Gartner’s new report, Software Vendor Auditing Trends: What to Watch for and How to Respond (May 23, 2012) contains  interesting food for thought for enterprises.  According to the report,  65% of the respondents in a recent Gartner survey said they had been audited by at least one software vendor during the past 12 months.  The vendors reported as auditing for software license compliance most frequently were (in alphabetical order) Adobe, Attachmate, Autodesk, IBM, Infor, Informatica, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, Symantec and VMware. 

The report goes on to point out the myriad license compliance issues of each of the high-audit vendors, along with Gartner recommendations for how to best address these issues.  A close reading of the Gartner “primary area of risk” portion of the report highlights a common thread that enterprises must take into account in order to be “software audit ready”.  Here are a few short snippets:

• Adobe: “…Inventory discovery tools cannot ensure compliance with all license terms and conditions, such as the contractual restriction that Adobe Acrobat forms may save no more than 500 completed responses without a server product license, as these tools identify only the software installations and not the way in which the software is used...”
• Attachmate: “…In many cases, customers are confused about the difference between the mainframe and thick-client (standalone) versions of the products, and about the ways in which they can be used…”
• Autodesk: “…Autodesk's license models are complex and confusing, particularly the way in which subscription entitlements and prior version rights work… Autodesk products are notoriously difficult to audit and many clients find that their incumbent tools are unable provide the necessary information to demonstrate compliance with negotiated license terms and conditions…”
• IBM: “…IBM has announced and set forth a new International Passport Advantage Agreement (IPAA), effective 18 July 2011, with changes to terms and conditions… When reviewing [license]entitlements, ensure that these terms are updated in your contract and SAM databases and processes to track and manage compliance…”
• Infor: “…Risks include failure to comply with the usage rights for software licenses, source code and object code, for software licensed now or previously by Infor, Baan, SSA Global, Lawson Software and other licensors' products acquired by Infor… Infor customers are often not aware of these limitations or issues as IT asset management and IT procurement may not be actively reviewing these older license agreements…”
• Informatica: “…Customer [software] audits seem consistently to target several key areas of Informatica functionality. Because PowerCenter (and many Informatica products) are licensed on a per-CPU-core basis, customers need to ensure they are not deploying the software on more CPU cores than they are licensed for…”
• Microsoft: “…The most common compliance issues faced by Microsoft customers typically relate to a lack of understanding of the subtly nuanced licensing requirements…”
• Oracle: “…The primary areas of risk appear to be vague areas of license metrics and usage entitlements, including changes in license metric definitions that may show up in ordering documents that differ from those of some earlier deals…”
• SAP: “…SAP license bundles have shifted considerably over the years. The exact bundle was generally not well defined in contracts, which now makes it difficult for clients to know whether they are entitled to use specific software in their agreement…”
• Symantec: “…Both desktop and server virtualization require a detailed check of license terms…”
• VMWare: “…An ELA (Enterprise License Agreement) grants licenses for software to be deployed and used before the ELA expires. Customers who set aside licenses just in case they might be needed in future can find that these licenses are not covered under the terms of their current ELA, especially if it is uncapped…”

Even a quick reading of this Gartner report reveals that enterprises cannot hope to be compliant and software audit ready if they only concentrate on inventory and counting of licenses.  Indeed, the greater risk comes from not being aware of the complex licensing terms and product use rights contained in each software license agreement, and ensuring that users are at all times compliant with those terms.

Gartner provides excellent recommendations on the actions that enterprises should take to ensure compliance with those license terms.  The question remains whether those recommendations can be put into action without automation.  Given limited time, resources and the enormous complexity around software asset management and license optimization, I think not.  Having automated license management solutions in place capable of tracking license terms, applying software product use rights, and reconciling software installations and usage with license entitlements would seem to be the only practicable solution to assist the resource-challenged software asset manager implement Gartner’s recommended approach.

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Readers may also be interested in this recent blog post on the same topic. To learn more about Managing IBM License Complexity, please download our white paper.

InstallAnywhere offers merge module support to facilitate parallel development, code sharing, and reuse. Unlike Windows Installer merge modules, InstallAnywhere merge modules can be integrated into InstallAnywhere projects in four ways: Design-Time, Build-Time, Install-Time, and Dynamic. The way the merge module is integrated affects how projects are coded and determines some aspects of how the installation functions at run-time. The goal of this article is to talk a bit out what merge modules are, how to write them, and how to use them.

What Is a Merge Module?

Merge modules are distinct groups of installation functionality that are packaged into a single package. They can be thought of as “plug and play” type functionality where, if they are written properly, they deliver a complete set of functionality in a package that can be included in one or more product installations. Conceptually they are like a USB device: once you plug it into the computer, the complete set of functionality is available, and when removed the functionality is completely removed. Similarly, when a merge module is included in an installation project, the result of running the built installation will be delivery of the contents of the merge module, as well as those in the installation project itself. If removed from the project, all of the functionality contained within is removed from the project.

Merge modules can contain anything a normal installation project can contain, like actions in Pre- and Post-Install tasks (including panels, consoles, etc…), actions in the Install and Uninstall tasks, and actions in Pre- and Post-Uninstall (including panels, consoles, etc…). Which of these actions will be visible or executed is determined by the merge module type designation when it is integrated into the installation project that consumes it.

Developing Merge Modules

From a development standpoint a merge module starts out as any other installation project. Designating the project as a merge module occurs in the Build task where the format of the output is specified. For testing purposes, you can even build the project as both a merge module and as an installation project that can be run independently on its own. This allows for testing of the merge module functionality outside any other installation project so it can be fully debugged before including it in any projects.

All merge module projects can be coded the same way and the distinction of which type they are is determined at integration time with the product installation that delivers them. In fact, the same merge module can be included in different projects as different types depending on what you intend as the developer. This is rare, but the flexibility does exist for those times where it may be desirable. That being said, it does help to understand how the merge module will be consumed to allow you to make coding choices, so you probably want to consider that before getting too far in your implementation.

Communication of variable values can take place between the merge module and the project which consumes it, and this is done via Advertised Variables. The consuming project can set variables within the merge module and the merge module can in turn set variable values within the consuming project. Merge modules advertise their variables too so that at import time they can be seen from the consuming project via the Edit Variables view that is unique for each type of merge module.

Using Merge Modules

As an InstallAnywhere developer, how do you know which type to choose? Let’s go through the types and how their behaviors differ.

Design-Time Merge Modules

Design-Time merge modules are imported in the Modules section under the Organization task. They are imported a single time during development of your installation project and can be thought of like taking a copy of the merge module content at import time and inserting the actions within it into the appropriate tasks within your installation project.

Once the merge module has been imported, there are no ties to the original merge module project, so any changes to it will only be included into new projects that import it.

After the Design-Time merge module has been imported, the actions from it can be moved around within your project to put them into the order that you desire. The actions are independent and can be acted upon independently. You can even organize them under action groups and assign rules to them.

Build-Time Merge Modules

Build-time merge modules are included via the Install Merge Module action in the Installation task. They are included in such a way that there is a reference to them in the consuming project, but they are streamed into the installation package at build-time. There is some control in the Install Merge Module action over whether the Pre-Install and Post-Install tasks are included in the run time functionality as well.

Although Pre-Install and Post-Install tasks can be included with Build-Time merge modules, the merge module will be installed silently so all Panels, Consoles, and Show Message actions will be ignored at run time.

Install-Time Merge Modules

Install-Time merge modules are included via the Install Merge Module action in the Installation task very similarly to Build-Time merge modules. They are also included in so that there is a reference to them in the consuming project, but instead of being streamed into the installation package at build-time, a reference to a directory is provided so that the project will know where to find the merge module at run time.

When the Install-Time merge module action is used in this way, the referenced directory is searched and all InstallAnywhere merge modules located in that directory will run in alphabetical order. As with Build-Time merge modules, there is some control in the Install Merge Module action over whether the Pre-Install and Post-Install tasks are included as well.

Although Pre-Install and Post-Install tasks can be included with Install-Time merge modules, the merge module will be installed silently so all Panels, Consoles, and Show Message actions will be ignored.

Dynamic Merge Modules

Dynamic merge modules are imported in the Modules section under the Organization task. They are imported an initial time when they are included in the project, but they are re-imported each time the installation is built or closed and opened again. This is the type of merge module that is the most like a Windows Installer Merge Module in how it is integrated with its consuming projects.

The author of the consuming project can chose whether or not to include Pre-Install and Post-Install actions from the merge module. Unlike Build-Time merge modules, a Dynamic merge module’s Pre-Install and Post-Install actions are grouped in a single action within the consuming project’s Pre-Install and Post-Install tasks. The actions within the merge module can be visible within the single group, but cannot be expanded or edited from the consuming project. The Installation tasks of the merge module are included in the Installation task of the consuming project, but as a single item that cannot be expanded or viewed via the consuming project. The single group can be moved as a single entity, but the separate actions within it cannot be split apart.

Conclusions

Merge modules can add a lot of flexibility to the way you code your projects. They can allow multiple developers to work on a project simultaneously, and can facilitate easy code sharing and reuse across multiple projects so give them a try!

For tips on creating professional, reliable installations that make a favorable first impression for your products, see Robert Dickau's white paper Best Practices for Building Multi-Platform Installers

As the cloud becomes the more prevalent and preferred architecture – having a succinct, automated process between Development (Dev) and Operations (Ops)— DevOps—will be a critical success factor for IT shops.  During my research for Visible Ops Private Cloud and Client4Cloud – it became clear that IT shops that automated bad processes or did not have processes in place – only got into trouble faster.  The less process and more rigid controls IT put in place for the business the more the business would work around IT to circumvent policies that inhibited productivity.

The agility, flexibility, and dynamic nature of cloud computing provides significant ROI to the business but only if IT can create and automate processes that provide compelling value to overall productivity of the company.  As IT Ops becomes the "Cloud Broker" and is able to create virtual environments within minutes – Dev will need to automate the packaging, handoff and analysis to keep up.  One individual interviewed for Visible Ops Private Cloud indicated that although it was great that IT could  provide the virtual environment within 15 minutes it still took them over 9 days to have critical applications installed and running due to poor processes for software licensing, procurement, analytics, and change management.  (2011, ITPI)

Many senior development and operations executives I have spoken to are focused on – how to create a cloud environment that provides Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) for the business. It became apparent during many discussions that DevOps is the next logical step.  Meaning, once the infrastructure is in place and automated – business will require IT to automate the rest of the process to reduce the overall time to value for the organization.  Successfully automating the handshake between Dev and Ops will be a critical success factor in companies realizing the true value of cloud computing.

