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Best practice


REQUEST FOR COMMENTS – ITAM REVIEW MICROSOFT CERTIFICATION

14 November 2023
9 minute read
George Wright
Best practice


REQUEST FOR COMMENTS – ITAM REVIEW MICROSOFT CERTIFICATION


14 November 2023
9 minute read
George Wright


We want your help in finalising the ITAM Review Microsoft Certification. ITAM
Review Certifications are designed to enable tool and service buyers to assess
potential purchases against common community-sourced standards. Currently we
have standards for Oracle, SAP, SaaS, Enterprise SAM, and Inventory & Discovery.


ITAM REVIEW MICROSOFT CERTIFICATION – WE NEED YOUR FEEDBACK!

Community sourcing of standards is important because it ensures that a
certification meets real-world needs, and with this in mind we would like to
request comments and feedback on our draft Microsoft SAM certification.

This certification assesses a tool’s capability for managing Microsoft licenses
for Operating Systems, Servers, Applications, and Online Services. It covers
topics as diverse as SQL Server licensing and Microsoft 365 across the full SAM
lifecycle of Entitlement, Consumption, Optimization, and Reporting. Please note
that we have not included topics relating to managing Microsoft Azure, or the
use of Microsoft licenses in other public or private clouds.

To read the current draft of the standard, either click here to access the Word
version:

Microsoft-Certification-Standard-v.01Download

Or scroll below to view the current draft text.


SEND US YOUR COMMENTS AND FEEDBACK

To send us your comments, please email support@itassetmanagement.net

We welcome comments from end users, consultants, and tool providers. The aim is
to develop a comprehensive standard to benefit the industry.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


MICROSOFT CERTIFICATION OUTLINE – DRAFT FOR COMMUNITY FEEDBACK




SUMMARY

This standard outlines the baseline requirements for tools to be certified by
ITAM Review for the purpose of managing Microsoft licenses. It is split into 4
sections: Entitlement, Consumption, Optimization, and Reporting. The aim is to
highlight to prospective tool customers how a certified tool meets common SAM
deliverable requirements – tracking license ownership, determining consumption
of licenses, creating reports for a variety of stakeholders, and optimizing
their estates to maximize license usage, remove license risk, and reduce costs.


SCOPE

Microsoft products cover a broad scope. This standard is focused on management
of product licenses and license metrics relating to enterprise software both on
premises and in the Cloud. Specifically, we expect certified products to cover
at least three of the following product categories: Operating Systems,
Applications, Servers, and Online Services.

Furthermore, the standard focuses on commercial licensing and recognizes that
optimization of academic, government, and non-production licensing may not be
covered by commercial tooling.

This standard does not cover Azure, or optimization of cloud deployments, other
than tracking usage of online services related to Operating System, Application,
SaaS, or Server/Datacenter licensing. A separate certification standard may be
created for Azure Management at a later date.


ENTITLEMENT

 1.  How does your tool record entitlements?
 2.  Does your tool enable the metrics listed in Appendix 1 to be recorded?
 3.  Can entitlements be structured by Buying program, agreement, affiliate,
     etc?
 4.  Are entitlements with active Software Assurance (SA) differentiated from
     those without?
 5.  For entitlements with SA are SA-specific benefits (e.g. license mobility)
     recorded in the license record and available for consumption and
     optimization purposes?
 6.  Can entitlements be loaded from a Microsoft License Statement (MLS)?
 7.  Is an audit trail maintained regarding adds, amends, and deletions of
     entitlement data?
 8.  Can licenses be imported from a 3rd-party source – e.g. Reseller account
     records?
 9.  How does your tool handle license renewals and true-ups?
 10. Does your tool record pricing (list and/or actual) to enable calculation of
     associated licensing costs?
 11. Are license SKUs recorded?
 12. Are OEM licenses (i.e. OS licenses provided with hardware) identifiable and
     segregated from purchased licenses?
 13. Does your tool track subscription licenses?
 14. Where applicable, are Azure Hybrid Benefits recorded?
 15. Can upgrade/downgrade rights be tracked?
 16. Can existing licenses be upgraded via license grants when metrics change?
     e.g. migration from per CPU to per core.


