November 2023
Flexera One introduced the following new features and enhancements this month.
Cloud Cost Optimization
Cloud Cost Optimization released the following new enhancements in November 2023.
Azure operating system dimension added
This enhancement is available with Cloud Cost Optimization.
Cloud Cost Optimization now includes the Operating System dimension for Azure EA bill data. The new dimension is used to understand cost and usage by Operating System as well as capacity and commitment planning. Additionally, to help reduce cloud waste the Azure Superseded Compute Instances recommendation can use the dimension to provide potential saving when moving from an old instance type to a new less expensive instance type.
For more information, see Microsoft Azure Enterprise Agreement Bill-Based Data Dimensions in the Flexera One Help.
Analyzing cloud spend using the Tabular View with filters
This FinOps feature is available with Cloud Cost Optimization.
Flexera's FinOps solution, Cloud Cost Optimization, includes a feature update to make analyzing cloud spend easier. The Tabular View is a great tool for quickly analyzing cloud spend and now it includes the ability to use filters to limit the spend that is important to your report. To access the tabular view, go to Cloud > Cost Optimization > Tabular View.
The filter appears at the top of the table and behaves the same as the Dashboard Widget Filter to narrow down the data the widget displays. Additionally, the filter can be used with the cost anomalies to show you the anomalies important to your needs. To see your filtered cost anomalies, navigate to the Tabular View, and set your Date Range, Filters, and Group By settings. Click View Anomalies in the upper-right corner of the table. A new page opens with the cost anomalies.
With this feature, you can now:
- Add filters to the Tabular View
- Use filters when viewing cost anomalies
- Share the filtered tabular view and cost anomalies pages with other users
- Reset the filter in the tabular view and dashboards
- Remove all filters in the tabular view and dashboards
For more information, see the following topics in the Flexera One Help:
Viewing potential savings in a billing center
This enhancement is available with Cloud Cost Optimization.
Understanding your spend recommendations is paramount to optimizing your cloud spend and usage. With this release, you can now see your potential savings from recommendations within a parent billing center and sub-billing center (child billing center).
This enhancement enables you to see where the biggest savings opportunities are on the Billing Centers page (Cloud > Cost Optimization > Billing Centers). For more information, see Viewing Potential Savings in a Billing Center.
You can also view potential savings at the organization level, for more information, see Viewing Potential Savings.
Reserved Instances utilization now using 30-day rolling window
This enhancement is available with Cloud Cost Optimization.
The Cloud Cost Optimization Reserved Instances page (Cloud > Cost Optimization > Reserved Instances) that displays information about your Amazon Web Services RIs for the selected organization has been updated to show data for a 30-day rolling window. Previously, this was a 7-day rolling window.
The 30-day rolling window is aligned with the commitment purchases, as they are based on 720 hours of usage. This update allows users to identify and take action on commitments that have not been fully utilized over the last 30 days. For more information, see Amazon Web Services Reserved Instances in the Flexera One Help.
Flexera One Platform
Flexera One added the following enhancement in November 2023.
Updates to Credentials API
This enhancement is available with the Flexera One API.
The Credential Management API is renamed to Credentials API and its documentation is now available on developer.flexera.com.
IT Asset Management
IT Asset Management released the following vulnerability update, new feature, and enhancements in November 2023.
FlexNet Inventory Agent and Inventory Beacon vulnerability update IOK-1085727
This vulnerability announcement applies to IT Asset Management FlexNet inventory agents and inventory beacons. Credit for identifying this issue goes to Patrick Romero of CrowdStrike.
A potential vulnerability exists in FlexNet inventory agent and inventory beacon versions 2022 R2.3 Part Number: 19.3.0 and earlier installations on Unix-like platforms devices running Docker daemon containers. The vulnerability may potentially allow a privilege escalation.
To address the potential vulnerability, Flexera quickly established mitigations through the security update IOK-1085727 for the FlexNet inventory agent and inventory beacon version 2022 R2.4 Part Number: 19.4.0.
For more information and resolution steps, see the following knowledge base article, FlexNet Inventory Agent and Inventory Beacon Vulnerability Update IOK-1085727 in the Flexera Community.