Key elements to consider on your DevOps journey:

• Development workflow that enables collaboration across multiple geographies, groups, and departments.
• Secure source code repository with branching that also have a sound disaster recovery and security controls to reduce mistakes and malicious activities.
• Automated packaging and provisioning of applications across physical and virtual paradigms leveraging current backend systems for Asset Management, Configuration Management, Change Management, and Service Desk.
• Automated test and dev that are cloud enabled to provide both depth of scale but also ability to burst across various cloud environments.
• In depth analytics on application and feature level usage along with software license entitlements to ensure that not only technically can you deploy in the cloud but legally can you.
• Automated software licensing handshake across hybrid clouds – also known as licensing as a service to enable lifting and shifting of workloads without the drag of manual approvals for bring your own software licensing policies of 3^rd party cloud providers and ISVs.

DevOps is coming of age and will be more critical for both development and packaging moving forward.  The key is automating the handshake and processes now as part of the overall cloud implementation.

Want to learn more about DevOps…check out these upcoming events where Paul Peissner from CollabNet will share DevOps insights and how Flexera Software solutions fit within the process.

By John Emmitt

Everyone who is deeply involved in software asset management (SAM) will tell you that (a) its not a quick fix type of thing—its got to be an ongoing program, (b) its mostly about having good, indeed best practice, processes and skilled people (but having robust, proven technology can make a huge difference in terms of successfully implementing those processes—more on this later), and (c) it can be hard to build a business case for implementing a SAM program and get the support of senior management. Why is that?

The Gartner list of top 10 CIO tech priorities for 2012 shows that SAM and License Optimization are not (specifically) on the list:

1. Analytics and business intelligence. (Last year's rank: 5)
2. Mobile technologies. (Last year: 3)
3. Cloud computing, including SaaS. (Last year: 1)
4. Collaboration/workflow technologies. (Last year: 8)
5. Legacy modernization.
6. IT management. (Last year: 4)
7. CRM
8. ERP applications
9. Security
10. Virtualization. (Last year: 2)

If you look back at previous years, I’m quite certain that software asset management and license optimization weren’t on the list then either. We do see “IT management” on the list, and maybe this is where we need to assume that SAM and license optimization are really “showing up”—SAM programs help organizations manage IT assets— to gain control and improve visibility of those assets and have better financial management of the assets.

The same Gartner survey that produced the above list also looked at top business priorities, and in third place they have “reducing costs”. So, we see that cost reduction is still a high priority. And guess what? Software asset management and license optimization programs can help organizations reduce costs for software, not to mention helping to avoid unbudgeted software audit true-up expenses. Furthermore, software typically represents 20 to 35% of the IT budget—it’s a big chunk of the CIO’s budget. So, again, why isn’t it on the list?

I have a couple of possible explanations for this. First, traditionally, software asset management technologies and projects focused on counting assets—hardware and software inventory and maybe doing some reconciliation against purchases. But the process was not very automated and was far from easy—it was a lot of work to bring in the license entitlement (purchase order) data, figure out what was actually purchased and match that up with the inventory data. You may have purchased Adobe Creative Suite 5 (CS5) Design Premium, but your inventory data showed that you had Acrobat and Dreamweaver on some machines and Photoshop and Illustrator on some others, for instance. It took some real digging to figure out that the Creative Suite purchase covered some or all of those installations. At the end of the day, maybe all this hard work got you through an audit or annual true-up event, but it didn’t help you dramatically reduce software costs or avoid the audit in the first place.

Second, customers who have been successful with SAM programs are almost always reluctant to tell their stories. So there is not a lot of verifiable data out there that says, if I invest X in SAM and license optimization, I’m going to have an ROI of Y. The reasons for this include the fact that these organizations have to continue to do business with the software vendors, even after they have achieved significant cost savings with that vendor, and they don’t want to rankle the vendor by publicizing the savings. That’s understandable, but also unfortunate from the standpoint of advancing the cause of SAM in the marketplace. Its also ironic, because the enterprises have been over-spending on software with these vendors for many years in some cases.

To address the first issue, I can say that SAM and license optimization technology has come a long way over the past few years. Tools now have built-in Stock keeping Unit (SKU) libraries, for example, that allow purchase order data to be automatically matched up with inventory data to help streamline the reconciliation process. Now you can see your license position at “the push of a button” and maintain continuous license compliance—avoiding those license audits. License optimization tools provide product use rights libraries that capture vendor license entitlements, which, when properly applied can reduce your license consumption considerably—right of second use, multiple (versions) installation rights, virtual use rights, cold backup/failover rights, etc. all entitle you to have multiple installations covered under a single license. This type of optimization was hard to do before, and as a result, companies over bought software licenses.

With regard to the second issue, we have many major enterprise customers that have successfully implemented SAM and license optimization programs and have reaped the rewards in terms of—increased control and visibility of their assets, reduced license liability risk, and significant cost savings. The actual savings is typically between 10% and 30% of their software spend in the first year of implementation. One Global 500 customer with more than 100,000 employees, for example, has realized a savings of more than $35 million on just two major vendors. That equates to about 17.5% of their total annual software spend of $200 million. In several cases customers have achieved reductions of 50% to 60% of their ongoing software maintenance costs for major vendors such as Adobe and Oracle.

Building the Business Case

Let’s build a rudimentary business case for a software asset management and license optimization program for a hypothetical financial services company that has $5 billion in revenue. The typical IT budget as a percentage of revenue varies by industry, with financial services coming in at about 4% of revenue:

For our hypothetical Financial Services company

Total IT budget:  $5B * 4% = $200 million

If their software budget is say, 25% of their IT budget, then:

Total Software budget:  $200M * 25% = $50 million

If the company can realize just a 10% savings on its software spend by implementing a SAM and license optimization program, the savings is:

@10%: Savings from SAM and License Optimization: $50M * 10% = $5 million

Let’s estimate that the first year cost of their SAM program, including IT staffing, consulting services and tools is about $850,000. Then the return on investment in the first year of implementation is:

ROI @10% savings rate: $5,000,000 - $850,000 / $850,000 = 488%

We see that the return on investment is substantial, even at the 10% savings rate. And we have empirical evidence from existing customers that this savings rate is very realistic and in fact is at the low end of the range. Now what CIO doesn’t want to invest in a program that returns more than 400% in cost savings and reduces license liability risk at the same time?

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To learn more about getting started on a Software Asset Management program, view our on-demand Webinar.

According to Gartner, application virtualization is an application packaging and deployment technology that isolates applications from each other and limits the degree to which they interact with the underlying OS. Application virtualization provides an alternative to traditional packaging and installation technologies. 

Application virtualization has the potential to decrease the time it takes to deploy applications by reducing application packaging complexity and scope for application conflicts typically experienced when using traditional packaging approaches (e.g., MSI). Cost savings comprise the main benefit of application virtualization in the form of faster application packaging, less regression testing, reduced help desk calls and increased standardization.

 Given that application virtualization represents an alternative approach to application packaging and deployment, it stands to reason that you would benefit from integrating this into your existing application packaging process. Specifically, such a process should include steps to: 

• Identify—the first step requires obtaining an accurate view of the applications that are deployed across the organization. This is a good time to look at the application inventory and take stock of what is actually being used, as opposed to what is deployed. When organizations undertake a major migration like Windows 7 or 8 - every app they port to that new environment requires time and effort - and therefore costs the company. Likewise, the same applies to application virtualization.  Reducing the number of applications that must be migrated, and the cost per migrated application is an important goal. So, companies are wise to inventory their applications and understand their use.

• Rationalize—once inventory is complete, IT should verify the need to continue to support the applications or to consolidate applications to a reduced number of products and versions, excluding from the migration process those that are not used. This will not only save time and cost around the migration, but it will enable the company to reduce wasted IT spend on application licenses that are not being used.

• Assess Compatibility—an essential step in any migration is an assessment of application suitability, as not all applications owned will work in the desired new environment. Without automation, it’s difficult to quickly know which applications will have compatibility issues, and thus which will require additional time to migrate.  If you’re virtualizing applications and considering rolling out Windows 7 or 8 applications as part of a larger VDI initiative, compatibility assessment must extend past simple application compatibility. It must also include an assessment of end user-compatibility. IT must have a high level of confidence that the user will have a good experience with the virtualized Windows app in the new operating system; otherwise the virtualized deployment will fail. To do so, organizations must collect in-depth information on each user’s application usage such as CPU performance, online/offline access, input/output and memory utilization, to reveal virtualization suitability and the complexity of virtualizing that application. From there, IT should generate a suitability assessment, ranking devices and users based on virtualization suitability into low-, medium- and high-complexity groups based on usage patterns and environmental conditions. Only those users assessed to have a high level of suitability should be deployed on the virtualized Windows 7 or 8 applications.

• Plan - the work completed in the Rationalize and Assess Compatibility phases arms IT management with a list of rationalized applications and the details of compatibility issues that need to be addressed. With this information IT will have a clear view of the magnitude of the project enabling them to accurately calculate costs and duration timeframes.

• Fix and package - as organizations prepare to deploy in the new environments they will need to convert applications to the required format. Application fixing and format conversion can be a time-consuming, manual process, so utilizing technology to automate this and leverage investment in packaged applications can yield considerable savings, and ensure a consistent approach to Application Readiness.

• Deploy - now IT can hand off the packaged virtualized applications to the deployment system for delivery to end users. To further cut costs, create efficiencies and deliver a better user experience, more organizations are looking to create App Portals for self-service - giving users an iTunes-like enterprise App Store to access approved applications. If the App Portal is linked to an Application Readiness solution, the process for populating the storefront with packaged applications, and making them available to users with requisite access rights can be simple. Moreover, if the App Portal is tied on the back end to an Enterprise License Optimization system, IT can create a seamless App Store experience for end users while still maintaining continual software compliance, financial accountability and control.

Note that this is the same process used to support traditional MSI applications.  While application virtualization introduces a new way to package and deploy, there are significant synergies to be realized—ease of training, process consistency, accuracy of results, etc.—from putting all applications through a standard application readiness process, regardless of the end format into which they will be packaged. Process consistency ensures that every application goes through the same rigor and steps to prepare it for successful deployment.

What continues to impede widespread adoption is that application virtualization cannot be used for 100% of applications, and may never work with many legacy applications, especially those developed in-house. The key is figuring out which ones can and can’t be virtualized. This reality places a premium on a standardized process that assesses each application for suitability to be virtualized and then implements an appropriate packaging strategy based on that assessment.

Application virtualization is not a panacea. But, with the right application readiness process supported by the right tools, organizations can leverage application virtualization to efficiently deliver applications and reduce help desk calls.

 For additional information, read the white paper “Six Steps to Continuous Application Readiness.”

