About license management
This article is intended for software license administrators and it describes:
What is software license management, and what are its key tasks and benefits.
Where you can find instructions on how to perform the license management tasks with Miradore Management Suite.
Requirements
First, when starting to implement software license management with Miradore Management Suite, navigate to "Administration > System settings > Main > Miradore features" and enable license management, because by default, the feature might be disabled and some license management views might be hidden from the user interface.
We also highly recommend to use software catalog in software license management for finding out what software are installed on to your managed devices, because that is the most efficient and reliable way to perform software identification. If the use of software catalog is not enabled in your Miradore Management Suite instance, please read How to create a license for Miradore to learn how you can enable the feature with the Miradore license.
About software license management
Software license management is the process that ensures that organization uses software in compliance with their copyright and license agreements with minimal cost.
The main tasks of the software license management process are described in the table below. On the right-most column, you can find instructions for performing the step with Miradore Management Suite.
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Task |
Task specific instructions |
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Establish a record of software licenses Find out what software licenses your organization has purchased and store them carefully with the license agreements and purchase receipts into License pools. Study the related license agreements and use the license pool fields to capture the essential license terms and details. |
Adding software licenses to Miradore |
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Begin to manage the use of paid software Explore the software inventory collected by Miradore to find out what software and how many copies of each software is being used in your organization. Investigate which software require a license and create a Managed software item for each software which requires a license. |
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Allocate licenses and configure settings for automatic allocation You can allocate software licenses to Miradore users and assets, or you can even assign licenses for devices or users that are not managed with Miradore. In addition to allocating licenses manually, you can define rules and restrictions for Miradore to enable automatic license allocation based on the identified software installations. |
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Ensure license compliance After you have completed the steps 1-3, you can use the license compliance reports for observing the license compliance status in your organization. By checking the traffic light icon, you can quickly detect software or license pools that might require your attention. In addition to that, you can also define automated monitoring for software licenses if you want Miradore to notify you whenever a license is expiring or license compliance issue occurs or the amount of free licenses in a license pool goes under the certain levels. |
License compliance by license pool License compliance by software |
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Follow-up and optimize With the help of software usage measuring, you might be able to detect assets or users who are really not using the licensed software. In a case like this, you can consider uninstalling the expensive software to release the license for reuse, and thus avoid purchasing new licenses. |
Enabling software usage measuring |
