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Flexera Announces Flexnet Manager for VMware

By David Delony, Contributing Writer

Flexera Software has announced the first Software License Organization solution for Vmware (News - Alert) products, Flexnet Manager for VMware.

"As CIOs seek to capture all the savings and efficiencies virtualization delivers, they can't forget that as much as 25 percent of software spend – including for VMware products – is being wasted because organizations fail to implement Software License Optimization best practice processes and technology," said Ed Rossi, vice president of product management at Flexera.

One major problem that companies face is “over-deployment license compliance risk,” that is, more copies of a Vmware product running on more machines than the company has paid for. For example, a customer might have a single license but running it on more than one server. This can be expensive if Vmware finds out about this, both in time and money as well as possible prosecution.

Flexera attempts to avoid these headaches by making it easier for IT departments to inventory the installations of Vmware products across an entire organization.

In addition to finding overused keys, Flexnet Manager looks at server capacity to find underused keys, which could save customers money by avoiding purchasing more keys than they need and using existing keys more efficiently.

The product is tailored to the needs of different companies depending on where they are in the “maturity model.” Flexera assumes a newer company will spend most of its effort on Software Asset Management (SAM) and Hardware Asset Management (HAM) than a more mature company that presumably knows how many servers and copies of software it has.

All of these features help a company maximize its return on investment (ROI) in VMware products.

"Organizations want confidence that they can invest in a Software License Optimization solution and start seeing value immediately.  But they also want investment protection - to ensure that as their software license management practices evolve, the same solution is sophisticated enough to deliver more value with greater return on investment,” Rossi said.  "FlexNet Manager for VMware is the only solution available enabling organisations to manage and optimise their VMware assets.  It delivers savings and risk reduction immediately, and in the long run."