InstallShield 2012 Spring includes support for running SQL scripts on Microsoft SQL Server 2012 database servers. The SQLBrowse run-time dialog that is displayed when end users choose to browse for a database server can now list instances of SQL Server 2012 and SQL Server 2012 Express including SQL Server 2012 Express LocalDB. Created for developers, LocalDB is a new version of SQL Server Express that is more suitable for embedding, and it helps them avoid a full installation of other editions of SQL Server.

Although the SQLLogin run-time dialog can connect to an instance of SQL Server 2012 or regular SQL Server 2012 Express by default when end users click the Next button, it fails to connect to an instance of LocalDB. This is because installations that are created in InstallShield use the SQL Server OLE DB provider by default to connect to a SQL Server database, and that old provider does not understand LocalDB connection strings: "Data Source=(localdb)\v11.0;Integrated Security=true....."

In order to enable connecting to LocalDB, you must switch to use the SQL Server 2012 Native Client OLE DB provider by following the steps below:

1. Open your InstallShield installation project.
2. In the View List under Additional Tools, open the Direct Editor.
3. In the Tables explorer, click the ISSQLDBMetaData table.
4. Find the MSSQLServer record.
5. The default value of the AdoDriverName field is "sqloledb". Change it to the following value: "sqlncli11"
6. Rebuild your installation.

The SQL Server 2012 Native Client OLE DB provider may not be installed on target systems. Therefore, you may want to use the Redistributables view to add the InstallShield prerequisite for the SQL Server 2012 Native Client to your installation in order to ensure that connecting to SQL Server works properly.

Note that InstallShield 2012 Spring does not include support for installing LocalDB named instances. If you want to create or delete named instances of LocalDB on target systems, consider using the SqlLocalDB Utility or writing your own code that calls the LocalDB Instance APIs.

The following example creates an instance of LocalDB named SampleInstance and starts the instance:

SqlLocalDB.exe create "SampleInstance" -s

To learn more about the new features in InstallShield 2012 Spring, register for the Webinar What’s New in InstallShield 2012 Spring.

Having just returned from the Symantec Vision Show in Las Vegas, I wanted to share some commentary that I gathered while at the event. As the threat landscape evolves and end-users are rapidly adopting new technologies, Vision 2012 provided some insights about where things are headed:

• The partnership between Symantec and VMware was spoken of often, and fondly, by the Symantec team, their partners, and end users who are intrigued to see where this is going. Reaching into the Hypervisor from within the Symantec Suite definitely opens up many possibilities and should make this very interesting to watch as it evolves.

• According to Forrester, expect 200 Million mobile devices in corporate environments by 2016, and the growth will be even faster in the amount of data housed. Cross-platform support has won over most of the major players and is especially strong for iOS. Several apps and versions coming this year are supporting iOS first, before Android or Windows mobile. Of the multiple demos I got to see − mostly on Apple devices − I found the separation of application access from data the most interesting. This is being done with forced authentication and inter-application security policies blocking sharing of data amongst un-secured devices. 

•  Another common theme was persistent vs. non-persistent environments, and all that they entail. It appears that demand for persistent environments is increasing as a result of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD). The Generation X & Y users don’t even look for security policies, they just bring in their devices and hook them up, so you’d best secure the data because it’s already too late to secure the devices.

•  The ‘Cloud’ was pervasive with many thought leadership and cloud sessions positing that in 2-3 years there won’t be sessions on the cloud, but instead it will be everywhere in nearly all the sessions. The mindset is changing from ‘security and compliance tools FROM the cloud, to security and compliance tools FOR the cloud.’ Much of the discussion about the cloud centered on the emerging threat landscape and the fact that attacks done with applications are not only targeting enterprise or government. As a result, endpoint protection on virtual desktops is increasing in importance to abate the ever-growing risk.

•  Symantec recognized that they have several portals and they committed to working on unifying them, which is good news for users. While they do provide a means of interacting through APIs and the like, it is still incumbent upon the end user to get this to work. Some developments are:

-   Nukona acquisition (2Q11) will be moving in the direction of single-sign on for application access

-   Regardless of the device on which the user logs in, persistent security settings will follow, thereby achieving the dream of managing BYOD from anywhere, anytime

So to sum up, the pervasiveness of the cloud and associated services required to secure delivery via the cloud and via mobile devices was top of mind and topic and is the direction we will see Symantec continue to invest.

Some call it the "Internet of Things" others call it "Machine-to-Machine" and some simply call it the convergence of smart enabled devices with the Internet—whatever you call it—we are at a new inflection point of connected devices. Based on Analysys Mason forecasts (http://www.analysysmason.com/about-us/news/insight/M2M_forecast_Jan2011), within the next few years, literally billions of Internet-enabled microprocessors will provide digital intelligence and connectivity for almost every commercial and industrial product or appliance, even baby clothes (Baby clothes go high-tech: Pyjamas to monitor heart beat, temperature, movement), extending the Internet into most aspects of our lives. This reminds me of how Skynet was created. For some wondering what Skynet is – it is a fictional computer systems, part of the Terminator movie series, with highly advanced artificial intelligence built by Cyberdyne Systems to automate the first national defense network that is capable of processing information at billion or perhaps trillion of operations per seconds. In these fictional movies, everything from embedded devices to computer systems to everyday machinery that humans are dependent on are interconnected and are controlled by Skynet making itself an entity with massive power by the data that it has in its possession to control and destroy anything how it see fit.

Traditionally, old world engineered systems like appliances, vehicles, energy meters, and vending machine were not connected to anything internet or internet-like. But, these same redesigned systems are now entering into the Internet. Expanding rapidly and globally due  to the growing advancements in hardware and software components, these smart appliances and devices are becoming the "Internet of Things" and the "Machine-to-Machine Evolution". Initially and implicitly, it is not the consumers that will have the most to gain from smart enabled device networking — it's the businesses that support them. The intelligent device manufacturer of your washing machine should be interested in its operating and usage patterns. Perhaps when it breaks down it will let them know, so that they can call pro-actively to let you know that they can provide immediate service. This may sound only slightly interesting for consumers, but for business and industrial automation applications it yields several major advantages. Intelligent device manufacturers can use their connected products to develop customer service relationships that can ultimately recreate the basis of customer management and generate new software + service offerings that enable recurring software licensing revenue streams. They can use device-networking technology to reduce the hassles of product ownership, while at the same time helping their own business to reduce costs and pursue new revenue growth opportunities.

As operators and service providers upgrade their infrastructure to support the ongoing demand for bandwidth, smart enabled devices will become ubiquitous and will play a bigger role in our life – from navigation systems in our cars and phone, to remote diagnostic machines to monitor our vital signs. Smart enabled devices or machines of tomorrow will have the capabilities to communicate with each other and process real time information that will lead to more efficient business transactions and conversely making our lives easier and subsequently ever so more dependent on these devices. As more and more machines are connected to each other and are part of the central fabric of our life, one day a spark of phenomenon might eventually happen and will give life to Skynet.

Flexera Software, the leading provider of Application Usage Management solutions for application producers and enterprises, announced today that its market-leading enterprise license optimization solution, FlexNet Manager Suite for Enterprises, won the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) CODiE Award for best asset management solution.  This is the third CODiE award win for Flexera Software.

SIIA, the principal trade association for the software and digital content industries, announced 28 CODiE Award winners in different categories on May 10 at a ceremony in San Francisco.  A CODiE Award win is an especially prestigious honor, as each award winner was first reviewed by a field of software industry executives, whose evaluations determined 119 finalists. SIIA members then reviewed these finalists and voted to select 28 CODiE Award winners in different categories, including FlexNet Manager Suite for Enterprise’s win as the best asset management solution.

FlexNet Manager Suite for Enterprises has emerged as the leading solution allowing large, global enterprises as well as midsize organizations to move up the maturity model, going beyond software asset management (SAM) to achieve continual enterprise license optimization. The solution automates entitlement based license management and reconciles software purchase order and contract information with actual application installation and usage data, to reduce license, maintenance and audit costs while maintaining license compliance.  As a result, enterprises gain unprecedented control of their software estate, driving as much as 5-30% savings in annual software spend.

Read the full press release here.

InstallShield 2012 Spring includes the following new capabilities:

Hybrid Cloud Deployments – Microsoft^® SQL Azure™ database scripting capabilities enable hybrid cloud SQL deployments

Pre-Release Support for Microsoft^® Windows^® 8 and Windows Server^® 2012 – Install your applications on new Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012, as well as Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2

Support for Visual Studio^® 11 – Build installations inside the new Visual Studio 11, as well as Visual Studio 2010, and deploy applications targeting .NET 4. Include new .NET prerequisites with installations

Advanced Wizard Page Editor and Redesigned Wizard Pages – Entirely new end-user interface with redesigned built-in wizard pages and a new wizard page editor to create a better run-time experience

Automatic Checking for Installer Updates and Patches – Automatic check and download of updates and patches at run-time

Suite Installation Enhancements – Easily bundle multiple products together into a single, unified installation. Ability to import and reference PRQ files as Suite packages, dynamic links for Suite packages, advanced reporting and logging on Suite packages as well as a new UI for custom conditions

Microsoft^® System Center 2012 Configuration Manager Support – Enables Software Producers to provide required deployment metadata to their Enterprise customers

Microsoft^® PowerShell™ Support – Enables Software Producers to streamline installation scripting requirements

We invite you to learn more about our newest version of InstallShield – try it out with a free trial, attend a Webinar dedicated to the new features later this month, see what our beta test group had to say about the product, learn about a special FlexNet Connect On-Demand Subscription Offer to experience a new way of connecting with your install base or just see if you qualify for our free T-shirt and enter-to-win offers :)

We’d also like to take a moment to thank our InstallShield 2012 Spring Beta participants and congratulate the entire InstallShield 2012 Spring launch team! This includes Engineering, QA, Technical Documentation, Product Management, Product Marketing, Support, Back Office, Services and Training. This launch truly completes the story we started last year and was a tremendous effort by all. 

Gartner has claimed that the 'Internet of Things' is on the horizon. The 'Internet of Things' is a phrase used to describe how the internet will link traditional smart devices, and a wide range of additional physical assets to allow these endpoints to generate and share data. Nearly every product will have an IP address and communication capability – not just networking and telecommunications devices, but also industrial equipment such as buildings, medical devices, test and measurement systems, construction equipment, and oil and gas machinery, to name a few – that will link to other devices and services via the web.

This isn't blue sky thinking. In its September 2011 report entitled The Internet of Things is Coming, Gartner recommends that CIOs and IT leaders set aside two days as early as 'before mid-2012' to develop a strategy for this scenario. The trend of pervasive Internet is already gaining hold and today is described in a number of ways in different industries – Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communications, intelligent device management, telematics, telehealth and "smart" infrastructure, to give some examples. Gartner forecasts that there will be more than 30 billion permanently connected devices by 2020 and more than 200 billion intermittently connected devices by that time.

