Named User Licenses Consumption and Optimization Report

IT Asset Management 2024 R1.3 (Cloud)

The Named User Licenses Consumption and Optimization Report, allows Software Asset Managers to actively track subscriptions for installed applications, and returns license consumption for all named user licenses.

By design, named user licenses can be complex as subscriptions often allow for bundled software. This makes it hard to understand what applications (installed applications, installed and used applications) are consuming the named user license.

To address this complexity and optimization opportunity, this report brings a summarized view, per user consumption that provides all details to understand the consumptions: installed and used applications consuming the license.

The report returns extensive user details such as full name, email address and so on. As well as consumption details such as installed applications consuming licenses, and installed and used applications consuming licenses.

Beyond Software Asset Management data transparency, the report computes optimization recommendations assessing each user(s) with an active subscription against lower cost subscriptions from the same Publisher, for installed and used applications. Specifically for Adobe, the report will identify if it's cheaper to license standalone Adobe products in comparison to subscribing to the Creative Cloud All Apps license subscription.

The report provides all cost information (current cost, optimal cost, potential saving for users, total potential saving and so on).

Software Asset Managers can subsequently use this data to action subscription(s) downgrades.

Note: By design, a named user license will cover installed applications for only those users who are allocated the license.

On running the report after the latest inventory import and license reconciliation process, the report will compute the following:

Installed applications on any and all active computers inventoried for the user(s).
Used applications on any and all active computers inventoried for the user(s).
Installations/usage not monitored by any particular license, therefore showing "under the radar" usage.
Prioritizes two different optimizations:
- Priority 1: installed applications. (considered priority 1 because optimization is more straightforward, subscribing to a lower plan is immediately possible).
- Priority 2: used applications. (considered priority 2 because optimization is less straightforward, unused applications need to be uninstalled prior to subscribing to a lower plan).
For Adobe only: the report will check the Adobe Creative Cloud All Apps license consumption and identify if it's cheaper to license standalone Adobe products instead. The threshold for this is less than three. If there are less than three products, then it is financially advantageous to license two individual products and to cancel the Creative Cloud All Apps license subscription. If there are three or more products, then it is worth subscribing to the Creative Cloud All Apps license subscription.
For Microsoft 365 only: the “F3<E1<AppsForEnterprise<E3<E5” subscription sequence is checked.
For all other products (generic): A generic Optimization is computed, per vendor, checking each user’s installed and used applications against the “lower” named user licenses from the lowest number of covered products to the highest. The ranking of subscriptions is purely based on the number of covered products by the license.

Note: The report does not include Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN). MSDN has a very specific configuration (in certain cases, can have hundreds of applications linked to a license) and does not have any downgrade capability.

Generating the report

Note: This report is scoped to the data that each operator is entitled to see, according to their access rights. While an administrator can see all licenses, consumption, and optimizations, another operator who has access rights restricted to EMEA sees only those elements linked to the EMEA location, and to any of its child locations.

Go to the Named User Licenses Consumption and Optimization page (Reporting > License Reports > Named User Licenses Consumption and Optimization).
Click Run report to display the results.

All results are shown as of the latest inventory import and license reconciliation process, for which the date and time are shown in the right-hand end of the title bar, against Reconciled:

Reading the report

The following columns (listed alphabetically) are available.

Please keep in mind that some columns are accessible by means of the column chooser to limit the default number of columns displayed.

Column name	Description
Comment on optimization	The comment will add further details to help software asset managers better understand the optimization calculations or optimal cost calculations. For example, for Adobe, if a user has a Creative Cloud All Apps subscription with only Acrobat and Illustrator installed and used, but a standalone license already exists for Acrobat DC, but not for Illustrator, then the optimal cost will not factor in the Illustrator subscription cost. For Microsoft365, the report checks on the existence of all licenses for F3, Microsoft Apps, E1, E3 and E5 to ensure that each user situation is assessed against lower subscriptions.
Computer(s) with installations consuming the license	Computers where installations consuming the license for the user have been found. Computers can be owned by the user or could show usage for this user for the consuming installation.
Consuming installations for the user	A list of installed applications for the user consuming the named user license.
Consuming installations for the user with usage	Used applications for the user consuming the named user license. The application record contains a "usage period" in the usage tab. This "usage period" determines if the installed application is currently being used. The default value is 3 months.
Corporate unit	The corporate unit of the user.
Cost center	The cost center of the user.
Email	The email address of the user.
Full name	The first, middle, and last names of the user. Editable in the Full name field on the General tab of the user properties.
Installed consuming products	The number of products installed for the user that are consuming the named user license.
Last inventory date for installed computer(s)	This is the most recent inventory date for the computers that have applications installed or used consuming the license. The date information is beneficial for making a decision whether or not to downgrade subscriptions. For example, if a computer was inventoried six months ago, none of the applications on that computer will have been used (threshold is generally 3 months).
License name	The named user license consumed by the user.
License products	The total number of products covered by the named user license.
License type	The kind of license, which determines what properties are available for the license, and how compliance is calculated for the license. For details of an individual license type, please see the appropriate entry in the glossary. Editable in the License type field in the Identification tab of the license properties.
List of active subscriptions for publisher	Provides a list of other active subscriptions for the user. This column can be used to identify double subscriptions.
Location	The location within your enterprise where the user is located.
Most recent used date	The most recent date when the consuming application was last used. This information is useful and allows the software asset manager to quickly see the application usage for the license consumption.
Optimal license value`(Currency)`	Shows the lowest license cost corresponding to either Priority 1 (installed applications) or priority 2 (used applications). Note: this column will be blank, unless a lower subscription license (for the same publisher) with a cost has been obtained in the last software purchase type, or in the overridden cost of the license. In most cases, the value presented in this column, will be the optimized license cost based on usage. The license cost based on usage, will always be the same or cheaper than the optimized license cost based on installed applications.
Overall optimization`(Currency)`	The sum of all the saving based on all of the potential optimization recommendations. Each recommendation computes an optimal license cost, and each recommendation is compared against the current existing subscription cost. The optimization for the user is the difference between the current cost and the optimal cost.
Publisher	The license publisher linked to the vendor. The publisher is inherited from the primary application covered by the license.
Recommendation based on installed applications (Priority 1)	Recommendation based on installed applications for the user consuming the license. This recommendation has a higher priority as no uninstallation step is required before “downgrading” the subscription.
Recommendation based on used applications (Priority 2)	Recommendation based on used applications for the user consuming the license. This recommendation has a lower priority as usage needs to be validated (there could be reason why usage was not collected) and an uninstallation step is required before “downgrading” the subscription.
Saving for user `(Currency)`	This column shows the saving offered. The recommended named user license based on used applications will always promote the best cost saving.
Used consuming products	The number of products installed and used by the user that are consuming the named user license.
User status	The operational status of the accessing user within the enterprise.
User’s active computers	Current number of active computers for the user.
Value consumed `(Currency)`	The unit cost of one entitlement (or point, depending on the license type). This cost is taken from the first available of the following data points, from highest to lowest priority: The Amount field on the Financial tab of the license properties The Override unit price on the Purchases tab of the license properties The Quantity amount at unit price field on the Financial tab of the properties of the purchase most recently linked to the license.

IT Asset Management (Cloud)

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