensure that all updates are incorporated into your license management activities.

Secure Remote Administration

The Web-based interface makes it easy for you to securely manage license usage from anywhere.

Managing Roles and Permissions

Easily define each user’s access rights to FlexNet Manager, ensuring personnel never perform unauthorized tasks, such as deleting or canceling the reports of others. You can also group users into different roles with specific access rights and assign them responsibility for server and agent subsets.

License File Editor

As license entitlements change, you can use FlexNet Manager to edit license files and distribute them to the different license servers in your environment.

Cross-Platform Support

FlexNet Manager's cross-platform architecture runs on virtually every OS, including the latest versions of Windows, Solaris, AIX, Red Hat, and HP-UX. It also runs on VMware Workstation, ESX Server, and Windows Server 2008.

IPv6 Certification

FlexNet Manager now works as an Ipv6 application in a dual-stack environment (Ipv4/Ipv6) and complies with government requirements for IPv6 compatibility.

More Platform and Database Support

FlexNet Manager now supports Redhat Enterprise 4.0, Windows Vista through Internet Explorer 7, and Solaris 10, as well as Oracle 10g, MySQL 5.0, and SQL server 2005 databases.

LDAP Support

Save time by using your LDAP database to establish user access rights to FlexNet Manager.

SNMP Integration

Send commands to FlexNet Manager from tools like IBM's Tivoli® and CA's Unicenter® using SNMP protocols.
Productivity Tools

At-a-Glance Summary View

The Summary page has an extra section listing the general status of all license servers, so you can see at a glance which servers are up, down, or experiencing an error. More

Get a summary view of the current state of licenses across your organization, including the real-time status of servers and vendor daemons, the most heavily used application features, the most active vendor daemons, and more. The Summary page has an extra section listing the general status of all license servers, so you can see at a glance which servers are up, down, or experiencing an error.

At-a-Glance Summary View

Proactive License Alerts

Automatically receive alerts notifying you of potential licensing problems—such as downed license servers, license expirations, license usage thresholds exceeded, and license overdraft situations. Alerts can be set globally across all license servers in your organization and customized to only alert administrators responsible for a subset of license activity.

Search and Sort Tools

Search and sort functionality makes it easier than ever to find the licensing data you need, which is especially useful for large organizations with many license servers. More

FlexNet Manager has enhanced search and sorting capabilities that make it easier for license administrators—especially those managing a high number of license servers and reports—to find specific licensing data.

 

Automatic License Server Restart

FlexNet Manager can automatically restart any license server with a single mouse click at initial set up, helping to reduce downtime while making your system easier to maintain.

Alert Execution Scripts

Save time and better manage licenses by using scripts to automatically respond to FlexNet Manager alerts. More

Save time and better manage licenses by using scripts to automatically respond to FlexNet Manager alerts.

For example, upon receiving a concurrent license usage threshold alert, a script could trigger an email to your users requesting they close the application when not in use.

Alert Escalations

FlexNet Manager will escalate alerts that have not been acted upon in a timely manner. You control which alert types require escalation.

Real-Time License Availability Monitoring

FlexNet Manager allows you to see current license usage and availability, so you can quickly resolve issues before they impact end users.

SAM Report Command Line Recognition

Legacy SAM customers can use FlexNet Manager to run their SAM-configured automated reports with minimal effort.

New and Enhanced Features in Version 14

Software Investment Planner

This powerful planning solution provides detailed insight into software usage and denial trends as they relate to contractual license terms, costs and organizational structure. More

Get answers to critical business questions more quickly and easily using FlexNet Manager’s new Software Investment Planner. Its flexible data model allows you to test various scenarios and get answers to any number of questions that begin with, “What if…?” Now you can better understand things like the benefits or pitfalls of new licensing models or pinpoint the most efficient way to distribute licenses across the organization.

Unlike any other tool on the market, it recommends purchase quantities based upon past usage trends and other customizable factors. This helps you to more accurately plan and budget for the future, identify the most efficient way to distribute licenses across the organization, and determine the right mix of software to purchase or retire in order to minimize software costs, effectively manage denials and address license compliance issues.

Software Investment Planner

New Contract Management Repository

FlexNet Manager’s centralized software license management capabilities now offers a central place to store all the complex terms of your contracts so you can more easily identify compliance issues and see the cost of changes in your license environment. More

Many organizations have multiple orders with any given vendor, and those orders are made up of several applications that are deployed in various ways. With such complexity, there may be times when organizations aren’t really sure what they own.

Software Investment Planner can serve as your system of record for this complex data. You can input all the terms of your contracts and replicate real-world structures by grouping terms under multiple pools. For example, pools may be associated with different regions or a vendor may want to separate their newer technology with their legacy technology. Vendor acquisitions may also drive unique terms. Now you can easily see how your complex contract terms and costs map to usage trends in order to address compliance issues and test different scenarios to identify the optimal way to purchase and allocate licenses.

Contract Management Repository

New Product-Based Reporting

Map complex product-to-feature relationships so you can provide procurement with reports on how your organization is using the products listed on your software contracts. More

Your procurement team understands the contract terms that refer to products, not features. But your usage reports are based on features, sometimes with cryptic naming conventions that even license administrators can’t decipher or understand.

Rather than rely on time-consuming manual spreadsheet manipulation, use the power of centralized software management in FlexNet Manager to map complex product-to-feature relationships so you can provide procurement with reports on how your organization is using the products listed on your software contracts.

Product-Based Reporting

New Usage Report for LUM-enabled Applications

If your organization relies on CATIA, ENOVIA SmarTeam, and other LUM-enabled applications, you can now use FlexNet Manager to report on and optimize these licenses too - all with a single interface and workflow.

Improved Organization-Model Maintenance

FlexNet Manager now offers an easier way to maintain your user data so you can report on how individuals are using software by organization, geography, project, or time zone with current information. More

With FlexNet Manager v. 14, you can now fully leverage the power of centralized software license management to maintain user data in two ways. You can make major updates by importing XML files or make minor updates using a new GUI. This new interface makes it easy to keep this important information updated by providing you with greater visibility into your hierarchical structure.

Organization-Model Maintenance