Patent application number | Description | Published |
20120030072 | CATALOG-BASED SOFTWARE LICENSE RECONCILIATION - A software reconciliation engine utilizes a software rule-based catalog to produce accurate license reconciliation across a wide range of software configurations. A software offering may comprise software installables and corresponding constraints. Installed software and active hardware is discovered by a scanner, stored in an installed software database and active hardware database respectively and is mapped against entitled software offerings to determine whether the installed software is entitled to be installed on the hardware. The installed software has a base product attribute, a used-in-count attribute and a parent-child attribute that are used by the reconciliation engine to compare against the constraints to determine entitlement and report compliance. | 02-02-2012 |
20120030073 | CREATION AND USE OF CONSTRAINT TEMPLATES - The new creation and use of entitlement constraint templates methods and systems can be linked to software offerings in a software catalog. Allowing software catalog experts to link contractual entitlement data with software product offerings via constraint templates on such a varying list of constraint types, establishes a highly robust software catalog knowledgebase. The result is significant cost savings in terms of time spent inputting entitlement constraint data by contract analysts as well as minimizing errors by those analysts who would otherwise be required to have a very high level of expertise in the software offerings while potentially inputting the same constraint data repeated times. | 02-02-2012 |
20130074189 | SOFTWARE LICENSE RECONCILIATION WITHIN A CLOUD COMPUTING INFRASTRUCTURE - A method, system, and computer program product for managing software program installations in a cloud computing environment. An example method includes calculating, by a computer processor, a maximum number of software licenses that could be required according to a software license rule from a software license agreement to run a set of software program instances on a set of servers configured as a computing cloud. Each software program instance is an installation of the software program on a different logical partition, and at least two of the servers from the set of servers are capable of requiring a different number of software licenses according to the software license rule. The method also includes determining if the maximum number of software licenses exceeds an allowed number of software licenses granted in the software license agreement. | 03-21-2013 |
Patent application number | Description | Published |
20130054492 | DETERMINING AN OPTION FOR DECOMMISSIONING OR CONSOLIDATING SOFTWARE - Embodiments include a computer system, method and program product for managing a software program installed on a computer hardware system, the software program subject to a software license. A retrieval of data is performed in which the data indicates actual usage of the software program and the computer hardware system, and processor power of the computer hardware system. In addition, a retrieval of licensing data from the software license is performed in which the licensing data indicates a permitted number of or fee for installations of the software program and a permitted amount of or fee for processor power of the computer hardware system in which the software program is installed. Whether to decommission a copy of the software program based on the data indicating actual usage, the licensing data, a projected amount of future usage of the software program, and criticality of the software program is determined and reported. | 02-28-2013 |
20140101061 | CORRELATING SOFTWARE LICENSES TO SOFTWARE INSTALLATIONS - Embodiments of the present invention provide a system, method, and program product to correlate a plurality of software licenses for a computer program to a plurality of installations of a computer program, two or more of the plurality of software licenses licensing respective sets of program components of the computer program that differ from each other, and two or more of the plurality of installations having respective sets of program components of the computer program that differ from each other. The computer determines an amount of match between each of the plurality of installations having the respective sets of program components of the computer program, and each of the plurality of software licenses licensing the respective sets of program components of the computer program, and the computer identifies the match amount having the greatest amount of match. | 04-10-2014 |
20140258152 | RESOLVING AN UNLICENSED COMPUTER INSTALLATION OF A TYPE OF SOFTWARE - A method and system for resolving an unlicensed installation of a type of software in a first computer of a company. The method and system: determines that the type of software is currently installed on a second computer of the company; determines that the company has an existing license permitting multiple copies of the software to be installed on the second computer; and based on the determination that the company has an existing license which permits multiple copies of the software to be installed on the second computer, determines, and generates a computer record indicating, that a solution to the unlicensed installation of the type of software on the first computer is to decommission the unlicensed software from the first computer and install another copy of the software in the second computer under the existing license in addition to the type of software currently installed on the second computer. | 09-11-2014 |
20140298315 | SOFTWARE SIGNATURE DISCOVERY - In a method for determining and scoring signatures for a software package, a processor compares files on a clean computer system after installation of a software package to files on the clean computer system before the installation. The processor determines a signature of the software package. The signature includes files on the clean computer system after installation of the software package that were not present on the clean computer system before the installation. | 10-02-2014 |
20150143359 | SOFTWARE SIGNATURE DISCOVERY - In a method for determining signatures for a software package, a processor compares files on a computer system after an installation of a software package to files on the computer system before the installation. The processor determines a signature of the software package. The signature includes an indication of files on the computer system after the installation of the software package that were not present on the computer system before the installation. The processor compares files remaining on the computer system after an uninstall of the first software package to the files on the computer system after the installation of the first software package. The processor determines one or more files indicated in the first signature not remaining on the computer system after the uninstall of the first software package. | 05-21-2015 |