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BYOSL for IaaS/PaaS

Software is increasingly hosted in cloud environments by a variety of cloud service providers (an arrangement often referred to as either Infrastructure as a Service [IaaS], or Platform as a Service [PaaS], depending on the service).

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Another common model is Software as a Service (SaaS); but this is excluded here because the normal practice with SaaS is to include any licensing costs within the service subscription price. For more details about the different service models, see SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS.

Common practice for IaaS (especially) or PaaS (less commonly) is for your enterprise, as the subscriber to the cloud service, to take responsibility for license provision, just as you do when you run software on-premises (locally in your own enterprise). For IaaS/PaaS, this is often called "bring your own software license" (BYOSL).

Managing your own software licensing in the cloud adds a few new data values that should be tracked for best practice:

  • It is valuable to know which cloud service provider is hosting a particular application that your enterprise uses. Although many software publishers don't change the terms of your license based on the choice of cloud service provider, some do (for example, IBM separately identifies major cloud service providers amongst its Eligible Public Clouds, and even has different values of PVUs consumed per vCPU or Core across its own different cloud offerings). But even where there is no such variation, it is both a data point for practical management and, potentially, information necessary for a software audit (which, among other things, seeks to identify where the software is running).

  • Even though a software publisher may specify common license requirements for use across any cloud service provider, those requirements may be different than the ones applying when you use the application locally on- premises. For example, with points-based licensing, a publisher may specify a different points rule for IaaS/PaaS than for local installations. You may need to switch the applicable points rule depending on where the software is hosted.

The first step, then, is identifying your cloud service provider. In IT Asset Management, this is a two-stage process:

  1. Any cloud service providers must be recorded in the system for your use. Several of the better-known cloud service providers are provided for you (and these cannot be disabled or changed); but you may also add any additional cloud service providers you need. To extend the list of cloud service providers, navigate to Cloud Service Providers tab in the IT Asset Management Settings General page (Administration > IT Asset Management Settings > General). See IT Asset Management Settings: Cloud Service Providers Tab for more details.
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The Open button is only enabled when you select multiple rows with the same inventory device type (in this case, Virtual machine), and where all the selected records are consistently either manually-created records or automatically collected as inventory (but not a mixture of both).

  • Option 3: You can download information from your cloud service provider into a spreadsheet, and perform a one-off inventory upload (see Inventory Data One-Off Upload Page). You could also schedule repeated uploads of the current spreadsheet data through an inventory beacon.

  • Option 4: You (or a consultant) can write a business adapter to update the Hosted in value for appropriate inventory devices. For more information, see the The Business Adapter Studio in Using FlexNet Business Adapters.

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You do not need to set the value On-premises for each inventory device (VM) that is locally hosted within your enterprise. Any inventory device that is not specifically assigned to a cloud service provider automatically gets the On-premises value.

With the cloud service provider hosting each device (and its associated software applications) now identified, you need to adjust the settings on the appropriate licenses to allow correct consumption. Once again, there are two aspects to this:

  • The license must be modified to allow consumption by inventory devices that are reported from the appropriate cloud service provider (or alternatively, restricted to consumption by devices that are hosted on-premises, if that is your choice). The license consumption rules (on the Use rights & rules tab of the license properties) allow you to select one or many options for where devices may be hosted to consume from this license. A helpful option for many situations is Any cloud service provider, because it not only allows consumption by inventory devices assigned to any of your currently-existing cloud service providers, but also by those assigned to cloud service providers that you may define in future. For more information, see License Consumption Rules.

  • You should carefully review the terms of each license agreement for variations that may apply when the software is running on inventory devices hosted by a cloud service provider. In particular, for points-based licenses, check for a special points rule (or several) that may apply in that context. Like the licenses, points rules may be configured to apply only to specified cloud service providers (for details, see Add a Points Rule). Once the points rule set is completed (a "set" because a license may use different points rules for different situations), you can attach it to the appropriate license on the Identification tab of the license properties (see Points Rule Set).

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Tip: For IBM PVU licenses, IT Asset Management provides a points rule set with a points rule appropriate for use with the setting Any cloud service provider. For other license types, you need to create your own points rules as appropriate.

These facilities allow you to have:

  • Applications linked to licenses that can be consumed only for installations in the appropriate cloud service provider, and

  • The licenses (for points-based licenses) linked to an appropriate points rule for that cloud service provider.

When software inventory is imported for a given inventory device (by default, scheduled nightly as part of full inventory import and compliance calculations):

  1. The installed application is identified in the software inventory for the inventory device
  2. The Hosted in value for the inventory device is used to select the appropriate license from those linked to the installed application
  3. A points rule (linked to that license) is selected that fits the same cloud service provider as identified for the inventory device

and the consumption against the chosen license is calculated for that inventory device.