Classifications

• • G—PHYSICS
  • G06—COMPUTING; CALCULATING OR COUNTING
  • G06F—ELECTRIC DIGITAL DATA PROCESSING
  • G06F21/00—Security arrangements for protecting computers, components thereof, programs or data against unauthorised activity
  • G06F21/10—Protecting distributed programs or content, e.g. vending or licensing of copyrighted material ; Digital rights management [DRM]
  • G06F21/105—Arrangements for software license management or administration, e.g. for managing licenses at corporate level

Definitions

• the present invention relates to computer software and more particularly to a method for administering and managing software license certificates.
• Much of the software in use by corporations, organizations and individuals is licensed either directly or indirectly from a variety of software vendors.
• the rights granted the licensees may take a variety of forms.
• a software product might be licensed to an organization for unlimited use, on any number of computers, but only within that organization.
• the organization might be permitted to only use the software on certain computers, or allow it to be used by only certain named employees, or by only a specified maximum number of concurrent employees, or until a specified date,' or only on certain days of the week, or based on any other set of restrictions that the vendor may negotiate with the organization.
• PMs protective mechanisms
• a PM which is typically invoked when the associated software product is initiated, might determine whether the computer (as identified by such things as a serial number or other unique characteristic) that the software is operating on is on the list of computers that the software is licensed on. Or, the PM might count the number of users concurrently using the software, checking to see whether a licensed maximum is ever exceeded.
• the PM For the PM to be able to match the actual use of a software product to the organization's licensed rights, the PM must know what those rights are. These are often supplied via an encrypted passcode or certificate which the software vendor gives to the organization, which in turn supplies it to the PM. Typically, a PM will not allow the software product to operate at all if a certificate is not supplied, missing, expired, or otherwise not made "known" to the PM.
• Organizations frequently negotiate changes in licensed rights to a particular product with the vendor of that product. When an organization replaces an existing computer with another, adds additional computers to the authorized list, adds more concurrent users, and so forth, they must agree on those rights with the vendor, paying a fee if necessary. Whenever the organization's licensed rights to a particular product change, a new certificate embodying the new rights must be obtained from the vendor and supplied to the PM.
• LMs License Managers
• Isogon e LiensePower/iFOR
• Globetrotter FlexLM
• Rainbow TintinelLM
• XSLM XSLM-compliant LMs
• the existence of standard LMs can in turn be expected to encourage more product vendors to incorporate PMs as part of the use of their products, thus raising even higher the burden on organizations of administering and managing the associated certificates.
• CDB database
• Products such as VISTA from Isogon, or Argis from Janus Technologies Inc., provide users with the ability to conveniently record in the CDB such information as vendor or distributor, contract information, software and/or hardware products covered by the agreement, computers on which the software is authorized to run, number of authorized users, maintenance terms, renewal data, budgets and forecasts, invoice and payment history, key terms and conditions, links to electronic versions of documents, etc.
• Users are also presented with an organizational view of the subdivisions (such as company, division, and department) with which the contract, the processor, the product, or the particular installation of the product is associated
• Still other software tools provide the means for tracking and day-to-day management of technical requirements, costs and environmental details of existing data centers, and the creation of scenarios for determining the optimum acquisition, expansion and reconfiguration strategies of the data centers as well as the forecasting of technical requirements, costs and environmental requirements of existing and proposed configurations of the data centers.
• Products such as Manhasset from Isogon, provide a knowledge base comprised of the technical and financial specifications of various storage devices and other software and hardware.
• a modeling tool allows for the creation of various "What-If" scenarios of possible data center configurations for making long term projections of the technical and financial requirements of existing, modified or proposed data center configurations. The costs of individual devices, systems or data center locations, as well as the costs of proposed new equipment and software are tracked.
• license certificates, license agreements, software products and software usage are all related to one another, there are difficulties that make this goal difficult to achieve.
• product identification based on license certificates is often presented in different terms than the identification based on agreements; product or vendor names may not be identical; what is considered a single product from one point of view may be considered to consist of two or more products from the other; there may be other discrepancies and mismatches; etc.
• Yet another object of the present invention is to provide a system and method for administering and managing software licensing environments in a manner which allows interaction of a centralized system with other systems such as those that inventory, catalog, and store data relative to software license properties resident on a computer system.
• the foregoing and other objects of the invention are realized by a software construct whose main function is to administer and manage software license certificates and properties and which includes as its main constituents a License Surveyor (LS) that performs an automatic discovery process to locate and identify all license servers and license certificates in a computer enterprise. Information gathered by the license surveyor may be stored in a repository called the Rights Database (RDB) .
