The Distributed Management Task Force launches Software License Management Incubator to develop guidelines for industry standards to keep licenses in compliance in virtual, cloud environments.
Enterprise IT managers struggling to keep software licenses in compliance now will face challenges when virtual and cloud technologies increase mobility and complexity in their environments, causing software license management to become exponentially more difficult. That’s why the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) this week launched the “Software License Management Incubator” to begin work on solving problems associated with tracking license compliance in sophisticated environments.
Read the DMTF’s Software License Management Incubator Charter
“Now with people moving to cloud computing and moving workloads from data center to public and private clouds, there is a greater need to identify license requirements for these workloads because they are made up of composite applications and they need to know they are in compliance with licenses,” says Winston Bumpus, DMTF president. “It’s great that we have all this mobility, but it also increases challenges when it comes to ensuring compliance with software licenses.”
The SLM Incubator is pre-standards activity in which the DMTF works to understand the use cases and all the variations that need to be handled when it comes to managing software licenses in advanced virtual and cloud environments. The goal is to improve access to and reporting of software inventory and product usage in these environments, which could provide improved IT governance and other benefits such as a better understanding of product usage for enterprise IT organizations.
“With DMTF’s Software License Management Incubator, we hope to evolve software licensing management to be a key business enabler, streamlining today’s inefficient processes and allowing firms of all sizes to unlock the value and flexibility of emerging distributed and cloud computing platforms,” said Adrian Kunzle, managing director, Firmwide Head of Engineering and Architecture at JP Morgan Chase, in a statement.
Customer organizations such as JP Morgan Chase helped initiate these efforts, according to Bumpus, who says when customers are engaged early in standards work the industry moves more quickly as well.
“A lot of standards are to be developed, but when customers are involved, it really gets the industry engaged,” Bumpus adds. “A lot of the requirements will come from the voice of these customer organizations.”
Formed as part of the DMTF Standards Incubation process, the SLM Incubator will “develop white papers focused on the challenges identified to enable the industry to manage licensed software products and product usage, and to move closer to interoperable solutions,” according to a DMTF press release.
The SLM Incubator leadership board consists of CA Technologies, Citrix, Microsoft, IBM, Novell and VMware.
Is software license management a concern for your cloud deployment? How do you plan to track software license compliance in the cloud? Please leave a comment here or let me know your thoughts directly via e-mail at Denise.Dubie@ca.com.
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