Resource ID is now collected from Azure instances
This enhancement is available with IT Asset Management.
The Flexera inventory agent and Microsoft Azure adapter can now collect Resource IDs from Microsoft Azure instances. This is beneficial for cloud cost management system customers, as the Resource ID is a key data element used to uniquely identify Microsoft Azure instances for billing, costing and cost allocations.
With this enhancement, Resource IDs for Microsoft Azure instances currently running in your Microsoft Azure environment, will populate the Cloud Service Provider Inventory page after Microsoft Azure virtual machine data is collected by the Flexera inventory agent or the Microsoft Azure adapter and imported into IT Asset Management.
For creating custom reports, Resource ID has been added to the Cloud Service Instance database object in the Report Builder.
For more information on what Microsoft Azure virtual machine data is imported into IT Asset Management and how to create a custom report, see Cloud Service Provider Inventory and Creating a Custom Report in the Flexera One Help.
Support for Oracle Coherence
This enhancement is available with IT Asset Management.
From this release, the FlexNet inventory agent supports inventory collection for Oracle Coherence. This enhancement enables customers to get more accurate recognition for Coherence and the edition information (where possible) as part of Oracle Fusion Middleware for their license position.
The files gathered by the FlexNet inventory agent are saved separately and are not included in the audit data for Oracle.
Changes to supported operating systems and compatibility with other products
This enhancement is available with IT Asset Management.
The following operating system versions have been added to the list of supported operating systems on FlexNet inventory agent:
- OpenSUSE Linux 15.5 (x86 64-bit only)
- Oracle Linux 8.8 and 9.2 (x86 64-bit only)
The following product versions have been added to the compatibility list of IT Asset Management with other products:
- Citrix Virtual Apps server (previously XenApp server) 7.2305
- Citrix Virtual Desktops (previously Citrix XenDesktop) 7.2305
- EdgeSight for Citrix Virtual Apps (previously XenApp EdgeSight) 7.2305
For the full lists, see Prerequisite Software and Compatibility with Other Products in IT Asset Management System Requirements and Compatibility.
New IBM Unlicensed Installations report
This feature is available with IT Asset Management.
Before this release, the IBM sub-capacity audit reports package did not include unlicensed installations of licensable IBM products. To obtain this information, customers had to manually filter for products published by IBM in all the unlicensed installations and save the results in PDF or CSV format. However, the saved PDF or CSV file was not digitally signed.
From this release, a new IBM Unlicensed Installations report is available and included in the digitally-signed IBM sub-capacity audit reports package. This report displays the persisting unlicensed installations of the licensable IBM products, for a given reporting period.
For more details, see IBM Unlicensed Installations Report in the Flexera One Help and Reporting to IBM in the IT Asset Management System Reference.
Purchase amount measure added to Flexera Asset Management Model
This enhancement is available with IT Asset Management.
A new measure, Purchase amount, has been added to the Flexera Asset Management Model. This new measure allows you to slice and dice data by Purchase Type and Purchase Status. Use this new measure when creating and customizing widgets related to purchases in Flexera Analytics.
For more information, see Flexera Analytics Data Models in the Database Schema Reference.
Support for Windows on ARM devices
This enhancement is available with IT Asset Management.
Windows has traditionally run on devices that are powered by x86/x64 processors. But more recently, it has also run on devices powered by ARM processors, which offer benefits such as longer battery life and cellular data connections.
From this release, the FlexNet inventory agent also supports inventory collection from Windows systems running on ARM-based devices.
Inventory Beacon 21.0.0 Changes
See Inventory Beacon 21.0.0 Changes.
FlexNet Inventory Agent Release 21.0.0
See FlexNet Inventory Agent Release 21.0.0.
IT Visibility
IT Visibility added the following enhancement in November 2023.
Enhanced IT Visibility Importer tool
This enhancement is available with IT Visibility.
Previously, when the IT Visibility Importer tool imported inventory data from FlexNet Manager On-Premises into IT Visibility for consumption, it did not maintain the relationship between the MAC addresses and IP addresses, even though it did import MAC addresses and IP addresses. This behavior was not ideal from a security perspective because knowing the accurate mapping relationship between MAC addresses and IP addresses is important for identifying individual devices on the network, detecting potential security incidents, implementing network segmentation, and so on.