• the License Surveyor has a subcomponent identified as the
• LP Listening Processor
• CP Change Processor
• a List Associator (LA) of the invention communicates with other software systems which handle software asset management to create associations with data gathered or stored by various software products that audit, monitor and/or survey the software products on the system and/or the frequency of use of software products and the like.
• the present invention reduces the administrative burden by automating much of the processing, controlling and managing the workflow related to administering and managing LM certificates.
• the present invention further provides a facility for integrating, relating, and reconciling related information from other software management tools and a facility for presenting and manipulating that information in a user- friendly manner.
• Figure 1 is a diagram showing a hierarchy of a license certificate management system.
• FIG. 2 is a more detailed diagram of the license certificate manager of Figure 1.
• Figure 3 is a flow chart of the change processor and quote requestor/catcher components of the invention.
• FIG. 4 is a flow chart showing further details of the certificate requestor/catcher and applier of the present invention.
• a computer system 21 typically consists of a collection of hardware 23 and a large suite of software products 25.
• the term "computer system” or "computer” is to be interpreted broadly. It may refer to a single computer at a single location, e.g. a stand alone PC, but also refers to hundreds of interconnected computers dispersed over widely spread geographical areas .
• Such a computer system typically incorporates many different software products, including an operating system and numerous application programs 31 provided from many different vendors. These application programs 31 are often licensed products which require the intervention of one or more license managers 29 to invoke, authorize and enable these products to run on the computer system 21.
• the assignee of the present invention provides a suite of programs that are variously involved in such tasks as auditing and monitoring software, for example the aforementioned SoftAudit product 80.
• Another Isogon product maintains lists and monitors license agreements, i.e. the VistaTM product 82 (described in U.S. Application Serial No. 09/518,048, filed March 2, 2000, the contents of which are incorporated by reference herein) .
• Isogon' s Manhasset product 84 (described in U.S. Application Serial No. 09/389,858, filed September 2, 1999, the contents of which are incorporated by reference herein) is a tool that allows users to manage hardware and software costs as well as to model computer systems and their software products.
• the main software block 10 of the present invention is an aggregation of various software components as described below which interface with the computer system 21 as well as with other software products such as the products 80, 82 and 84 for the purpose of administering and managing software license certificates. At times, it is necessary to obtain additional software certificates to increase the number or amount of software access to the various application software 31 operable on the computer 21.
• the system 10 interfaces, for example, via the Internet 15 with vendors or licensors 24 to whom various requests for quotations or purchase orders for license certificates are directed, which certificates are subsequently installed and applied to the computer system 21.
• constituents of the system 10 of the present invention include the Change Processor 12, the Quote Requestor/Catcher 14, the Certificate Requestor 18, the Certificate Catcher 20 and the Certificate Applier/Deapplier 22. These components interface with various software vendors
• step 34 shows the acceptance of proposed changes from a user.
• step 36 it is determined which software products are affected and step 38 creates an entry in the APF as noted.
• the Quote Requestor 14a then obtains a quote request at step 40 and in connection therewith assembles a list of affected software products at step 42. Requests for quotations are then issued at step 44 and retrieved electronic quotes are obtained at step 46.
• Steps 48 and 50 involve the looking up of the change request records in the APF and the entry/marking of changes in the change request records .
• the Certificate Requestor 18 accepts confirmation of proposed change from a user at step 52, which determines which software products are affected at step 54 and then takes the steps set forth at steps 56 and 58.
• the Certificate Catcher 20 then retrieves license certificates at 60 and consults the change request record as indicated at step 62, finally storing a certificate into the change request record and marking the appropriate records at step 64.
• the final step in the process is taken by the
• Certificate Applier which, as indicated variously at steps 66 through 74, assembles a list of software products and for each product supplies the appropriate license certificate 28 to the applicable Protective Mechanism. It also keeps a journal of these changes and creates other appropriate records .
• system of the invention includes the following components :
• License Surveyor The LS 11 ( Figure 2) performs an auto-discovery process (survey) to locate and identify substantially all license servers and license certificates in a computer enterprise. "Substantially all” means on the order of about 70% or greater of all license certificates, whereas “all” means on the order of about 90% or more of the license certificates.
• This knowledge comprising all of the user's computers, the licensed software operating on them, details of each associated license agreement with the vendor, and the licensed rights associated to the software product is stored in a repository called the Rights Database (RDB) 17.
• RDB Rights Database
• this LS 11 function is run as a batch process that is performed initially to create the repository, however, it may be repeated as often as deemed necessary to verify the data already on file, to discover any information that might have been inadvertently missed by other processes of the current invention or to detect licenses put into effect by processes that are not part of the present invention.
• the LS 11 is automatically, notified to conduct a full or incremental survey by a Listening Process (LP) 11a.
