FrontRange simplifies software licensing

Infrastructure management firm FrontRange Solutions is set to launch a new version of its License Manager product tomorrow, featuring new capabilities designed to help firms save money and boost compliance efforts by streamlining their software asset management (SAM) projects.

License Manager 3.1 features support for Microsoft’s Systems Management Server 2003 offering, allowing customers to take a direct feed from the ubiquitous server management product to ease their data collection and discovery efforts.

The new version has also made it easier for enterprises to get their software license data into the Manager product, reducing the risk of error, according to Matt Fisher, director of marketing at FrpntRange.

“With the first couple of iterations it was a bit of a chore,” he explained. “With 3.1 we’ve created a bulk data upload tool as a way of allowing end users to populate a spreadsheet with all the license agreements they have, and we pull that into the License Manager.”

Finally, the firm has expanded its Nexus online database, adding to the hundreds of thousands of vendors’ license records which already populate it.

The technology is designed to alert customers as soon as they enter their license data into the Manager if there is a discrepancy between their figures and those of the vendor.

“If there is a small discrepancy we can normalise it but where we can’t we’ll flag it to the end user,” said Fisher. “Historically the Nexus was launched for Microsoft products but as SAM maturity has grown we’ve had to include other vendors.”