Skip to main content

October 2023

Flexera One introduced the following new features and enhancements this month.

Cloud Cost Optimization​

Cloud Cost Optimization released the following enhancement in October 2023.

Custom Tags are now Tag Dimensions​

note

This enhancement is available with Cloud Cost Optimization.

Tag Dimensions, formerly named Custom Tags, are dimensions that are specific to your organization. They are custom dimensions that are used to allocate and view the cloud spend for resource tags.

Within Flexera One, Tag Dimensions can be used on the following pages:

  • Dashboards
  • Tabular View (Cloud > Tabular View)
  • Rule-Based Dimensions (Administration > Cloud Settings > Rule-Based Dimensions)
  • Adjustment Program (Cloud > Adjustment Program)

For more information, see the Flexera One Help topic Tag Dimensions.

IT Asset Management​

IT Asset Management released the following new features and enhancement in October 2023.

Intelligent License Exemption and Allocation feature​

note

This feature is available with IT Asset Management.

The Intelligent License Exemption and Allocation feature automates the process of allocating or exempting users and devices to licenses as defined by a report. This allows SAM managers to better influence the scope of license coverage in a more automated way and minimizes the time needed to manually allocate or exempt users and devices to licenses.

To automate allocation and exemption of users and devices by report, open License Properties, select the Use Rights & Rules tab and scroll down to the Allocations and exemptions section (previously called “Exemptions”). In addition to exempting a device by role, you can now allocate or exempt users and devices by report and link the report to a license.

Users and devices allocated to a report are given priority to consume from the license.

  • Selecting Allocated for the allocation type, will only allow the user or device to consume from a license if a licensed application can be found.
  • Selecting Awaiting Inventory or Permanent for the allocation type, allows the user or device to consume from the license with or without a licensed application.

Users and devices exempted from consuming a license by a report will consume the license with priority for their installed applications covered by that license, like for an allocation, but the consumption will be 0. Some license agreements specify certain purposes for which an installed application may be used without consuming any license entitlements. Typical examples include exemptions for backup machines, or for computers used exclusively for training.

Automated allocations and exemptions can be viewed in the Consumption tab from the Allocation reason and Exemption reason columns, and are recalculated every day during the pre-scheduled overnight license reconciliation job. Essentially, you are able to create dynamic user and device groups, and your report may retrieve more or less users and devices every day which is reflected in the license automatically with no manual input.

info

The following logic applies for allocating and exempting users and devices: Manual allocations and exemptions will never be deleted from IT Asset Management. The reason being that a user purposely allocated or exempted a user/device to or from a license, and that allocation or exemption will continue to apply to the license even if the report is changed. However, automated exemptions for a particular device or user are prioritized over manual and automated allocations because of the difference in cost. It's cheaper to exempt a user from consuming a license instead of allocating a user to consume entitlements from a license.

For more information on how to automate allocations and exemptions for users and devices in IT Asset Management, see Allocations and Exemptions in the Flexera One Help.

New support for proxy authentication in the FlexNet Beacon application​

note

This feature is available with IT Asset Management.

Previously, proxy connections on an inventory beacon could only be configured manually in the Windows Registry but not in the FlexNet Beacon application. In addition, only the anonymous authentication method was supported, which meant that users could not set up proxy connections requiring authentication with user name and password.

From this release, the FlexNet Beacon application supports proxy configuration for both anonymous authentication and authentication with user name and password. Users no longer need to edit the Windows Registry and can set up proxy connections with either authentication method directly in the FlexNet Beacon UI.

For more details, see Configuring for Proxy Servers in the Flexera One Help.

Changes to supported operating systems and compatibility with other products​

note

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:

  • Photon OS 5.0
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 8.8 and 9.2 (x86 64-bit only)
  • Fedora Linux 38 (x86 64-bit only)
  • Debian Linux 12.0 (x86 64-bit only)
  • Ubuntu 23.04 (x86 64-bit only)
  • SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15.5 (x86 64-bit only)
  • macOS 14

The following product versions have been added to the compatibility list of IT Asset Management with other products:

  • IBM License Metric Tool (ILMT) or HCL BigFix Inventory on IBM DB2 9.2.32
  • Tanium Asset 1.26.183

For the full lists, see Prerequisite Software and Compatibility with Other Products in System Requirements and Compatibility.

Accurate visibility and licensing of production and non-production instances for IBM Cloud Pak licenses​

note

This feature is available with IT Asset Management.

IT Asset Management now provides accurate IBM PVU and VPC licensing for installations of production, and non-production Cloud Pak instances.