• LP Listening Process
• the LP 11a detects a change in a software license certificate; installation of a new software product; execution of a software product that either has an expired certificate or no certificate at all; etc.; it signals the LS 11 to conduct a survey.
• the LP 11a can be incorporated into a PM (Protective Mechanism) 27, LM (License Manager) 29, the operating system or act as a separate software monitoring process.
• Change Processor (CP) The CP 12, using the knowledge accumulated in the RDB 17, tracks any and all changes made (or contemplated) to license certificates.
• the CP 17 is informed by the user, or other automated process, when a change must be made (or is being contemplated) that might require modification of those licensed rights, for example the replacement of a particular computer with a different one, or the need to add 50 users to those licensed to use a particular set of products.
• the CP 12 assigns a Change Request Number (CR#) , determines from the RDB 17 which licensed products would be affected, and stores the list of affected products and their associated vendors in the Affected Products List (APL) 17a keyed to the current change request .
• the methods by which the CP 12 determines which products are affected include :
• the RDB 17 catalogs all software products by organization, enterprise, and/or location; 2. The RDB 17 catalogs all software products by computer;
• the RDB 17 catalogs software products according to user
• the RDB 17 catalogs all software products as belonging to a particular set of products wherein a change to one necessitates a similar change to all other products in that set;
• the CP 12 is notified by another process which software products belong to a particular set of affected products; 6. Rules are established to assert specific actions for given software products, users, etc . ;
• An auditing function is incorporated into the CP and other processes of the system to keep a record of any license certificates and APL records that are created, deleted, or otherwise modified.
• Quote Requestor (QR) 14a If the user anticipates that the change being made will require additional payment to the vendor (s) of the affected software product (s) , and desires a quote from the vendor (s) before proceeding, the
• QR 14a electronically sends the requisite information, i.e., an RFQ (Request for Quote) describing the nature of the proposed change, the product involved, the effective date, etc., to each vendor represented in the APL 17a for that change request. If electronic quotes are not supported by a vendor, the QR 14a generates a printed request form for the user to send to the vendor (s) . The appropriate Change Request Records in the APL 17a are marked as "Quote Requested.”
• RFQ Request for Quote
• the QC 14b receives and records each quote received back from vendors in response to the RFQ sent to them by the QR 14a. Quotes may be received electronically, directly into the QC 14b, or may be entered manually by the user. As quotes are received, the QC 14b marks the associated records in the APL 17a as "Quote Received" . At any time, the QC 14b can display a report to the user, showing the quotes received, their amounts and other details, and those quotes not yet received, for a particular
• Certificate Requestor (CRQ) 18 When the user has determined to actually make the contemplated change (perhaps after previously obtaining quotes) , the CRQ 18 sends Request For
• Certificate notices to this effect (optionally accompanied by a Purchase Order, contract addendum, or other necessary documentation) to all the vendors represented in the APL 17a, marking the records "Certificate
• Certificate Catcher (CC) 20 As certificates reflecting the desired change are received from vendors, whether electronically, directly into the CC 20, or entered manually by the user (using the Certificate Editor) , the CC 20 marks the associated records in the APL 17a as "Certificate Received" , and adds to the APL the certificates themselves. At any time, the CC 20 can display a report to the user, showing the certificates received, and those certificates not yet received, for a particular CR# or set of CR#s .
• Certificate Editor/Viewer The CEV 18a enables the user to manually enter or change a license certificate in those instances where such is permitted by the vendor. For a set of certificates, presumably from the same vendor, wherein the same changes must be applied to multiple certificates, the CEV 18a automatically applies those changes for the user. At the same time, the CEV 18a permits the user to examine the details of a license certificate, group of certificates, or electronic quotes that have been received. In either edit or view mode, the CEV 18a accepts selection criteria from the user, such as by vendor, computer, partitions (LPAR) , enterprise, product, or other specifications as appropriate. In some cases the CEV 18a may be supplied as part of or along with am LM 29, typically as part of the administrator's tool. In this case, the present invention may invoke such a tool, or may make use of an API (application program interface) provided by the LM 29.
• API application program interface
• Certificate Applier/Deapplier The CAD 22, working from the APL 17a, but under control of the user, puts all the certificates received for a particular CR# into effect by supplying them to the applicable PMs. Depending on the nature of each PM 27, this might consist of storing a copy of the certificate in a particular file or database, or of supplying it to a particular program or process associated with the PM 27 .
• the user may request an immediate application of the CR#s or defer them for later application.
• the CAD may manage a queue of deferred CR#s wherein each CR# is scheduled for automatic application at a user specified time, or deferred indefinitely pending user authorization.
• the CAD maintains a journal of all changes made to all software products (or a user selected set of software) including, where applicable, copies of license certificates that have been superseded.
