Monitoring usage of software licenses

You can use the License Usage Monitor application to monitor your usage of licenses for products based on Tivoli®'s process automation engine. You can use this information to optimize the usage of licenses and determine whether your organization is using more than the purchased number of licenses.

The License Usage Monitor application does not prevent overuse of licenses and does not replace the IBM license auditing process. This application gathers information to help you understand your license usage.

To enable license monitoring, you must complete the following tasks:
  • Create license records.
  • Configure and enable the License Usage Monitor cron task.
  • Optionally, you can assign licenses to users, for example, assigning authorized licenses to system administrators.
After the cron task runs, you can view license usage information on the License Use tab. The License Usage table displays information about the overall number of licenses that you own. The License Used By table displays information about individual users. For authorized licenses, the number of users who are displayed in the Licenses Used By table equals the total number of licenses that are deployed. Concurrent licenses are based on the number of users who are logged in at a time. For concurrent licenses, the number of users who are displayed in the Licenses Used By table might not be equal to the total number of licenses that are deployed. Currently, the cron task supports only authorized and concurrent users and the following Maximo® Asset Management products:
  • Maximo Asset Management
  • Maximo Asset Management Scheduler
  • Maximo Calibration
  • Maximo for Transportation
  • Maximo for Service Providers
  • Maximo Anywhere

If you have installed any product other than products listed, all users that have access to that product are marked as unlicensed users.

You must create a license record for each type of license that you own, for example, authorized licenses and concurrent licenses. If you own more than one product that is based on Tivoli's process automation engine, you must create license records for each product. For example, if you have five authorized licenses and five concurrent licenses for Maximo Asset Management, and five authorized licenses for Control Desk, you must create three license records.

You do not need to create records for self-service licenses.

The License Usage Monitor application displays only the most recent license usage data that is calculated by the cron task. To view historical license data, use the reports that are provided with the application or create an ad hoc report.

By default, license data is saved in the database for two years. You can configure this setting by using the System Properties application.

In the License Usage Monitor application, you can also perform the following tasks:
  • View the cron task history
  • View a list of applications that are related to each product
  • Add a custom application to the list of applications