[How-to] Optimize Software Licenses in AssetSonar

In growing organizations, keeping track of ever-increasing users and software assets has become a major concern. Manually tracking these licenses makes you more prone to inaccurate data, lack of visibility, and lack of consolidated view on software license usage, eventually leading to operational inefficiencies and overhead costs. 

AssetSonar’s License Optimizer is a new addition to the suite’s software license management capabilities that allows organizations to optimize licenses by identifying unused seats and potential cost saving opportunities. 

Benefits of License Optimizer

AssetSonar’s license optimizer functionality empowers companies by providing a consolidated view into the usage across your technology stack to uncover definitive, real savings outcomes. With enhanced visibility through the dashboard and reduction of manual steps in checking underused and unallocated software licenses, this feature helps to optimize costs, provides insights for better forecasting, and is a scalable solution to IT asset managers of all sizes of companies.

Here is how this functionality can add value to your business: 

• Cost savings: Users can identify the opportunities to save cost by quickly viewing the whole software license landscape on one page. They can further breakdown this overview and can see the details by going to the reports.
• Procurement and allocation planning: License Optimizer can help users to identify which licenses need right-sizing. They can easily identify if they have procured more than needed or if they need to buy more seats in the next payment cycle and can take required actions. 
• Scalability: New companies signing up with a large number of IT assets assigned licenses to users face the challenge of updating license information for each device manually. The underused license trackability feature caters to this need by providing a scalable solution that can handle a high volume of cloud software license information, making it easier for new companies to manage their software cost effectively.
• Enhanced compliance and audit readiness: Optimizing costs for software allocation improves compliance with policies and regulations by ensuring that software information is up to date. This feature enhances auditability and provides a clear record of license custody, facilitating compliance checks and internal audits.
• Accurate and comprehensive tracking: License Optimizer enables tracking of license allocation based on the last logged-in user through syncs that take place regularly. This provides IT administrators with regular visibility into viewing the whole software license landscape on one page.

Now let’s see License Optimizer in action. 

License Optimizer Dashboard

From the left navigation bar, hover your mouse over ‘Software’ and click on ‘License Optimizer’. 

License Optimizer’s main page will open up as shown below: 

Here are the brief descriptions of the significant fields on this page: 

• Potential Savings: This number reflects the overall summary of how much money you can save by managing non-entitled, unused, and inactive member seats. 
• Non-entitled seats: This is the total number of license seats that are not entitled to any active members in the organization. You can lower the seat count before the next payment cycle to save money. 
• Inactive member seats: This is a sum of license seats that are entitled to inactive members. You can either lower the seat count or re-allocate this seat for better utilization. 
• Unused seats: This is the count of license seats that havent been used over the last 90 days by active and entitled members. You can save costs by taking back these license seats. 

License Optimizer Actions

Once you have identified the areas for cost management, you can then take actions on individual licenses from the table. Choose a license that you want to take an action on and click on the ‘Actions’ icon as shown below: 

Clicking on the icon will open up a pop-up from where you can take multiple actions. This overlay will give you detailed information on the inactive members and unused seats. Choose the relevant people and click on ‘Remove Entitlements’. 

You can also click the ‘Select All Members’ checkbox to perform the action for all members across all pages.

Please note that the Select All Members checkbox will automatically be unchecked if you deselect even one user from the list. 

Once the action has been completed successfully, you’ll see the values change in the License Optimizer dashboard. You’ll also get a notification informing you that the action has been performed successfully. 

You can now proceed to removing seats from the license. From the same pop-up, choose the ‘Remove Seats’ option, fill out the relevant information in the form and click on ‘Remove Seats’ to get rid of the extra license seats.