CONSUMPTION

 1.  List the methods your tool uses for gathering consumption data (e.g.
     agent-based, agentless, API, third-party sources, manual input)
 2.  Does your tool import data from an organization’s computers and users
     directory (e.g. Active Directory)?
 3.  How frequently can consumption data be collected? (e.g. continuously,
     daily, weekly, ad hoc)
 4.  For virtualized on-premises environments can a deployment hierarchy be
     established and maintained (e.g. Datacenter/Cluster/Host/VM), including
     relevant data such as processor type, core count, and hyperthreading
     status?
 5.  Can environments be tagged as Production/Non-Production/DR?
 6.  For the purposes of calculating consumption can appropriate metrics be
     assigned to consuming devices/users? For example, tagging a Cluster as
     entitled to unlimited deployment due to assignment of Datacenter licenses,
     or assigning a Device CAL to a device, or marking a SQL deployment as being
     licensed with Server/CAL licenses.
 7.  Are user connections to environments discovered and inventoried? This is
     required in order to determine user-based consumption metrics such as
     User/Device CALs and MSDN/Visual Studio.
 8.  Are last access dates to products (servers, applications, etc) by devices
     and users recorded?
 9.  Does your tool record consumption of Azure Hybrid Benefit rights?
 10. Does your tool record creation and deletion dates for assets (users,
     devices, installations)?


OPTIMIZATION

 1. Does your tool reflect and track Microsoft license assignment rules
    including the 90-day rule and License Mobility?
 2. Are licenses automatically de-allocated when a license assignment rule such
    as the 90-day rule is met?
 3. Is a renewal calendar or similar view provided for licenses (e.g. CSP, SaaS,
    EA renewals)?
 4. Are license entitlements allocated automatically based on consumption data
    in order to minimize cost and/or maximize license compliance?
 5. Can licenses be “pinned” to certain environments? e.g. assigning unlimited
    deployment rights to a specific cluster, or tagging a non-production
    environment to use MSDN/Visual Studio licenses
 6. Where downgrade or upgrade rights are being utilized is this reflected in
    the compliance calculation?
 7. Are license costs captured in order to determine the financial aspects of
    consumption optimization?
 8. Does the tool provide evidence to support automated optimizations/license
    allocations. For example, indicating a cluster has unlimited deployment
    rights due to assignment of Datacenter licenses?
 9. Does your tool support scenario modelling to aid decision making? For
    example, calculating the compliance impact of proposed hardware upgrades.


REPORTING

 1. Does the tool provide a dashboarding function, including customization by
    users?
 2. Does the reporting engine enable role-based access – i.e. limiting access to
    certain data to certain subsets of users?
 3. Are costs relating to license deployments, compliance shortfalls, etc. made
    available in applicable reports?
 4. Can users create their own custom reports?
 5. Can reports be generated and issued on a scheduled basis?
 6. Is it possible for external reporting tools (e.g. PowerBI, Tableau) to
    access data in your tool? If so, is the access automated via API or similar
    or via manual means (e.g. CSV export)
 7. Can users generate and access trend data? For example, show the progress of
    compliance or optimization aspects over time.
 8. Does the dashboarding facility provide users with actionable insights, e.g.
    optimization opportunities?


APPENDIX 1 – METRICS

GLOBAL METRICS

 * Per user
 * Per device
 * Per CPU
 * Per core

PRODUCT CATEGORIES

ON-PREMISES DATACENTER

 * Windows Server
   * Per CPU + CAL (old)
   * Per Core + CAL (current)
 * SQL Server
   * Per CPU (old)
   * Per Core (new)
   * Per Server + CAL (old for Enterprise, current for Std)
   * Developer Edition
 * Azure Hybrid Benefit for both

ON-PREMISES DESKTOP

 * Windows 10/11
 * Office Std/Pro Plus

SAAS

 * Office / Microsoft 365
 * Visio / Project 365
 * Power Apps
 * Power Automate
 * Power BI

CLOUD

 * Azure Hybrid Benefit
 * License Mobility rights

SOFTWARE ASSURANCE

 * Upgrade/downgrade rights
 * License Mobility


CAN’T FIND WHAT YOU’RE LOOKING FOR?




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