License management without major consequences

At present, medium-sized businesses in Germany are largely divided when it comes to the use of license management. One part still has little control over the use of existing IT resources.

There is a lack of guidelines and procedures as well as the corresponding tools and human resources. The other part has already implemented first license management processes and is working with third-party tools or databases for their realization.

However, the findings from license management are only used to a limited extent for commercial decisions or to meet legal requirements. It is more a matter of purely recording and tracking the IT resources used, without any consequences for business actions.

Overlicensed or underlicensed?

The greatest need for action is in the development and maintenance of the hardware, software and license inventory. Maintenance is a prerequisite for any valuable procurement decision as well as for optimal, reliable compliance checks that identify overlicensing and underlicensing.

The software used must be determined regularly. When setting up the license inventory, the request and distribution of software must be well organized.

Special tools come into question to support the processes, such as system management tools and software distribution tools. There are also license management and software asset management tools.

This includes cuLicense, the universal license management solution from Circle Unlimited. The cuDetect SAP software, on the other hand, is geared towards optimizing SAP license usage.

License management without restriction

The organizational and process-related prerequisites must be in place for the successful use of license management. This is done by fully integrating the license management system into the SAP landscape.

It must not be a technology-heavy isolated solution. By linking license management directly to the SAP systems, e.g. for procurement and contract management, it is possible to automatically detect overlicensing and underlicensing and to optimize the request and distribution process for software licenses from a commercial and legal perspective.

The logical linking of related licenses and contracts also provides an overview of the financial views and obligations of license agreements and related maintenance contracts.

This provides planning security. The use of open source solutions or "used software" is technically possible in license management, i.e., there are no restrictions or special features to be observed.

However, care must be taken with regard to content. In the case of open source solutions, it must be checked whether they may also be used commercially, and in the case of used software, whether all rights of use were really transferred in a legally valid manner upon acquisition.

A question of resources

The demand for out-of-the-box solutions is increasing. The trend is toward license management in the form of outtasking or outsourcing. In this case, partial tasks or the entire license management are handed over to an external license manager.

This form of license management is interesting for all those who do not want to or cannot yet invest in internal resources. They do not need to build up and keep up-to-date a pool of personnel and knowledge internally. Increasingly, cloud-based technologies are being used for outtasking or outsourcing license management.