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January 2025

Flexera One introduced the following new features and enhancements this month.

Cloud Cost Optimization​

Cloud Cost Optimization added the following new features in January 2025.

Editing recommendation sets​

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This beta enhancement is available with Cloud Cost Optimization.

Cloud Cost Optimization now offers a workflow to edit recommendation sets. You can customize and update policy parameter values for new and existing recommendation sets. This workflow helps you continuously align recommendations per your organization’s needs. For more information, see the Flexera One Help topic Editing a Recommendation Set.

Centralized Savings Plans visibility now available for Microsoft Azure Modern Commerce Agreement (MCA)​

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This feature is available with Cloud Cost Optimization.

FinOps teams can now access and manage critical savings plans data including cost, utilization percentage, and expiration dates for Microsoft Azure MCA directly on the Savings Plans page (Cloud > Commitments > Savings Plans). This page provides a consolidated view of the Azure MCA savings plans for the selected organization for a 30-day rolling window.

By centralizing this data, the FinOps teams no longer have to rely on external cloud consoles, saving valuable time and resources. With comprehensive data at their fingertips, teams can make more informed, timely decisions to better manage and optimize cloud usage. The real-time visibility into key metrics, enables them to optimize cloud spending, avoid unnecessary costs, and maximize savings.

Previously, the FinOps teams had to switch between multiple cloud provider consoles to access this data which was time-consuming.

For more information, see Microsoft Azure Savings Plans in the Flexera One Help.

IT Asset Management​

IT Asset Management released the following features and enhancements in January 2025.

Changes to supported operating systems and compatibility with other products​

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This enhancement is available with IT Asset Management.

The following operating system versions have been added to the list of supported operating systems on FlexNet Inventory Agent:

  • Fedora Linux 41

  • Ubuntu 24.10

  • Windows Server 2025

The following product versions have been added to the compatibility list of IT Asset Management with other products:

  • BMC Discovery (previously ADDM) 24.3

  • Citrix Virtual Apps server (previously XenApp server) 7.2407

  • Citrix Virtual Desktops (previously Citrix XenDesktop) 7.2407

  • EdgeSight for Citrix Virtual Apps (previously XenApp EdgeSight) 7.2407

  • IBM License Metric Tool (ILMT) or HCL BigFix Inventory on IBM DB2 9.2.37

  • IBM License Metric Tool (ILMT) or HCL BigFix Inventory on Microsoft SQL Server 9.2.37

  • OpenText Universal Discovery 24.4

For the full lists, see Prerequisite Software and Compatibility with Other Products in System Requirements and Compatibility.

Addition of cluster information in inventory views and VM counts in Report Builder​

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This enhancement is available with IT Asset Management.

Previously, inventory views within IT Asset Management displayed host names but did not include cluster names. However, given how dynamic virtual environments are, VMs are frequently moving between hosts within a given cluster. For this reason, many software licensing rules in virtual environments are actually set at the cluster level, not the host level.

In this release, the inventory views and Report Builder have been enhanced to include cluster information and VM counts:

  • A new Cluster Name has been added to all the inventory views (such as Active Inventory, Ignored Inventory, Cloud Service Provider Inventory, and more) where the host name information is available. This column allows users to easily identify the cluster to which each host and VM belongs.

  • The Report Builder now displays the number of VMs per host and per cluster. These fields help users to automate and improve the process of license allocation based on VM density.

Improvements to the displayed information for licensed products​

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This enhancement is available with IT Asset Management.

The IT Asset Management License page displays the details of your IT Asset Management license. The Licensed products section on this page has been improved to provide clearer information and offer additional data about containers.

  • The numbers of licensed devices are now categorized into Client licenses and Server licenses. Each category includes numbers of licensed devices, active devices, and available licenses.

  • A new count Avg. active containers (90 days) is provided showing the average number of active containers over the past 90 days, together with the number of server licenses consumed by the active containers. Every 10 containers consume one server license. You can also view a chart displaying the daily active container counts over the past 90 days.

For more information, see IT Asset Management License in the Flexera One Help.

Support for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) as a default cloud service provider detected by inventory agents​

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This feature is available with IT Asset Management.