• the CAD under user control, rollbacks to a prior set of certificates having a particular CR# (i.e., de-apply a set of certificates assuming this function is supported by the PM/LM) which have been saved in the APL. In those instances where required by the PM/LM, the rollback is performed sequentially using all of the intervening change requests, otherwise only the certificates of the desired CR# are re- applied.
• the LA 33 is a facility for automatically establishing associations between items in one list (e.g., license certificates, products, vendors, processors, users, etc.) with items in another list of such items whenever product name, product identification number or other identifying feature match.
• a separate table is created consisting of links associating records in one database (e.g., the RDB 17) with corresponding records in another database (e.g., the CDB 19) .
• the List Associator 33 may automatically establish associations between license certificate information obtained by the license surveyor LS 11 and corresponding lists of software products and their usage records which are derived by the software surveyor and monitor product 80, for example, the present assignee's SoftAudit product.
• the LA 33 determines possible associations or associations that are most probable. This is based upon the heuristics of evaluating the similarity of item name, identification number, or other such criteria between items in one list and items in another list. [Techniques that are applied include: Soundex coding, pattern matching, dictionary lookup, and/or Fuzzy Logic] The results may be displayed for user selection, confirmation, or rejection. For each item to be associated, the LA 33 provides as many candidates as are appropriate, ranked alphabetically or in likelihood of match. All such candidate associations can be displayed in a distinctive color; the user could tab or scroll directly from one such candidate association to the next and confirm or reject each one in turn, or could highlight and accept or reject several such candidate associations " at once.
• the user provides a set of rules by which the LA 33 establishes an association between records in separate lists.
• a rule can be established to treat XYZ Corporation and XYZ International (a wholly-owned subsidiary) as one and the same .
• the LA 33 provides a facility by which the user specifies an association between one or more items in one list with an item in another list.
• the user might use a pointing device such as a computer mouse to highlight one or more items on the one list of products and one item on the other list of products.
• the LA 33 presents an opportunity for the user to confirm the association before it was processed.
• Data Reconciler (DR) The DR 35 is a facility by which differences between records in lists of different types (e.g., license certificates, license agreements, etc.) are reconciled after having been associated to one another by the LA 33. Using heuristics and rules, the DR resolves differences in product or vendor names, what constitutes a software product, and missing or duplicate information.
• Records are created for missing information, duplicate records are consolidated, and records are deleted for information that is erroneous or out-of-date.
• the user can provide a set of rules by which the DR 35 reconciles differences in an association between records in separate lists.
• a rule treats XYZ Corporation and XYZ International (a wholly-owned subsidiary) as one and the same .
• the DEV 37 is a facility for concurrently presenting on a display two or more lists of items that have been first associated by the LA 33 and then reconciled by the DR 35 sorted by organization, location, license certificate, product name, product identification number, vendor name, vendor identification, or other identifying feature.
• the DEV 37 permits the user, where applicable, to make changes and/or corrections to those records. Any changes made, are automatically made, where appropriate or permitted, to the corresponding records in the individual lists from which the associated records are composed. For a set of records, presumably from the same vendor, wherein the same changes must be applied to multiple records, the DEV 37 automatically applies those changes for the user. In either edit or view mode, the DEV 37 accepts selection criteria from the user, such as by vendor, computer, partitions (LPAR) , enterprise, product, or other specifications as appropriate.
• LPAR partitions
• the contractual aspects of license agreements and license certificate information (acquired and/or stored by software product 82, such as the VISTATM product 82 of the assignee of the present invention) is associated and reconciled by the LA 33 and DR 35 facilities, respectively. Users are thus able to conveniently answer questions such as the following :
• license certificate information and a variety of product, inventory and usage information is associated and reconciled by the LA and DR facilities, respectively. Users are thus able to conveniently correlate license certificate information to such information as products installed by processor, library and vendor; such information also containing usage and usage by user to answer questions such as the following:
• license certificate information is tracked against actual and hypothetical changes in hardware and software configuration over time (as provided by a configuration management tool 84 such as ManhassetTM from Isogon) .
• MIPS Massive Service Units
• license rights of these certificates being underutilized by an actual or hypothetical configuration? For example, if a license certificate authorizes that a particular software product can be utilized on processors totaling up to 1,000 MIPS, does a given hypothetical configuration fail to reach 1,000 MIPS at any given point in time?

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• 2001
  • 2001-04-16 AU AU2001257064A patent/AU2001257064A1/en not_active Abandoned
  • 2001-04-16 EP EP01930537A patent/EP1368717A2/de not_active Withdrawn
  • 2001-04-16 WO PCT/US2001/012363 patent/WO2001079970A2/en not_active Application Discontinuation

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