Opportunity beckons intelligent device manufacturers. They must evolve their products from fixed function and disconnected systems to flexible and seamlessly connected devices.

In this video, Steve Schmidt, Flexera Software's vice president of corporate development, talks about machine-to-machine, the Internet of Things, connected devices, and the tremendous value to consumers, and the monetization opportunities for producers.

Steve Schmidt, Vice President of Corporate Development, Flexera Software 

When an enterprise decides to take on in earnest the challenge of software asset management (SAM), it usually begins with a project.  The enterprise usually has some pre-existing rudimentary tracking in place, even if only entry of service requests for software installation into a spreadsheet.  The SAM project team will examine the requirements and capabilities for software inventory and entitlement tracking in the organization, select a product and/or service to meet its objectives, and implement the new solution in the enterprise environment.  However, one critical element is often overlooked:  conversion of the SAM project, after completion, to a sustained SAM and license optimization program. 

It’s understandable that enterprises are often focused on the SAM project.  The project is what should drive process implementation and improvement in the enterprise.  The SAM project is aligned with the enterprise’s business goals; as part of the project, an enterprise must understand and design the right business processes to achieve these goals.  The project phase is also when infrastructure to support SAM is deployed, when software inventory collection systems are integrated, and often when initial software reconciliation results are delivered.  In some cases, the project might also entail some level of license optimization in which the organization’s license entitlements, including product use rights, are applied to minimize license consumption. This could be done for certain key vendors in the initial project phase, for example. This optimization process goes beyond traditional SAM and is a key requirement for maximizing the ROI of the project and/or the ongoing program. A SAM project is full of activity, usually has high visibility, and because it represents change, is closely monitored. 

All good things must come to an end, and SAM projects are no different.  By their nature, SAM projects are short-lived.  This means that for the enterprise to achieve lasting benefit and a mature SAM environment going forward, the foremost goal of the SAM project must be the establishment of a SAM and license optimization program.  Such a program delivers ongoing value to an enterprise simply by continuing and improving on the processes and technologies established during the SAM project.  It sounds straightforward, but often this step is overlooked by enterprises.  Of course, in many cases, some or all members of the SAM project team will be members of the SAM and license optimization program team.  However, in some enterprises, particularly enterprises with significant IT outsourcing, at the end of a project, many resources will be redeployed onto other projects.  Without a transition plan, the newly minted SAM environment will be neglected and will grow stale over time.  Up to date reports will not be available, and ultimately the enterprise may need to create another SAM project to refresh the environment. 

Therefore, in order to create sustainable SAM gains for the enterprise, a SAM project must consider how the ongoing program will operate.  In particular, the project must forecast staffing requirements for ongoing license management activities, including maintenance of SAM infrastructure, software upgrades and issue resolution, and especially ongoing license reconciliation, compliance reporting and license optimization.  Do not assume that the time required for these activities will not change from current processes.  If an individual is currently tracking license allocations by manual spreadsheet input, it should take less time for the same person to do that using a more automated system, but they may have other more advanced reports to generate and analyze going forward. This could include license compliance reports, trend analysis reports and predictive analysis simulations to measure the impact of IT environment changes on their license position, to name only a few.  The value of this more-mature SAM and license optimization analysis is certainly worth it to the enterprise, but it does not come for free and must be staffed to be realized. 

In order for any enterprise to realize long-term benefits from a software asset management project, that project must be established as an ongoing program with appropriate staffing and support.  An established SAM and license optimization program will allow the enterprise to realize a higher return on investment on SAM processes and technology, not just for three months after the project conclusion, but year after year. 

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To learn more about best practice processes for establishing a SAM and license optimization program, please download our whitepaper: NCC Guideline for IT Management: Software Asset and License Management Best Practices.

As applications have been prepared for deployment in organizations, there has often been value in adding externally generated data to the package to aid in the use and management of the application.  Some of these data elements have been associated with technical components, such as a list of file dependencies.  Others have been more administrative, such as the target department, date of preparation, identification of the packager and/or tester, contact information of the support staff, etc.

Additional types of metadata appear to be increasing in interest and value.  A selection of recent examples includes:

• Deployment preferences – At the Microsoft Management Summit in April, Bill Anderson’s “state of the union” on System Center 2012 Configuration Manager included a discussion of the new Application Model. This model includes information about the best available application delivery option for various user groups, and can be leveraged by System Center at time of application deployment. 

• User settings – Microsoft’s announcement of User Experience Virtualization (UE-V) is one of the most recent examples of a way to include user-specific application profile setting to an application.  The data is stored in an XML file that accompanies the application, and provides users with a common application experience even when they login across different devices. 

• Financial and Licensing information – In enterprise app stores, which are becoming increasingly popular, data about the cost of the application is often presented to interested users in order to help them understand the budgetary impact to the organization.  Likewise, the number of licenses available can be included, and used to conditionally allocate new instances of the application and/or trigger approval or procurement processes.

• Identification tags – Even the basic idea of self-identification of the application is evolving.  The ISO - 19770 standard defines a way to identify applications using XML data included with the application package.  This promises to help organizations quickly and accurately identify applications, enhancing support and compliance initiatives. Microsoft has recently announced additional support for this standard. 

All of these data elements are intended to make the application set more manageable within the enterprise.  To make the best use of such data, guidelines should be set within the organization about when and how it is applied.  To facilitate consistency and to streamline the process, templates can be built and applied via tools that automate the application readiness process.

Reference Links:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh925141.aspx

Microsoft tag support announced

Are Random Processes Really Random?

Today’s blog is really a thought exercise on random processes. Do random selections always yield random results? Let’s run a test.

Let’s say that we have a Cloud compute grid where the servers are mapped to a 0-1000 by 0-1000 grid. Furthermore, we are using XWare virtualization technology and  xMotion to move workloads around the compute grid randomly. Each time a workload moves, the direction is randomly selected from (N, S, E, W, NW, NE, SW, or SE) and the color assigned to each. When the workload lands on the next server, the server is color coded. The distance traveled is always 2/3 from where it is to the edge of the grid, where the edge of the grid is determined by the random direction.

In the example below, the workload starts at randomly selected X and moves South (direction selected at random), lands on a server, which is colored purple. The next direction selected at random is Northeast and the server where the workload lands is colored blue. The next random move is Southeast and the server is colored green.

This compute grid is really big—1001 by 1001 computers or 1,002,001 computers. To see if the resulting workload moves result in a random pattern or not, this process was repeated 1 billion times, with the picture (a fractal) below being generated. We see that a seemly random process can lead to a very deterministic result. Interestingly, only 62% of the servers were touched by this workload.

In an IBM audit situation, if you could convince IBM that you should only pay for 62% of the servers in the cluster, because you can prove that xMotion will only move the workload to this percentage of servers, you would still lose the argument, since XWare isn’t an IBM Eligible Virtualization Technology!

Even if it were an approved virtualization technology, you’re probably still on the hook to license for all the servers in the cluster if you have “full capacity” licenses (depending on the license model in use). If you have “sub-capacity” licenses then you’d have to license for the Virtualization Capacity of the group of servers. Virtualization capacity is “the sum of the virtual core capacity available to a product.”

OK, so I managed to get a little bit in there on license management.

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To learn more about how to simulate changes to your IT environment to understand the impact on your license position, please visit our website to read about ‘What If’ analysis.

My recent treadmill purchase literally drove home the point that Intelligent Device Manufacturers are fundamentally transforming themselves into software-centric, service-driven businesses.

The treadmill features a built-in Android Tablet computer.  It is connected to my home wireless network and displays the news, accesses email, lets me watch videos and more. The treadmill also connects to the manufacturer's cloud-based application. This application lets me program a workout using Google Maps. For example, I could plot a route around my neighborhood and save it in the cloud. Periodically, the treadmill connects to the cloud application, downloads the workout and programs it in with accurate details such as elevation and distance. I can also track my progress towards fitness goals by viewing my workout history with time, distance, incline, calories burned and pulse in the cloud application and also on the treadmill. I can download workouts planned by other consumers in exotic parts of the globe—the plan is rendered in the treadmill on a Google Map. The cloud application also has running events that I can compete in, in real time. I can also find a fitness coach online who can tailor a program and monitor my progress. And finally, I can also share my workout programs via Facebook or Google+.  

This example illustrates several trends we are observing in the broader Intelligent Device Manufacturer space:

• Adoption of Android well beyond mobile use cases into industrial equipment.
• Internet-enabled devices are growing as the treadmill example shows. Internet connectivity is a key enabler for several use cases including firmware updates, software updates and data upload/downloads (e.g. workout programs for the treadmill).
• Connectivity and software on devices are transforming business models. My treadmill's manufacturer has created a "hardware plus services" model since the cloud application that the treadmill connects to requires an annual subscription to give me access to my workout history and all the sharing features.
• Many devices are capable of creating an app store and partner ecosystem for manufacturers. For my treadmill, fitness professionals from anywhere in the world can work with me and get paid for their services. Likewise, many fitness apps could be developed for the treadmill ecosystem.
• Social media features are being built into devices.

What are your experiences with smart devices?

Read related blogs:

• Machine-to-Machine (M2M) Has Evolved

• Anyone for 1 quadrillion intelligent, connected devices on the Internet?

• New IDC Report Highlights How Licensing Helps Intelligent Device Manufacturers Generate Revenue from Embedded Software
  

• Intelligent Devices Proliferate Due to Abundant Processors and Embedded Software

One problematic area for Citrix XenApp (and other application virtualization technology) customers is how to ensure they buy the correct numbers of software licenses for products they deploy and use from their Citrix servers.  While the licenses they buy from Citrix are quite straightforward, the licenses for virtualized applications that they use in this environment can be troublesome to count, particularly if some users are also using the apps locally on their desktops as well.  Since every third party vendor would look on this kind of deployment differently, enterprises need accurate methods to count each type of license. License optimization tools that help count the usage and license consumption can be very beneficial and help avoid over-counting.

There is often an overlap between licenses used in a Citrix environment and those used in other end user environments, such as the traditional desktop. For instance while a Citrix farm might make MS Office available for all users, some users may already have a local install and consume a license for that device, which also covers them for the Citrix virtualized application delivered to the same device (desktop, laptop, etc.).  The examples below illustrate that depending on the license model and usage scenario, different numbers of licenses are consumed. In the first case, a User based license will consume only 1 license for 2 devices, whereas a Device based license requires 2—one for each device. In the second scenario, only one license is required to access both the local installation and the virtual application, regardless of whether the license is User based or Device based.

Figure 1 - Examples of Licensing Scenarios in a Citrix XenApp Environment

Why is this important?

