Monitoring & Managing Software Vendors Licensing Portals
Many Software Vendors such as Microsoft (VLSC & MPSA), VMware, Citrix, Veritas, Adobe, etc. have licensing portals.
These contain important information on customers licenses & subscriptions including renewal dates, license keys, release level entitlements, user & device assignments, product downloads, access to knowledge databases, support levels & often provide a route to raising support cases.
From time to time it is important to review which users in your organisation have access rights to your licensing portals. Users who have left the organisation should have their access rights revoked. New users may need to be added & levels of access (who can do what) reviewed.
Prior to placing renewal orders it’s worthwhile reviewing product users (e.g. Adobe). Don’t waste money on renewing subscriptions for users who have left or who are no longer using a product.
It’s worthwhile keeping your Licensing Portals uncluttered, e.g. by archiving old/unused licenses (MyCitrix & MyVMware).
In the case of MyVMware it’s worthwhile naming & structuring folders to reflect your IT infrastructure, locating license keys in the appropriate folder.
Some portals (e.g. MyVMware) will generate useful alerts to named users when something has changed, e.g. generation of new license keys for a later release.
You can often control which user should receive renewal quotations and which resellers can provide quotations (e.g. MyCitrix).
For those clients that have an on-going service agreement with The SAM Club we help them monitor & manage their licensing portals on a pro-active basis.
Some portals are quite complicated, so The SAM Club maintains essential information in its clients SAM Workbooks.
We can also undertake to review nominated licensing portals on a project basis.
For more information, please contact us at [email protected]