Now, when you use the IT Visibility Importer tool to import inventory data from FlexNet Manager On-Premises into IT Visibility, both the MAC-to-IP mapping and IP-to-MAC mapping are populated and maintained in IT Visibility. This enhancement helps you manage devices and maintain network security more effectively.
For more information about the IT Visibility Importer tool, see Importing Inventory Data From FlexNet Manager On-Premises Into IT Visibility.
SaaS Management
SaaS Management released the following new feature and update in November 2023.
Reclaiming user licenses and tracking user activity no longer available for DocuSign integration
This change relates to SaaS Management.
The Last Login Date parameter was recently removed by DocuSign from their API. Flexera One’s SaaS Management solution relies on this date to reclaim user licenses and track user activity. There are no immediate plans for DocuSign to return the Last Login Date parameter to their API. As a result, the SaaS Management DocuSign integration no longer reclaims user licenses and tracks user activity.
Identify and analyze additional shadow SaaS use
This feature is available with SaaS Management.
Flexera One’s SaaS Management solution now offers a direct SaaS integration with Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps Client Credentials. This integration provides full protection for SaaS applications by helping monitor and protect your organization’s cloud app data in a variety of ways.
- Shadow IT discovery
- Visibility into cloud app usage
- Managing your organization’s SaaS security posture
In addition to the direct integration, SaaS Management offers a Microsoft Power BI report that uses the SaaS Management API. This report provides insights into SaaS applications used within your organization and helps you easily surface occurrences of Shadow IT. The report insights can be shared with contacts within your organization who do not typically use SaaS Management.
For additional information see Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps Client Credentials in the Flexera One Help. Additionally, see the Flexera Community Knowledge Base article, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps Power BI Reporting for Flexera One's SaaS Management.
Technopedia
Technopedia released the following new feature and enhancement in November 2023.
Calculated lifecycle data now available in Technopedia UI
This feature is available with Technopedia.
Technopedia provides enrichment data such as lifecycle dates—General Availability (GA), End of Life (EOL), and Obsolete dates (the last date on which any support is provided by the vendor, captured the way it was published by the vendor)—in addition to software releases. Flexera’s Content Team curates these dates from various sources (direct from vendors' websites or other reliable sources). However, not every vendor provides this information publicly, leaving Technopedia customers facing the challenge of having to manage releases with missing lifecycle dates.
Calculated Lifecycle supplements the curated, research-based dates by introducing dynamic calculations on dates for a particular release based on existing dates from other related releases (such as releases under the same product, family, suite, vendor, category, and so on). These calculations provide additional data points to customers who need to have explicit dates in their EOL management use-cases, while at the same time still maintain full transparency that they are calculated dates.
With the calculated lifecycle data, you can better understand when the software might be at risk, even if not formally communicated by the vendor so that you can choose to take actions to mitigate vulnerabilities and support costs.
Previously, the calculated lifecycle data was only available in the Flexera One Technopedia API, but not in the Technopedia UI.
You can now manage software releases with missing lifecycle dates in the Flexera One Technopedia UI Software dashboard. For more information about how to use the Technopedia dashboards, see Technopedia Dashboards.
The following Calculated Lifecycle Data fields appear in the Software dashboard when you drill down to get the release details under the Lifecycle Details section.
- New calculated date fields —These fields contain calculated values based on an algorithm that picks the best scenario (“case”) to calculate the missing dates. Each date field— General Availability, End of Life, Obsolete —has its own calculated date field.
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These dates are calculated, and not actual dates as published by the vendor.
- New calculated “case” fields —These fields provide information on how the dates were calculated—whether they were calculated based on dates from other releases under the same product, calculated based on dates from other releases within the same suite, and so on.
Current Technopedia build number now available in Technopedia UI
This enhancement is available with Technopedia.
Previously, the Technopedia build details were only available in the Flexera One Technopedia API, but not in the Technopedia UI.
Now, you can also access the Technopedia build number in the Flexera One Technopedia UI Hardware and Software dashboards. This information helps you to check for updates when the gap-fill process is complete. For more information about how to use the Technopedia dashboards, see Technopedia Dashboards.