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Administrators can now automate the discovery of ‘bring your own licence’ (BYOL) usage across their Amazon Web Services (AWS) and on-premises environments thanks to new functionality within the cloud giant’s Licence Manager offering.
Broadly, AWS License Manager gives users the flexibility and control to manage software licence usage in such a way as to match end user organisational structure and processes. It can be set in different configurations to address specific business needs.
The service is designed to make it easier for administrators to manage their existing software licences from vendors such as Microsoft, SAP, Oracle and IBM across different environments.
With the automation capability, administrators can specify product information along with licencing rules for BYOL software within the space of just a few clicks.
According to AWS, this enables the Licence Manager service to automatically track the instances that have the specified software installed and notify the administrator of any licensing rule violations.
This way, administrators can remain informed of all the software installations across their environments, and can prevent usage that is not compliant with their defined licensing rules.
The service is available in multiple regions globally. Within the Asia Pacific region, it is supported across the Sydney, Singapore, Tokyo, Seoul and Hong Kong regions, among others.
AWS License Manager integrates with various AWS launch mechanisms, including AWS CloudFormation, EC2 Launch Templates, and Service Catalog.
It can also be used to track licenses across EC2 instances using default tenancy, Dedicated Instances, Dedicated Hosts, Spot Instances and Spot Fleet, and Auto Scaling groups.
The new capability comes as AWS announces a raft of new offerings at its re:Invent event in Las Vegas this week, including three new initiatives the company hopes will drive the use of quantum computing technology throughout industry, beyond proof-of-concept uses and towards full-blown production applications.
These are: Amazon Braket, a fully managed AWS service that enables scientists, researchers, and developers to begin experimenting with computers from quantum hardware providers in a single place; the Amazon Quantum Solutions Lab; and the AWS Center for Quantum Computing.
The company has also launched a new program to help customers migrate legacy Windows Server applications to newer, supported versions of Windows Server on AWS, without any code changes.
