Upgrade Rights

An upgrade right means that you are entitled to receive one or more future versions of the same product when they are released, at no extra cost. Often this right is granted for as long as you have a current maintenance agreement (for example, Software Assurance for Microsoft). This right is not to be confused with a separate purchase of an upgrade package for software where you did not have the right to a free upgrade.

Note:This accordion is displayed only when a license has at least one product linked to it. For multi-product licenses and Microsoft CALs, the upgrade and downgrade rights can be set through the Product use rights pop up (see Configure Product Use Rights). This accordion is not displayed for SAP Named User, SAP Package, Microsoft User CAL, Microsoft Device CAL licenses, or where it is not relevant.

When upgrade rights have been set, and the next version of this application is discovered in inventory, it is automatically attached to the same license (subject to your business process rule settings).

Restrictions

• For Custom Metric licenses, these controls are purely for your record keeping and do not impact any calculations.
• For IBM PVU licenses, these properties have no effect on the PVU counts imported from ILMT. However, if a computer is reported in inventory from another source and not matched by a record imported from ILMT, IT Asset Management performs its own calculations of license consumption on that computer. In this latter case, the following controls are taken into account.

Controls

The following table lists upgrade rights controls.

Upgrade Rights Controls

Control

Details

This license does not have contracts with upgrade rights

This label indicates that this license has no linked contract attached to it that has applicable upgrade rights. Upgrade rights can be inherited from a contract, or specified in this section. This label appears when the contract attached to this license has no upgrade rights. See License Properties / Contracts Tab.

Inherit upgrade rights from contract

Indicates the name of the linked contract from which this license can inherit license consumption rules and rights. When you select this check box, you instruct IT Asset Management to dynamically inherit license use rights and rules from an automatically-selected linked contract. If a license is linked to multiple contracts, the license inherits use rights and rules from one of the linked contracts based on the following conditions:

• If one of the linked contracts has a value Yes for the Evergreen field, its use rights and rules are inherited by the license.
• If none of the linked contracts has a value Yes for the Evergreen field, the license inherits use rights and rules from the contract that has a greater value for the Expiry date field.
• If none of the linked contracts has a value Yes for the Evergreen field, and all of the linked contracts have same value for the Expiry date field, the license inherits use rights and rules from the contract that appears first in database order (normally the contract record that was created first).
• If all of the linked contracts have a value Yes for the Evergreen field, or all of the linked contracts have same expiry date, the license inherits use rights and rules from the contract that appears first in database order.

Note:You cannot use other rights options when you select this check box.

No upgrade rights

Choose this option when you do not have an upgrade right (for example, packages bought retail, or a license outside a support agreement).

Support upgrades to a selected version

For those cases where an upgrade right applies until a specific product version, you can set the version here. When you choose this option, a drop- down list appears. Choose an appropriate value from this list:

• Latest version allows unlimited upgrade rights.
• Other options may appear, listing other versions of the same product from the same publisher. By default these are listed from the latest version to the oldest, as determined by the Application Recognition Library. If you choose one of these versions, it is the last one to which you are allowed to upgrade for free.

This is the appropriate setting when:

• You once had a support agreement that granted free upgrades, and later let that support agreement expire. Setting this control to the last upgrade to which you were entitled keeps all prior versions appropriately licensed, but prevents later versions attaching to this license.
• Your upgrade right covers minor version upgrades (such as from 1.4.3 to 1.4.4) but not major version upgrades (such as 1.4.3 to 2.0).

Support upgrades until a set date

For those cases where an upgrade right applies until a set date (such as special deals), you can set the date here. When you choose this option, a date picker calendar appears. You can type the date in the current format configured for your enterprise, or click the arrow on the right of this field to pick a date from the calendar.

It’s possible that you initially set up a license to reflect some available upgrade rights, but that these were subsequently terminated. In such cases it is good to revisit the license properties and set the termination date to prevent subsequent mistakes in calculating compliance.

Note:Generally, this test relies on a release date being set for the application (that is, if the application's release date is earlier than your set date, you can upgrade to that version). However, many applications do not have release dates available in the ARL (Application Recognition Library). To assist, the nightly license reconciliation assumes that applications already in the ARL with unknown release dates must have been released in the past; and if your set date is still in the future, then clearly upgrades to the latest known version of the application are permitted. No similar assumption can be made once the set date is in the past, since there is no way to tell whether that past date is before or after the application's unknown (past) release date. For this reason, it is very valuable to keep the "upgrades until" date current when you renew support, so that it remains in the future. Alternatively, you may wish to make use of the previous Support upgrades to a selected version option.

Note:You cannot set Support upgrades to a selected version to Not allowed. If upgrade is not allowed, set the radio button for No upgrade rights. You cannot track the changes made to upgrade rights.