This feature requires version 82 or later of InventorySettings.xml and version 16.0.1 or later of the FlexNet Inventory Agent.

Previously, IT Asset Management supported the three major cloud service providers (CSPs)—Azure, AWS, and GCP. If the FlexNet Inventory Agent was installed on a virtual system hosted with one of these CSPs, the Hosted In property would automatically be set, and the system would be added to the Cloud Service Provider Inventory view. However, this support did not extend to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI).

Now, OCI is also detected as a default CSP to ensure comprehensive inventory management across all major cloud service providers. If the FlexNet Inventory Agent inventories a VM running on OCI, this information will be automatically fed into IT Asset Management.

Ability to specify the cluster name in the Flexera Kubernetes Agent Helm chart​

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This feature is available with IT Asset Management.

Previously, users were not able to specify the name of a cluster in the Flexera Kubernetes Agent Helm chart. As Kubernetes does not have a native naming mechanism, the agent uses a variety of strategies to discover an appropriate name for the cluster; however, these strategies were not consistently reliable.

Now, you can use the new parameter clusterName to bypass the discovery process and directly assign a meaningful and easily recognizable name for a cluster. This new method ensures better organization and quicker identification of clusters.

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Note: The cluster name specified by the clusterName parameter is for display purposes only, and the cluster is identified internally by a unique ID.

For more information about the new parameter, see Full Flexera Kubernetes Agent Helm chart configuration and installation in the Flexera One Help.

VMware vSAN inventory now collected and recognized​

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This enhancement is available with IT Asset Management.

VMware vSAN, a software-defined storage solution that is integrated directly into the ESXi hypervisor, is now collected and recognized as VMware inventory. You can find it as an application inventory record on the VMware Inventory page, along with all the relevant properties collected about how it is licensed, such as Capacity, Keys assigned, Evaluation, and more.

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To collect the necessary vSAN information, FlexNet Beacon or ESXQuery tool version 23.1.0 or later (released with IT Asset Management version 2024 R2.1) is required.

To support this enhancement, the VMware Inventory page has been updated with the following new properties:

  • Cluster name: Indicates the vMotion cluster to which the ESX host represented by this row belongs.

  • Cluster Required vSAN Capacity: The total number of TiBs (Tebibytes) used by vSAN datastores on all hosts belonging to the vMotion cluster represented in this row.

  • Host required vSAN capacity (TiBs): The total number of TiBs (Tebibytes) used by vSAN datastores on the host represented by this row.

For more information about the VMware Inventory page, including a complete list of available properties, see VMware Inventory in the Flexera One Help.

IT Visibility​

IT Visibility released the following enhancement in January 2025.

Private Catalog user experience improvements​

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This enhancement is available with IT Visibility and Technology Intelligence Platform.

In January, Flexera One customers who make use of IT Visibility’s Private Catalog features will see a number of subtle improvements and optimizations to the workflow related to managing Private Catalog Releases:

  • New Private Catalog Releases can be created based upon an existing release.

    When you choose an existing release and click Create Release From This Release, the release details of the existing release, such as Manufacturer, Product Family, Product, Category and Sub-category, are automatically carried over to the new release. This automated behavior can greatly reduce the time it takes to create new Private Catalog releases over the manual text entries that had been necessary before.

    Previously, you had to manually type in the details while creating a private catalog release, and these manual tasks could lead to erroneous data entry. With the new enhancements in place, a new private release can be created using the details of an existing private release—resulting in reduced time and more accurate data entry.

  • Private Catalog Release details (Category and Sub-category), which had been free-form text fields, now accept input from a dropdown menu of category or sub-category choices.

    When you do need to edit the release details, you can still enter your own values for these detail fields, but the ability to choose from a list of existing values can speed up the workflow and reduce the opportunities for errors and inconsistencies in those detail values. The new dropdown menus are populated from the categories and sub-categories used in your previous private releases and from Technopedia categories and sub-categories. So, for customers who want to ensure their product categories and sub-categories align with Technopedia’s categories and sub-categories, these dropdown choices also make it easier to get those values standardized.

For more information about how to work with Private Catalog releases in IT Visibility, see Working With the Private Catalog in the Flexera One Help.