A customer with just under 5,000 employees, including about 1,000 users who also access their software via Citrix, was recently trying to calculate their license consumption under all of the above scenarios. For some titles they were getting numbers greater than 5,000, even though users were meant to be able to leverage their license for a locally installed copy.  The numbers were obviously wrong, but how could they work out an appropriate license level? In addition, some of these titles weren’t used by all users, so just buying one copy for each employee would have been expensive and also the wrong approach.

They needed to come up with a better way of calculating the consumption of licenses for a combination of locally installed software and virtualized applications, without wasting money on unnecessary additional licenses.

How is it different from a traditional software environment?

In a traditional software environment, companies are used to the problem of just counting the number of software installs on the physical hardware. In a Citrix XenApp virtualized application environment, the application software isn’t installed on the end-point device, so it doesn’t show up in inventory. To solve this problem, some organizations are using next generation software asset management and license optimization products to collect application virtualization data from the Citrix server—for example, information on users with access rights to the virtualized applications and possibly, the actual usage data, if the Citrix Edgesight tool is also in use. This information can be combined with regular inventory from the end users’ machines to find out:

• Who has a local copy of the application on their desktop or laptop
• Who uses the software via Citrix XenApp
• Who could use the software via Citrix XenApp (i.e. has access rights)

This information gets reconciled against the entitlement data from purchase orders and software agreements.  Organizations can determine whether an additional license is needed for each Citrix user or whether the license allocated to the device for the local copy is going to cover the virtual usage. The application usage data can also tell them which users have access to the software in Citrix but don’t ever use it.  That way, administrators can tighten up access through ACL permissions on the Citrix servers.

With the Citrix XenApp, Edgesight and end-point inventory data, the license optimization tool can be used to accurately manage virtualized application licenses.  These tools also apply license entitlements—product use rights, including virtual use, to ensure that license consumption is minimized and no unnecessary licenses are purchased. 

What is the result for customers?

The customer mentioned above was able to uncover license entitlements that had previously not been utilized—meaning they had bought more than enough licenses for their current needs. They also discovered other situations where the additional licenses required were much fewer than they expected.  For some titles, they needed 1000 less licenses than they had thought.

They were also able to tighten up access to applications and are using automation to only grant access to users in Citrix XenApp where they require it.  This has resulted in significant cost avoidance and cost savings on licenses for virtualized applications.

How are you managing licenses for your virtualized applications?

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To learn more about optimized license management for complex datacenter environments, please download our whitepaper.

Historically, independent software vendors (ISVs) have thought of software licensing primarily as a means of protecting their intellectual property (IP) and maximizing revenue.  Effective software licensing technology, after all, is essential for ensuring that IP is not intentionally or unintentionally used in a way that violates contracts.  The right software licensing structure can also help ensure that ISVs receive incremental added revenue for incremental added value.  Neither of these software licensing value propositions is going away any time soon. 

As enterprise technology environments enter a new transformative period characterized by the adoption of virtualization and the cloud, however, software licensing is playing a new role for ISVs—that of a significant competitive differentiator.

Virtualization and the cloud are having this impact because they are fundamentally changing our entire notion of what constitutes a customer’s “environment.”  A server is no longer a physical machine X in location Y.  An application is no longer the code that runs on stack S to support client platforms P₁ and P₂ to provide access for known users U₁-U_x.  Instead, customer environments are highly fluid physical and logical spaces that are being continually re-shaped by workloads, cost, performance, compliance, market pressures and the incessant emergence of new provisioning alternatives.

And as enterprise IT managers wrestle with the new realities of their fluid environments, they are getting less and less patient with ISVs who don’t “get it.”  In fact, many of them are starting to make strategic decisions about which ISVs are in and which ones are out based on whether their software licensing schemes fit with the new reality of IT.

Three factors in particular are driving IT managers to make software licensing a top criteria for deciding which ISVs are worthwhile partners:

Customers demand fairness.  IT managers are downright angry at ISVs that fail to recognize the new rules of enterprise infrastructure.  ISVs that fail to accommodate the ascendancy of the virtual machine and the sometimes-my-PC-and-sometimes-my-smartphone user risk having their business taken from them by ISVs that do—even if their solutions are superior in other ways.

Customers demand flexibility.  IT managers today understand that their environments are in transition and that the way they deploy applications today might not be the way they deploy them eighteen months from now.  ISVs, on the other hand, tend to resist changes to their software licensing models and agreements.  ISVs that adapt to the fluidity of enterprise IT with more flexible software licensing will therefore be able to claim competitive superiority.

Customers demand a great experience.  IT managers are finding life complicated enough as they add layers of virtualization to their environments and try to successfully manage more “moving parts” than ever.  The last thing they need is for their ISVs to make software licensing and entitlement management more difficult for them.  ISVs can therefore add differentiated value by making it simpler and easier for customers to track existing software entitlements and activate new ones.

The bottom line is that, in a virtualized world, software licensing is not just a way for ISVs to pursue self-interest.  It’s also a way for them to demonstrate genuine understanding of and concern for their customers’ rapidly evolving needs.  ISVs that match technology innovation with software licensing innovation will win in this new world.  Those that don’t will risk becoming the latest victims of market disruption.

 If you’re an ISV, how have you altered your software licensing strategy to address virtualization and the cloud?  And if you’re an enterprise IT manager, what changes do you want to see your ISVs make in response to the changes in your IT environment?  Share your thoughts and responses below.

I read an interesting article entitled “Is VDI Still Viable?” today.  It does a really nice job of broadly looking at the topic of virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) from every angle.  It looks at the cost implications and ROI, security, performance, management, user experience, etc.  And, it includes insights from both vendors and end customers – some of which have struggled to make it work and others who have successes they can point to.

The article also cites leading industry analyst firm Gartner and includes their perspective on where the acceptance of VDI is, including the fact that Gartner indicates that the VDI penetration rate is currently at about 2 percent of the enterprise desktop space, a number Gartner expects to reach 10 percent by 2014.  So, despite the challenges, Gartner definitely sees material growth and acceptance on the horizon.

This mirrors what we’ve been seeing as well.  Getting VDI right the first time is a tricky proposition.  There are a lot of variables involved and, unlike some initiatives, this isn’t just about IT.  A move to VDI can have a significant impact on the users.  All of this points to a critical need to have a fact-based plan developed before embarking on a VDI project.  Such a plan would be built upon real data on how your users, app and computers interact with each other.  Solutions such as Flexera Software’s AdminStudio Virtual Desktop Assessment  monitor the behavior of computers, users and applications and provide full visibility into your desktop environment to help you plan more effectively, minimize risk and reduce user-centric computing and desktop virtualization costs.

Any VDI project should start with a pilot first, but in order to ensure a successful pilot, you need to have a fact-based plan that helps you understand behaviors, select the right technologies and determine who is and is not a good candidate for VDI in the first place.  As the article accurately lays out, there are a lot of factors to consider, so having as many facts at your disposal to base your planning on is a must.

It’s good to see Microsoft announcing support for the ISO/IEC 19770-2 software tagging standard. Providing and leveraging these tags comes within a six step process, where both software publishers and Software Asset Management (SAM) / Enterprise License Optimization tool providers must participate for customers to derive value. Here are the steps to tag utilization as part of the license optimization process:

 Step1: The software needs to be tagged by the software publisher. (See Flexera Software’s announcement of  end-to-end support for tagging including InstallShield 2012 support for the creation of tags and AdminStudio support for preserving tags during the repackaging process).

Step 2: The tagged software is deployed (using tools such as SCCM or Intune) to the endpoint (computer).

 Step 3: The auto-discovery / inventory tool needs to be able to collect these tags from each of the devices (desktops, laptops, servers, pads…) in the IT environment.

Today, SCCM 2012 doesn’t yet provide this tag inventory capability. It will be important for Microsoft to synchronize the future release of SCCM that is “tag-ready” and the tagging of its many software products. One without the other creates a break in the chain. Likewise, no customer value is achieved if software tags can’t be collected and processed downstream.

SAM and Enterprise License Optimization tools pick-up where SCCM leaves off. There are several more steps in license management and optimization that lead to much higher value and return on investment. Let’s take a look at the Rest of the Story, as Paul Harvey said so many times.

Step 4: Once the software tag is collected during the inventory process (future version of SCCM or other existing inventory tools—note that FlexNet Manager Platform supports tag collection now), this evidence still needs to be recognized. The capabilities required here go beyond SCCM and a SAM or License Optimization solution is required.

Tags provide richer evidence compared to other types like Add/Remove programs, but still represent fingerprints that must be processed and matched to an application recognition library entry. This recognition process produces a list of software titles per device. Now you ‘know what you have’ in your IT environment. This is the value of tagging—easing the process of accurately identifying installed software.

Step 5: A License Optimization solution (a few SAM tools provide this too) should automatically link the reconciled software titles per device to a proper set of software stocking keeping unit (SKU) numbers, where one title may have many SKUs, depending on how it was bought. The SKU number defines exactly what was purchased and how it was purchased (e.g. under an Enterprise Agreement, Select Agreement, etc.) The linkage between the title and purchase order SKUs is the key to streamlining the license reconciliation process and reporting on what was purchased compared to what was found through inventory.

This type of ‘purchased versus inventory’ report is valuable and what many companies use to defend themselves in a software license audit. However, it doesn’t account for the license entitlements that come with the software. This means that although the report is accurate from a license compliance perspective, it’s completely non-optimized, with no product use rights taken into account. In this case, you could end up paying unnecessarily for more licenses in both an out-of-compliance (audit) situation and for a new purchase scenario.

Step 6: This step is a big one, only handled by License Optimization Solutions, and disproportionate to the first five steps. It is the key to driving down spend and forestalling unnecessary software purchases. The type of agreement under which the software was purchased, the license metric/model that the vendor uses to calculate price, the software product use rights (entitlements) under the agreement, and order of license allocation are all tied together from a license/spend optimization standpoint.

Example Agreements/Terms

Microsoft:

• Enterprise Agreement
• Select Plus
• Open Value

Adobe:

•  Cumulative Licensing Program
• Transactional Licensing Program
• Enterprise Agreement

Example License Metrics

IBM:

• Processor Value Unit
• User Value Unit
• Resource Value Unit
• Authorized User
• Concurrent User
• Floating User
• Client Device

SAP:

• Developer User
• Business Expert User
• Professional User
• Limited Professional
• Business Information User
• Employee User
• Employee Self Service
• Business Analyst User

Example Product Use Rights (License Entitlements)

• Upgrade
• Downgrade
• Second Use
• Multiple Install
• Virtual Environment Use
• Reimaging
• Backup/ Fail Over/ Disaster Recovery

Example Order of License Allocation

• Standard Licenses before Professional
• Product Licenses before Suite Licenses

The license optimization solution determines the least cost outcome considering all of these variables and conditions, which are very complex and differ from vendor to vendor, physical versus virtual and even software title to title.

