SOFTWARE LICENSE RATIO MONITORING AND LICENSE REUSE OPTIMIZATION

摘要

Systems and methods for managing and optimizing licensing restrictions for deployed systems are presented. Particularly, a central system may be used to coordinate license assignments to a plurality of users in accordance with ratios mandated as part of a licensing agreement. The system may reassess the ratios after deployment and may adjust licensing allocations to preserve the ratio, as well as to better accord with usage behavior by the organization as a whole. Some embodiments employment specific enforcement provisions, mandating the recommended licensing percentage for a license type based upon scaled sums of optimal ratio values for different license types.

主权项

1. A central computer system comprising:
a database comprising:
usage conditions associated with a plurality of license types for a software program, the conditions comprising a license ratio requirement between licenses of a first license type for the software program and licenses of a second license type for the software program; andinformation regarding a hierarchical arrangement of the plurality of license types that corresponds to a hierarchical arrangement of amounts of functionality accessible by a user for the software program; at least one processor; at least one memory comprising instructions configured to cause the at least one processor to:
determine, based on the usage conditions, that the license ratio between a first group of licenses of the first license type at a first level of the hierarchical arrangement and a second group of licenses of the second license type at a second level of the hierarchical arrangement is in force for a deployment system comprising one or more client systems, wherein the first level of the hierarchical arrangement and the second level of the hierarchical arrangement represent different amounts of functionality accessible by a user for the software program;calculate a first recommended license count for the first group of licenses based on the license ratio;calculate a second recommended license count for the second group of licenses based on the license ratio;reallocate one or more licenses from the first group of licenses being used by one or more users of the one or more client systems in accordance with the first recommended license count; andreallocate one or more licenses from the second group of licenses being used by one or more users of the one or more client systems in accordance with the second recommended license count.