Queensland uni tackles software licences

The University of Queensland has had issues with software licensing, because individual faculties each have a different purchasing process, making it hard to see the software being used by whom. Now, the university has adopted Flexera to keep track of software use.

"We realised this lack of visibility into our software assets exposed us to software-audit risk for some applications, as well as the likelihood that we were overspending on others," Paul Sheeran, ITS executive officer at the University of Queensland, said in a statement.

The university looked at LANDesk, Altiris and KeyServer, but, in the end, it settled on FlexNet Manager Suite for Enterprises, including FlexNet Manager Platform, FlexNet Manager for Microsoft, FlexNet Manager for Adobe and FlexNet Manager for Engineering Applications.

The software will keep tabs on the university's 25,000 devices for asset-management purposes, and will also keep an eye on the software used on those devices. It will not only ensure that the university isn't unintentionally serving software to more users than it has licensed, but will also flag when the university has bought too many licences for its user base, which could uncover potential savings.

"Reducing audit risk by exposing where we might be over-using software is critical," said Sheeran, "but that's only part of the story. With organisation-wide visibility into all applications we've licensed and how they're actually being used, coupled with the ability to tie that usage data to our product-use rights, we're hoping to see where we might have over-licensed software, and how best to allocate and shift idle licences to users with actual need, thereby reducing the need to buy additional licences. This will undoubtedly represent a substantial return on our investment."