It’s very common for companies that reach this step to find that they are over licensed for software from some of their key vendors. They can either forestall future purchases or negotiate with their vendor and perhaps pay maintenance for only what they really need. In an software license audit scenario, the liability calculated from a software purchased versus inventory report may be greatly reduced or eliminated, after applying product use rights and generating an Actual License Position.

It was a great week with some excellent sessions; here are some of my observations:

• Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) is creating more security related work for the IT workforce
  • Good idea on the difference between governed and managed devices, quadrant resonates with everyone because you cannot manage mobile devices in the traditional manner
  • New roles, scopes and permissions are becoming more granular as the mobile workforce and IT collide over securing data
• Still major worry about licensing for mobile and cloud delivery
  • Microsoft will be simplifying their license models, per several sessions and discussions, which is good news for complex user environments
  • Licensing in the cloud is a big gap, and it’s yet to be figured out
• System Center Orchestrator has made leaps and bounds forward
  • Run book automation (RBA) discussions were overheard several times, as was the idea of workflow templates
  • In addition to the app model, System Center 2012 Orchestrator was featured prominently in several sessions and many discussions on the floor and in the hallways
  • The need to plug into workflow models will drive new innovations in connectivity with platforms
• Start thinking of Microsoft as a platform and your survival will depend on your innovations
  • Take more control of your own destiny by using the tools they provide to leverage the System Center platform
• Flexible worker and lifestyles have huge requirements in new infrastructure and management
  • System Center 2012 Configuration Manager (CM) deploying to iOS is a pretty amazing recognition of reality – Microsoft is now less anti-iOS than previously thought (despite having their own competing platform)
  • Bold move by Microsoft to remove BYOD issue
• Cloud reality sinking in – the hybrid will be here for a long, long time
  • Progress in Azure, Intune, and other cloud platforms all make it clear that Microsoft is  investing massively there – and correctly
• Structure of cloud not nearly as important as the delivery of services

• System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) will become a big continue to erode the leadership position of other virtualization vendors
  • They’re advancing the server management capabilities at a rapid pace

• Win8 was not as much a focal point – Microsoft spent more time talking about business objectives to be solved rather than the O/S

• This is going to be a busy year for keeping up with all of the releases coming up from Microsoft

Next year – New Orleans, Laissez les bons temps rouler in June!

In March, Microsoft released new documents, the “SQL Server 2012 Licensing Quick Reference Guide” and the “SQL Server 2012 Licensing Datasheet and FAQ”. Both are available online from this Microsoft SQL Server licensing page. The most noticeable change from the previous edition is the introduction of a core factor table similar to the Oracle Processor Core factor and the IBM Processor Value Unit tables. The new Microsoft table is very simple and considers several case scenarios:

• All cores of a physical processor (socket) must be licensed with a minimum of 4 cores. This explains why the factor is 4 for single core and 2 for dual core processors.
• Some AMD processors have a core factor of .75 as they are deemed less powerful than Intel processors with an equal number of cores.

The March 2012 table is published online and is subject to change overtime. These changes will likely be driven by the release of new processor models. This is another piece of the licensing agreement that is now published online, like the product use rights document that is updated on a quarterly basis. The calculation of a license position must consider these rules, so monitoring any change is required to accurately measure compliance.

Using the Microsoft core table for physical machines is very simple. The number of cores for all processors is counted, then the core factor is applied and the result is the number of licenses that need to be purchased. For instance, if a server is equipped with 2 Intel Xeon 6 core processors, then 12 core licenses are needed as the core factor is “1” for Intel processors with 6 cores. When it comes to purchasing, core licenses are only sold by packs of two, so only 6 “packs of 2 cores” are needed. With AMD processors, the calculation may not provide an even number. For instance, an AMD FX-6100 6 core processor will require 5 core licenses (6 *.75= 4.5 rounded to 5) and the purchase of 3 “packs of 2 cores”. The extra unused core can be reallocated to another machine. Note that hyper threading is never considered for physical machines.

On virtual machines, the core table is never used. What is counted is the number of virtual cores (v-cores) supporting each virtual operating system environment (OSE), with a minimum of 4 v-cores per environment. The definition of a v-core is done at the hardware thread level: if multiple hardware threads are supporting a single virtual core, then additional licenses are needed for each thread. With the Standard Edition, each VM needs to be licensed individually. With the Enterprise Edition, there is also the possibility to license all the cores on a physical server and then run an unlimited number of SQL Server instances in physical and virtual machines, up to the number of core licenses assigned to the server. With Software Assurance, and only for the duration of it, this last limit is lifted and the number of v-cores where SQL Server is running may exceed the total number of physical cores.

Details are provided on how to migrate licenses from the processor to the core model under Software Assurance. No change is required until the end of your current agreements but the possibility exists to use the SQL Server 2012 core license model for specific deployments with new or existing licenses. At the end of their current enrolment, customers must perform and record an inventory of their servers. Their current processor licenses will be translated to core licenses according to their findings. Microsoft also guarantees a minimum number of core licenses per processor depending on edition: 8 per SQL Server Datacenter edition processor licenses and 4 for any other edition. There are two additional restrictions:

• To exchange a SQL Server processor license for core licenses, SA coverage must be renewed based on the number of core licenses required to license all of the physical cores in the processor.
• To be eligible for more than the minimum exchange, the total number of processor licenses assigned to a given server cannot exceed the total number of physical processors in the server.

The primary impact of these changes is on SQL Server licensing costs. There is no benefit in licensing old servers with less than 4 cores per processor considering that 4 cores at a minimum must be licensed for each processor. Configurations where processors have 4 cores will not be impacted by the change. Licensing SQL Server on high end processors may be significantly more expensive.

If we compare the price of SQL Server 2008 R2 Enterprise edition ($27,495 per processor) and SQL Server 2012 R2 Enterprise Edition ($6,874 per core), and apply the .75 core factor to AMD processors over 4 cores, the figures go as follows for a single processor:

As you can see, the use of newer processors with a large number of cores substantially increases the SQL Server core-based license cost.

***

To learn more about optimized license management for the datacenter, please download our whitepaper.

It seems everywhere you turn, IT people are talking about the move towards user-centric computing and desktop virtualization.  These are the latest trends impacting IT and the potential benefits and implications are significant.  They promise highly efficient desktop management, improved resource utilization, stronger security, greater protection of user data and substantially lower desktop costs. 

Unfortunately, many desktop virtualization projects to date have either stalled or flat out failed.  Why is that?  It’s most commonly because IT lacks visibility into how users and desktop applications consume resources such as network bandwidth, storage, CPU and memory.  Getting user-centric computing and desktop virtualization projects right requires a detailed understanding of how these factors interact with each other so that the appropriate planning, design and implementation can be completed to ensure the project is successful.  Without this insight, the migration to virtual desktops is time consuming, disruptive and risky. 

Flexera Software has long been a leader in powering an enterprises’ Application Readiness process – a process that ensures that applications are successfully deployed and delivering the business value they were intended to provide.  Today, Flexera Software has introduced the latest capability in our Application Readiness solution set – a Virtual Desktop Assessment solution to help IT deliver successful user-centric computing and desktop virtualization projects. 

AdminStudio Virtual Desktop Assessment monitors key system behaviors of computers, users and applications, capturing and summarizing detailed data that helps gauge virtualization suitability.  It’s a vendor-agnostic solution that helps you make informed decisions and enhance your virtualization strategy, whether that strategy includes Microsoft App-V™, VMware® ThinApp™ or Citrix® XenApp™. 

To learn more, you can read the press release: Flexera Software Announces New AdminStudio Virtual Desktop Assessment Tool for Planning Migrations to User-Centric Computing and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)

Software asset management (SAM) projects typically originate in traditional corporate IT organizations, whether at a global or large subsidiary level.  This makes sense, because the software publishers with highest visibility across the organization are the ones who fit squarely into the operations of central IT.  Almost everyone in the organization, including executive management, is familiar with and uses the products of Microsoft, Adobe and other major desktop software vendors.  Central IT also has ownership of IT infrastructure, so they know the importance of server-based software vendors such as IBM, Oracle and SAP.  Most critically, all these vendors, whether for general-purpose desktop software or corporate IT infrastructure software, typically impact the general corporate IT budget itself.  This means that a lack of license optimization affects the CIO’s budget.  Because of this, SAM projects usually begin by focusing on large traditional IT vendors. 

This focus on central IT scope and budget can obscure a critical area of the business that affects both software spend and software risk:  R&D and engineering organizations.  R&D organizations often have separate sourcing, purchasing, and IT processes from the main enterprise, so software asset management projects originating in central IT frequently lack visibility into software deployments and software purchases in R&D.  In addition, R&D environments often include systems that may be critical to R&D activities but fall outside the scope of central IT.  Central IT may only support Windows systems, for example, but R&D might require large Linux systems to support heavy-duty simulation work.  Finally, there can often be political tension between R&D organizations and central IT.  The potential rift between enterprise IT goals and R&D requirements can result in a siege mentality among R&D management and R&D IT staff. This can lead, in turn, to a lack of cooperation with central IT initiatives including centralized software asset management programs. 

Because R&D is often a relatively small part of an enterprise, SAM projects sometimes assume that the technical and political obstacles to including R&D environments in software asset management activities justify leaving R&D out of scope.  However, software spend in R&D is typically out of proportion to headcount, because engineering software is very expensive compared to standard desktop applications.  In fact, annual software license and maintenance spend on engineering applications can actually exceed the overall spend for software licenses and maintenance on the enterprise’s standard Windows desktop, even when R&D users are a small minority of overall users! 

In addition, R&D environments are filled with engineers.  I began my career as an R&D engineer and continue to support engineering IT teams and license management activities, and I can confidently say that engineers, as a class, possess two traits that should concern anyone interested in enterprise software license compliance.  First, engineers have the technical capabilities to acquire, install, configure, and run software in their environment.  This includes software authorized by the enterprise or by R&D management, as well as software introduced into the environment solely by the individual engineer.  Engineers also have the ability to reconfigure the software to point to a different license server than the one authorized by R&D IT, as well as remotely access systems in other geographies that may have licenses available. 

This might be manageable except for the second trait:  ignorance of the implications of software licensing on their software installation and configuration decisions.  Individual engineers are generally insulated from software contracts and purchasing processes.  As a result, they are frequently not sensitized to the financial implications or compliance and audit risks of software they have acquired and installed (through various means, some legitimate and some not).  Even in cases where an organization has an agreement with a software publisher, engineers often think in terms of site-wide licensing and may not consider that their individual actions can affect overall budget. 

