Software License Tracking - Free

[Melbosa]

Damn its hard to find open source or free software that just tracks licensing.  I don't need any discovery or inventory software, all I need is software that I put in my licenses, attach to my assets (that I can enter manually) and then have it tell me how many licenses I have.  It would be a bonus if it calculated my virtual licensing as well.

Anyone out there in RW land seen something like this?

[Lazybones]

I have worked with several very expensive commersioal ones, they all are @%&#ty..

None account for CPU licensing or visualization correctly that I have seen..

I swear that Excel is the most dependable tool in this regard... Even working with Vendors such as SoftChoice, you end up running discovery tools, dumping the data to excel and CORRECTING it for all the special cases such as MSDN, CALs, Visualization, Instancing rights, admin consoles that appear as server products.

[Tom]

Anyone want to pay someone to do it?

I am a contract programmer now ;DDDDD

[Lazybones]

Anyone want to pay someone to do it?

I am a contract programmer now ;DDDDD

That project could be a never ending money pit with the number of ways that things can be licensed.

[Tom]

Anyone want to pay someone to do it?

I am a contract programmer now ;DDDDD

That project could be a never ending money pit with the number of ways that things can be licensed.

You say Money Pit, I say Money Fountain.

[Thorin]

Anyone want to pay someone to do it?

I am a contract programmer now ;DDDDD

That project could be a never ending money pit with the number of ways that things can be licensed.

You say Money Pit, I say Money Fountain.

And since you like cats, you could turn that into a Fountain of Cats

Oh, and I have no knowledge of any good license tracking software - I think Lazy's right, Excel is your POWER TOOL.

[Lazybones]

FYI Microsoft does have a free audit tool you can run http://www.microsoft.com/sam/en/us/map.aspx . It is free and gathers good data but doesn't really help track anything.

[Melbosa]

Yeah its the tracking assignment to asset and license pool subtraction so I know what licenses are left to consume from a vendor.  Its not a simple Excel spreadsheet... almost a small database thing.

[Mr. Analog]

Put together some use cases and send 'em to Tom

[Melbosa]

Well cause I have to do this anyway, here is the data I need to correlate:

Licensing Pool
License Type (Device, User, Site)
Vendor
License Count
Virtualization Licensing Additional?
VM License Count
Purchased Date
Perpetual?
Expires Date
Reference #
Reference # Description
Notes

Assets
Asset Type (Server, Workstation, User)
Asset Name
Asset Location
Asset Details
Notes

Licensing Assignment
Asset
License
Assigned Date




I have to be able to add, modify, remove, and report on most of this data.  I can't find anything that really handles a License Pool and then assingments very well without being a much larger product for Asset Management (which is just too much for my needs), and even those that I have found don't do the Pool in the free ones.

[Melbosa]

Well here is a bit of a Moc in Excel...

[Mr. Analog]

You should write down how you want to use each part of the software

"As a user I want to be able to [FILL IN BLANK]"

From there I'm sure we could mock a few screens up in Balsamiq or something real fast.

I have a copy of Visual Studio 2013 at home and I've been thinking of firing up a small personal project again (not like I don't already have a bajillion things going)

[Darren Dirt]

I'm sure we could mock a few screens up in Balsamiq or something real fast.

Neat -- http://forums.righteouswrath.com/index.php/topic,9995.0.html

[Melbosa]

So in the attachment, Red is User Enterable, 1xBlue Box is fed and user selectable from Blue Overlay, 2xBlue Box is filled fully from Blue Overlay, rest is automated.