Managing licence obligations against entitlement in the virtual world – part 1
By now you’ve most probably seen coverage warning to mind the hype developed from various quarters of the efficiencies and returns from virtualising your infrastructure. The vendor and early media publicity of a better, faster, cheaper approach has been tempered by a greater understanding of the blindspots and folly of charging down the road to a virtualised infrastructure.
Moving from Hype to Reality
As the virtualisation market place is maturing, a series of alliances are emerging including HP/Microsoft and vBlock from Cisco EMC and VMware with the view of providing ‘turnkey’ solutions that create simplicity and efficiency. In addition we’re seeing a range of automated and orchestrated environment management tools which deliver return from optimising the virtual environment in the datacentre and use load balancing functions to eliminate performance issues.
A recent survey from the National Computing Centre revealed that 90% of organisations view virtualisation as an important technology in improving the operation and cost-effectiveness of the IT environment over the next two years..Cost reduction is seen as the principle objective through heat management, space, tin, power, in the datacentre and flexibility and ease of managing a dispersed user environment is the key of VDI.
The maturing of the datacentre virtualisation marketplace and release of Windows 7 put a desktop refresh or OS migration into the mix of most organisations project roadmaps making the cost of a VDI project more palatable. This shift in economic viability will inevitably mean the realities of managing a more flexible and fluid environment will be experienced by most desktop and datacentre teams if not already.
Yet still a conundrum remains – how to take advantage of rapid and flexible deployment using virtualisation without falling foul of licence compliance? With 30% of firms considering desktop virtualisation there are few topics likely to have as significant effect on licence management in the near future.
What are the issues?
Let’s start with fitting the virtualised infrastructure with licensing models. For most purchasing and IT pros a utility model for software is utopia, however that goal will most likely be achievable by ISVs delivering applications using SaaS. Delivery through virtualisation without a subscription or concurrent licensing model will fall well short of the usage based models which The Cloud has the potential to deliver.
The nature of concurrent models themselves are quite rigid by nature (requiring licence for maximum users or devices) and will still have limitations in aligning costs with real use. Perpetual licensing ultimately requires a long term commitment to user numbers regardless of use or method of delivery so when virtualising software licensed on a per user or per device basis the organisation should expect to see no reductions in software costs.
Auditing issues are abundant with the requirement to identify quantity of software ‘installed’ whilst measuring a variety of metrics such as cores or Power Value Units (PVUs) and keeping that detail up to date. The nature of virtual environments being one that is fluid and enables rapid provisioning creates the challenge of understanding the licence obligations across a constantly changing landscape. In cases where the organisation has a Microsoft Enterprise or Enterprise Subscription Agreement for example the opportunity to true up on an annual basis largely removes a lot of the pain of auditing and keeping track of peaks and troughs – but what of broader software requirements where 200 or more other vendors software may be used?
Managing the Hybrid
Consider also the hybrid environment, one where virtualised devises sit alongside conventional physical instances and deployment methods. In the short term an all or nothing approach is unlikely with ‘tactical’ implementations dominating demand for virtualisation. Whilst this remains the case licence management solutions will be required to draw inventory data from multiple sources in a fashion which also de-duplicates where multiple use rights apply e.g. a local install and virtual installation or access from one device.
To the business, signing off on projects which reduce capital outlays and visible management costs – virtualisation is just cool enough to be reassuring and yet complex enough to be ignored when it comes to asking the hard questions and truly understanding its business impact.
If any or all of this sounds off-putting it need not necessarily be. In the next edition we will look at approaches which support the “quick win” of virtualisation and reduce both impact and side effects as the enterprise evolves. By taking proactive steps and putting the required solutions and processes in place every organisation can get a handle on its requirements and obligations, both mitigating the risks and leveraging the benefits of a virtualised environment.
How is your organisation addressing control, governance and Virtualisation?
Author: Stephen White, Technology Leader Software, Computacenter (UK) Ltd
