To mirror this novel reality, software wholesalers and Information Technology departments have been searching for methods to fine-tune existing licensing models. IT staffs also would like to minimize the licensing expenditures via economies of scale and precise data about how many licenses are really required.
Two new Cisco products now assist Cisco IT in considerably minimizing the costs associated with licensing OSs and App Software in the data center:
The Cisco UCS B420 M3 Blade Servers possess the super-dense memory which enables you to provide up to 192 virtual machines per blade server. For OS licenses, you purchase one license with infinite guests for the blade. You are able to configure as guests all of the virtual machines (VMs) hosted on that specific server blade. This method implies that some of your OS licensing costs are 80% less than what they would have been if you had purchased individual licenses for each Virtual Machine (VM).
Cisco’s Intelligent Automation for Cloud (Cisco IAC) is basically an orchestration software which you can employ to create the virtual machine instances. For App Software licensing, you can also employ Cisco IAC to keep track of the quantity of licenses actually deployed, then you can buy those licenses at a negotiated volume discount from Cisco. This methodology can be less costly than purchasing an enterprise license having unlimited number of users.
Another benefit for your IT staff is that you will not have to keep guessing how many licenses you require at the start of your contract term. Rather you can simply analyze Cisco IAC counts to “pay as you grow,” so that you are only purchasing licenses at the contract price when you really require them.
Precise license counts are also advantageous for vendors with the peace of mind that you will not be using more licenses than you have paid for. License tracking has been difficult problem between vendors and IT departments for a long time now as “true-up” counts can be very problematic to do without the automation and cloud standpoints supplied by the Cisco IAC.
However, there is one caveat for this: Diverse software vendors delineate their licenses in different manners so a given vendor’s license coverage & terms are continuously subject to changes.
Since virtualization plays a more and more greater role in more data centers, we anticipate that licensing choices will continue to evolve. We suggest you take a look at your virtualization strategies and licensing models with the target of harmonizing your hardware investments with the capability to minimize licensing costs.
To learn more, please speak to our licensing specialists today.