The unique characteristics and risks of R&D organizations warrant their inclusion in enterprise-wide SAM projects.  While there are obstacles to such inclusion, the gains to the overall enterprise in terms of financial savings and license compliance risk mitigation mean that the effort will be worth it. 

***

To learn more about concurrent license management for engineering applications, please view our on-demand webinar: Pure Gold-- Leveraging Software Usage Data to Reduce License Costs and Risk

In a recent blog post, Mathieu Baissac shared some thoughts on the ISO/IEC 19770-3 software entitlement tag. Following is an introduction for everyone in case you are not familiar with the ISO/IEC 19770-2  and -3 software entitlement tag.

The ISO/IEC 19770-3 SAM Standard is a technical specification for software entitlement tags. A software entitlement tag is a digital encapsulation in an XML format of licensing rights and limitations, and optional licensing metrics. The specific information provided by a software entitlement tag can be used to ensure compliance with licensing rights and limits, and to optimize licensing usage and costs.

The software entitlement tag will be delivered through the procurement process of software licences. It applies to both volume and retail procurement processes as well as delivery of open source, shareware, evaluation, and not-for-resale software products. In the volume procurement case, software entitlement tags will typically be received and managed centrally by a customer together with other software asset data.

A software entitlement tag allows for reconciliation of entitlements with software installed and/or used by customers. When a software entitlement tag has been created and electronically signed by a software publisher, it can be used for demonstration of entitlement ownership by a customer.

The following comparison of an ISO/IEC 19770-2 software Identification tag with a software entitlement tag will help to better understand the software entitlement tag:

• ISO/IEC 19770-2 software identification tags typically travel with the software package and are stored on a computer's disk during installation of the software package.
• ISO/IEC 19770-3 software entitlement tags typically travel with the software license ("entitlement") purchasing documents and therefore may have many different delivery methods and timings.
• ISO/IEC 19770-2 software identification tags have no unique instance identifier per instance of tag. If a customer has two copies of the same software product then they have two identical ISO/IEC 19770-2 software identification tags.
• ISO/IEC 19770-3 software entitlement tags usually have a unique identifier per instance of the tag. If a customer acquires entitlements for two copies of the same software product at different times, each instance of the software product will have a unique software entitlement tag with a unique ID.
• ISO/IEC 19770-2 software identification tags do not specify a quantity
• ISO/IEC 19770-3 software entitlement tags contain quantity and units of measure. One instance of a software entitlement tag may entitle many instances of a software package. Additionally, one instance of a software package may have many software entitlement tags – as entitlement rights to use particular features are acquired.
• ISO/IEC 19770-2 software identification tags contain no entitlement, or "right to use", information – ISO/IEC 19770-2 software identification tags contain only "software identification" information.
• ISO/IEC 19770-3 software entitlement tags contain specific details about the entitlement rights granted for a particular software product, as well as details about entitlement limits, and how those rights and limits can be measured.
• ISO/IEC 19770-3 supports software asset management (SAM) processes as defined in ISO/IEC 19770-1. It is also designed to work together with software identification tags as defined in ISO/IEC 19770-2.

Standardization of software entitlements provides uniform, measurable data for both the license compliance, and license optimization, processes of SAM practice. Software entitlement tags benefit all stakeholders involved in the creation, licensing, distribution, releasing, installation, and ongoing management of software and software entitlements.

If you're interested in learning more, just ask...

John Tomeny is a twenty-year veteran of the SAM/ITAM industry, the Convener of the ISO/IEC 19770-3 SAM Standards development group and a co-author of the ISO/IEC 19770-2 Software Identification Tag standard.  He is a distinguished recipient of the IAITAM Fellow designation from the International Association of IT Asset Managers, and winner of the CODiE Award for "Best Asset Management Solution".  John is VP of Sassafras Software, the publisher of  "K2 - KeyAuditor & KeyServer". John serves as chief ITAM consultant and trainer to Sassafras's North American and European customers.

I've had the honor of being part of the working group that has been creating the
ISO-19770-3 standard for the last few years.

The scope of the ISO/IEC 19770-3 standard for software entitlements is quite large:

• Provide customers a mechanism to receive, in a standard format, a recording of their entitlements
• Establish processes by which this information moves from Publishers through the channel and to the customers
• Provide mechanism for customers to create their own -3 tags (in case publishers do not provide them)
• Provide enough information in the tag itself so that:
  • Customers can understand rights and limitations
  • Customers can potentially validate actual compliance  and optimize licensing
  

This standard defines, at a high level, the 19770-3 tag as:

            A software entitlement tag is a digital encapsulation in an XML format of:

• Rights and limitations which have been conveyed to a customer
• Optional detail metrics which can be used to ensure compliance with the rights and limits.


This standard does not limit the definition of entitlements to just "license" – but instead describes "rights to use" and "rights to access." This broad definition was adopted as recognition that software licensing models are changing and therefore customers will need to understand all their rights – regardless of whether they purchased a SaaS service, a perpetual license, a term license or maintenance and support.  To determine their compliance position, customers must understand all of these details.

This standard includes the whole concept of providing "metrics" to validate compliance. The standard includes concepts like "test methods" including test values, scripts and URL so that customers can test compliance. We examined a variety of licensing models – including hardware (processors or CPUs), per device, user-based, client access licenses, virtualized guests, etc. 

The standard captures the limits for each entitlement including time (e.g., perpetual vs. start/end date), geographical limits (e.g., can only use it in country X), customer type limits (e.g., only for education), language limits (e.g., can only use the French version), platform limits (e.g., can only use on x86-32), environment limits (e.g., "production" vs. "test"), as well as the ability to apply any number of other limits. By standardizing how these limits are expressed, publishers and customers can both help customers stay compliant.

This standard also enables publishers to provide a lot of additional information including contract information, rules for true-up, purchase information (including channel partners, product names that they use, etc.), auditor, and even activation information. All of these are optional elements which can assist the publisher in better informing the customer.

This standard recognizes that entitlements change as part of a lifecycle. Consequently this standard has lifecycle concepts like revoke, archive, upgrade and deployment concepts such as retail distribution, channels, OEMs, open source, and SaaS to name a few. The standard includes a large number of scenarios such as maintenance renewals, partial upgrades, add-on purchases, edition migration, capacity adjustments, location transfers, evaluation to perpetual conversions, conveyance of secondary use rights, bankruptcy, and true-up. The goal is to provide guidance on what type of entitlement information should be provided under these circumstances.

Lastly, this standard was written to co-habit with the ISO/IEC 19770-2 standard for software identification. Once publishers start supporting both, then customers will be able to answer comparative questions like "what do I have installed" compared to "what do I have the right to install/own/have" or "what is my company using" compared to "what does my company have the right to use" and "how do I validate that I'm using this correctly?"

I look forward to the publication of ISO/IEC 19770-3 and how Flexera Software can help publishers and customers use the standard to improve their understanding and overall management of software licensing.

The software industry is rapidly changing and becoming more commoditized.  In a mature marketplace, software vendors must be more creative and innovative in product pricing and packaging in order to differentiate and gain competitive advantage.  Packaging features and functionality in new and creative combinations enables vendors to deliver additional value and capture new revenue streams.  Indeed, flexible packaging, software licensing and entitlement models are key to giving software vendors the upper hand to act and react to changing product and pricing sensitivities. 

In this video, Jim Geisman, president and founder of Software Pricing Partners, discusses software licensing, pricing and packaging best practices software vendors should adopt in competitive markets.

Watch the Software Pricing and Packaging Best Practice Advice from Software Pricing Partners Video

Jim Geisman, President and Founder, Software Pricing Partners

Over the past year, there has been an increasing buzz around User Centric Computing, especially in the enterprise IT context. Very little has been written about what this trend implies for software publishers. This article will demystify User Centric Computing as it relates to its impact on software licensing from the perspective of software publishers.

What is User Centric Computing? Unlike IT's traditional "device-centric" approach, user-centric computing is all about providing business users with a seamless and personalized experience of all their applications regardless of their device, location, operating system and network connectivity. Enterprise IT benefits by being able to secure and manage users and their environments centrally. As pointed out in another blog "Getting Started with User Centric Computing" -- user-centric computing gives users control of their computing experience, providing them with access to any combination of computing environments, applications, settings, and data from any location or device.

 The ingredients of a User Centric Computing solution include[1]:  

• An approach to managing user preferences, data and user-specific applications. User Experience Management Solutions such as AppSense meet this requirement.
• An approach to delivering applications provisioned by users' IT departments. Application Virtualization (e.g. Microsoft App-V), Remote Desktop Services (e.g. Citrix XenApp) and Virtual Desktop Infrastructures (e.g. Citrix XenDesktop) are broad categories of solutions targeting this requirement.
• An approach to managing the end user's computing environment, when applicable. Note that with enterprises allowing users to "Bring Your Own Device", corporate IT may not actually be responsible for managing the end user's computing environment. This requirement is met using the management framework of a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure solution.

From a deployment perspective, User Centric Computing involves the creation of a bundle of applications on a central server and delivering them to users using an application delivery approach listed above.

Implications for Software Licensing – If you are a software publisher, User Centric Computing will require you to:

Evolve your licensing approach: If your current software licensing approach is tied to a device, it has to change, by definition, since user-centric computing un-tethers users from their devices. If you use some form of concurrent licensing, that too needs to evolve to account for off-network use of applications as well as situations where the same user consumes your application from multiple devices. In either case, licensing metrics and approaches should align with users (e.g. licensing based on named users) of the application rather than devices or instances of your application.

Consider usage-based monetization (versus license enforcement): As enterprises expect a seamless application experience for users across diverse environments, they will not want license provisioning to get in their way. At least some enterprises will push publishers for usage-based licensing approaches (versus license enforcement). Besides, license enforcement based on device attributes will just not work in solutions such as Virtual Desktop Infrastructures as machine virtualization is at its core.

Provide centralized administration for entitlements and licenses: Centralized administration of users and their computing environment is a key aspect of User Centric Computing. Needless to add, we will see enterprises pushing their software publishers to provide tools that help them administer entitlements and licenses in a consolidated fashion across all their products and eventually, across multiple publishers.

[1] Source: "User Environment Management: Smackdown", PQR, http://www.virtuall.nl/download-document/user-environment-management-uem-smackdown

Recently I had a call with some folks who were responsible for process improvements in the company's "Quote-To-Cash" processes. They work at a very large software/hardware producer (household name withheld). They asked all kinds of questions, including: 

• "When is this SaaS stuff going to be mainstream?"
• "When do I need to get ready for generating phone-bill like invoices in any large amount?"
• "When is this subscription stuff going to get real (in a meaningful way)?"

The most senior person said, "There is so much buzz—I don't believe any of it."

