Catalog-based software license reconciliation

摘要

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.

主权项

1. A method of reconciling discovered software programs with software licenses, the method comprising:
a computer providing a rule-based catalog for mapping an entitled software offering having software programs and associated constraints to installed software programs, at least one constraint comprising an entitled installation count specifying the number of entitled installations of the software programs for the software offering; the computer discovering software programs installed on the hardware in the computer environment, the installed software programs each having a base product attribute, a used-in-counts attribute, a parent-child attribute, and at least one of: a physical hardware installation requirement, and a deployment environment requirement, each of the attributes being set or reset; the computer identifying an entitled software offering associated with a discovered installed software program and fetching all other installed software programs in the identified software offering; the computer determining if one or more of the discovered installed software programs in the identified entitled software offering is a base product based on a base product attribute of the one or the discovered software programs in the identified entitled software offering; and the computer determining whether to count the identified entitled software offering against the entitled installation count based on the determination whether one of the discovered installed software programs in the identified entitled software offering is a base product, wherein the identified entitled software offering is determined to not count against the entitled installation count in the case that one or more of the discovered software programs in the identified entitled software offering is not a base product, wherein the identified entitled software offering is determined to count against the entitled installation count in the case that one or more of the discovered software programs in the identified entitled software offering is a base product, and wherein the base product is indicated by the presence of a code artifact that is installed on the hardware and capable of being executed.