Prior to this release, IT Asset Management was not able to differentiate between production and non-production instances of IBM Cloud Pak licenses. As a consequence, it was not possible to correctly count the number of Cloud Pak instances installed on non-production machines (machines primarily used for testing, development and so on).

When compared to production machines, non-production machines employ different conversion ratios and licensing costs vary significantly. Since IT Asset Management was not able to differentiate between production and non-production instances, the same conversion ratio (the ratio explicitly used for production devices) was applied to both production and non-production IBM Cloud Pak instances, severely impacting cost.

note

The conversion ratio defines the factor used to move from the total number of virtual processor cores (VPCs) assigned in all devices running the same product (on this license), to the number of license entitlements consumed. For example, a ratio of 2:1, means that every two assigned cores consume one license entitlement.

To rectify this problem, the new Inventory Device Roles page gives you the ability to view inventory device roles and decide whether or not they are counted as production or non-production roles for application recognition. This new page contains a list of all available device roles in IT Asset Management (Development, Training, Production and so on), and corresponding Production check boxes. To count a device as production, simply check the Production check box. To count a device as non-production, leave the Production check box unchecked.

In addition to the new Inventory Device Roles page, the suite replacement capability accessible in the Evidence tab under Application Properties has been extended with a new Require non-production role check box. When checked, IT Asset Management will only do the suite replacement and recognize the suite instead of the member application(s), if the device with installations of the member applications is assigned to a non-production role.

To recognize non-production IBM Cloud Pak instances, all non-production application suites have been added to the Application Recognition Library (ARL). Customers will not have to create non-production suites and assign applications to the suites themselves. Each of the added suites require a non-production role. The minimum number of Cloud Pak instances installed on a non-production machine is one, and each installation will have a single child application which is the non-production equivalent of the production application. As per the aforementioned code changes, when inventory is now collected and the Require non-production role check box is checked, if the device role is defined as non-production, the suite replacement will happen and the non-production equivalent of the application is recognized.

By employing both steps described above, you can now choose what inventory devices are production and non-production, and IT Asset Management will recognize non-production software and apply the correct non-production conversion ratio.

For more information on selecting production or non-production for inventory device roles, and the new Require non-production role check box, see Inventory Device Roles and Evidence Tab: Suite and Member Evidence in the Flexera One Help.

SAM Publisher Hub​

note

This feature is available with IT Asset Management.

Following the SAM Optimization Hub and SAM Operations Hub, the third SAM Hub is now available in this release for IT Asset Management: SAM Publisher Hub.

The SAM Publisher Hub gives you a visual summary of how application publishers are being managed in your organization by consolidating publisher-centric data into one page in the form of various widgets, pie chart and trends' diagrams.

For more information, see SAM Publisher Hub in the Flexera One Help.

IT Visibility​

IT Visibility added the following enhancement in October 2023.

Automatic synchronization with Technopedia content updates​

note

This enhancement is available with IT Visibility.

Previously, updates in Technopedia contents would not be reflected in the normalized data in IT Visibility until the next inventory reimport, which could take days or longer depending on your import schedule.

Now, any changes to the Technopedia contents (either in the global Technopedia catalog or in the Private Catalog) automatically trigger the re-normalization process in IT Visibility and the normalized data against the updated Technopedia will be available in IT Visibility within hours. You no longer need to run a reimport to synchronize with the latest Technopedia contents. This enhancement enables you to easily maintain the currency of your inventory data and statistics.

note

This automatic synchronization is not applicable to file evidence yet.

General Availability (GA) features available after upgrading to latest version of IT Visibility​

IT Visibility has released a new backend that provides customer access to new features listed in this section. Upgrading to the latest version of IT Visibility is not automatically performed for customers who were onboarded prior to October 31, 2023. To request an upgrade, contact Flexera Support.

note

The features listed in this section were released as beta features in June 2023 and are now included in this GA release, available if your organization has upgraded to the latest version of IT Visibility.

When your organization upgrades to the latest version of IT Visibility, you can use the GA features listed in this section. This section links to the June and September beta announcements of these features.

SaaS Management​

SaaS Management released the following Flexera One Help change in October 2023.

Legacy ServiceNow integration instructions removed from Flexera One Help​

note

This Flexera One Help change relates to SaaS Management.

In August 2023, Flexera One’s SaaS Management stopped offering the legacy ServiceNow and ServiceNow OAuth2 SaaS integrations. Flexera has now removed the integration instructions for these legacy SaaS integrations from the Flexera One Help. Refer to the help topic listed in the second column as its replacement.

Removed Flexera One Help TopicUse this Flexera One Help topic instead
ServiceNowServiceNow Licensing
ServiceNow OAuth2ServiceNow Licensing OAuth2