I then came upon an article in Forbes – The End of ERP – from the CEO of Zuora, Tien Tzuo. The article has statements like "ERP – enterprise resource planning software – is on its deathbed" and "A moment of silence for ERP." As someone who has implemented ERPs for many years, in many countries—for different types of companies—I started laughing.

His point…  I'm referring to the shift we are experiencing away from a 20^th century product-based, "buy once" economy to a 21^st century services-based "Subscription Economy" centered around recurring customer relationships… Is potentially correct, but it doesn't mean that ERPs are going away.  ERPs run manufacturing floors, maintain financial books, track purchases, etc. Those aren't going to go away just because we're moving to a "subscription economy."

So back to those process improvement folks. What are they supposed to think about this article? They're going to just chuck it to "more buzz" and choose to ignore it. That doesn't help us – the subscription economy is growing and ERPs are here to stay.

By the way, my answer to them was, "You have a while before SaaS and Subscription revenue becomes a large percent of your revenue, but since it's so transformational and affects so many areas – you'll need to start investigating now!" and "We can help you."

View the recent 2011 Key Trends in Software Licensing and Pricing webinar with Amy Konary from IDC for more information on transformational technologies you need to be prepared for.

Many software producers today are seeing a shift in process of their software development lifecycle. Companies are transitioning from traditional “waterfall” development methodologies to “agile” development methodologies to better serve their customers. For good reason too, agile development offers a host of benefits when compared to waterfall practices. That said, installation is a major consideration for an agile team and requires the installer software to offer flexibility with regards to its licensing.

One of the principal tenets of agile is fast, iterative development. Product teams want to get features into the hands of users/customers faster and focus less on “process and cycles”. This means that multiple developers in multiple geographies could work on a project and have a need to contribute or create an installer. In these scenarios, when it comes to how your installer software is licensed, you wouldn’t want to be tied to a specific “machine” (for example, a Node Locked license). Instead, the better licensing approach would be to have a concurrent license that allowed anyone on the development team to create the installer at any time, provided the license is available. In an agile development environment this would help streamline and even speed up the development cycle since you would no longer have to wait for the owner/user of that “node” to create the installer.

For more information about agile installation development practices, view: Agile and Installation Development Webinar or read: Five Tips for Delivering Working Software with Agile.

I recently read an interesting whitepaper titled Advancing Virtualization Investments to the Next Level By Mark Bowker, Senior Analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group.  The paper highlights how everyone is constantly hearing about virtualization, which makes everyone feel like they are falling behind, however, the author did a good job of pointing out two-thirds of organizations with virtual server implementations have less than three years of experience with the technology, and only 16% have had it deployed for more than five years. In addition, while some degree of server virtualization is becoming ubiquitous, slightly more than half of the organizations surveyed have virtualized less than one-third of their potential server target and 59% of survey respondents have not virtualized any mission-critical applications.  Also interesting is  the idea that virtualization helps reduce CapEx (hardware, server floor space in data centers, etc.) costs by spending OpEx (virtualization software) is a great pivot and an excellent way to leverage investments many people have already made, or are in the process of making.  Lastly, an often overlooked benefit of virtualization is security of data and disaster recovery.   Most people think of the benefits only in hard costs but these are often much more expensive than people account for. Check out the paper at Advancing Virtualization Investments to the Next Level.

Just as sometimes you want to let your users configure the software, sometimes you need to limit the choices they can make. Maybe you're checking if they're up too late by asking them to solve a trivial arithmetic problem. Or maybe it's a matter of allowing them to continue only if they have a valid serial number. In this article, I'll show how to do the first in a custom wizard page, using a custom DLL I create with Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Express.

Similar to last time, I start by creating a new project called SuiteCalc, in which I select an application type of DLL, change my Runtime Library to /MT and /MTd, and add a module definition file named SuiteCalc.def to export the function VerifySum and wire the file to my Linker Input properties. This function follows the interface Hidenori described in his Calling a Function in a DLL from a Wizard Page or Window in a Suite Installation blog post, and it can be called by specifying it in either an Action or a Validate setting of any supporting control. The settings Action and Validate differ in that Validate runs the function before changing the property (calls to get_Property retrieve the old value of the property), and a failure return value prevents the change from being committed; Action runs the function after the change is committed, and a failure return value indicates the install should abort. So I create the function VerifySum in SuiteCalc.cpp.

HRESULT __stdcall VerifySum(IDispatch *pDispatch);

The function VerifySum reads three properties, checks the math, and stores a result into a fourth property. For simplicity it will always read Addend1 and Addend2, and compare their sum to Sum. When all three are supplied, it will set Correct to either Yes or No, and when there isn't a valid mathematical equation because one of the properties doesn't hold a number, it will set Correct to an empty string.

Next I create a Suite project, add a test package, and add SuiteCalc.dll to the project through the Support Files view. It's time to modify the wizard. The InstallationWelcome page needs a way to specify Addend1, Addend2, and Sum, so I add three new text box controls, and set their properties. Each of those text boxes will have their Action setting set to {SuiteCalc::VerifySum} in order to invoke the validation. To react to the results of this action, there are a couple options. One is to add a label with its Property set to Correct, and another is to add two labels with text like Correct and Wrong with their visible conditions set to {Binding Correct==Yes} and {Binding Correct=No} respectively. I'll go with the second. Finally to prevent installing when I can't add numbers correctly, I set the Next button's enabled condition to {Binding Correct==Yes}. For completeness, I added a label with a plus and an equal sign between the text boxes.

And that's it: we have our calculator. The attached SuiteCalc.zip file contains the sample source code I've described, as well as a built DLL and a project that uses it. You can use the same approach to check anything you'd like. You could even make a web call. Just beware that the longer the code takes to execute, the longer the end user has to wait to see the results.

Note that actions that call a function in a DLL require InstallShield 2012 SP1. To obtain SP1, see Q201298: InstallShield 2012 Service Pack 1. For information about the InstallShield 2012 release, see the InstallShield 2012 demo.

Just read an interesting article entitled “How are CIOs looking at today’s disruptive tech trends?” that summarizes a recent roundtable on digital strategies featuring the CIOs from American Express, Bechtel, Chevron, Eastman Chemical, Eaton Corporation, the Hilti Group, Holcim, Nestle, Sysco, and Time Warner Cable. 

It’s an interesting look into the challenges these CIOs face as a result of the major disruptive technologies that are getting so much press these days (mobility, social media, consumerization, cloud and big data).  The article details 6 key insights about new disruptive technology that I think are insightful for anyone in IT (there’s a link to a 17 page report within the article as well).

One of the six insights really caught my eye: “Designing for loss of control” is one of IT’s key challenges.  In essence, it acknowledges that IT can’t keep up, but is still going to be held accountable for security, reliability and performance.  I would add spend management to this as well.  This is very true and matches what we see every day around applications.

IT is being asked to deliver applications faster to their business users, cope with rapidly changing access requirements (e.g., the same app accessible on a laptop and an iPad) while trying to leverage new technologies (e.g., cloud, virtualization) to meet these needs and save money.  Most organizations don’t have mature application readiness processes because in a more static world, it just wasn’t the priority.  But, in today’s rapidly changing, heterogeneous and increasingly complex environment, they need to establish a robust process to automate and manage application migrations and on-going operations to accelerate Windows application availability for on-premises, virtual or cloud deployments.  This process needs to automate and manage compatibility assessment, application packaging and deployment, which now excludes the expectation of applications being virtualized, deployed in the cloud and accessible to employees via a self-service enterprise app store.

In addition, given the strategic importance and aggregate spend of applications, IT must establish processes for software asset management and license optimization to ensure they are buying what they need and using what they bought.  But this too is becoming increasingly difficult with the influx of new technologies such as virtualization and bursting to the cloud which makes tracking and understanding application usage that much more challenging.  Processes need to be established to continuously ensure usage is in compliance with software license agreements and to provide the organization the insights they need to manage how many software licenses are required based on actual usage on a global basis.

IT will continue to be held accountable for ensuring software license compliance and driving increased application usage despite the disruptions that all of this external technology change represents.  Establishing business processes to manage application readiness, software asset management and license optimization can go a long way to helping IT “design for loss of control” by ensuring that continuous processes are in place to strategically manage application usage.

In my last two blog articles (ICE Validation: Part 1 and ICE Validation: Part 2) we discussed the need for validation of the MSI databases and a means by which you could include your own custom rules into the standard Internal Consistency Evaluator (ICE) validation checking mechanism. This time we will extend the thinking to provide a means of automatically resolving validation issues creating a Manipulating-ICE or MICE.

Aim
The obvious extension to the error flagging phase of the ICE validation is the error correction phase, which has, up until now, been a manual process. We need to remove the need for a technician performing validation to personally interpret the results. We seek to automate the resolution, fixing hundreds of instances in the same time it would take to resolve one issue manually.

To do this we will perform the following steps:

1. Make a copy of the original MSI database.
2. Inspect some element of the MSI database iterating through records as necessary.
3. Perform resolution by updating the copy of the database.
4. Commit all changes and compare to the original database to generate the transform.

This demonstration will be performed in Visual Basic Script for ease.

During this demonstration we will take a very simple example of a custom packaging Best Practice, that of ensuring that all packages are deployed per-machine by setting the value of the property ALLUSERS to 1.

Copy the Original Database
In the following code snippet we see (on line 18) the command line argument being processed to determine the working directory of the MSI which was dropped onto the VBScript. After that both the base MSI and the changed MSI are assigned names. The VBScript File System Object is used to duplicate the given MSI. Then, using the Windows Installer Object, both databases are opened (the base in read-only and the changed in read-write transact mode).

Inspect the Current Value of the ALLUSERS Property
In this snippet we see how to interact with the tables; it is quite similar to the way in which you talk to a SQL Database. First we create a view, then we execute that view and finally fetch records from the executed view.

The key to getting this right is the types of quotes used on line 42. The double quotes (" ") enclose the entire Select statement. We sometimes break out of that literal string to include VBScript variables calculated or parameterised earlier, and in those cases we concatenate them into the line using the ampersand (&). The single vertical quotes ('') are used to refer to strings within the Select statement. In our example we are looking for the string value of a property to be ALLUSERS. Any columns which are defined as numeric, such as the Root column in the Registry table, do not use the single vertical quotes. Finally the single angled quotes (` `) are used to escape column and table names; this is not necessary unless the column of table name clashes with an internal MSI-SQL keyword—for example, in the Registry table there is a column called Key, which is also a MSI-SQL keyword.

To highlight the problem of not escaping consider a somewhat contrived custom table called FROM containing a column called SELECT and wanting to read its value when a second column called WHERE has the value 1. The un-escaped Select statement would read:

“SELECT SELECT FROM FROM WHERE WHERE=2” and would fail miserably, whereas the escaped equivalent:

“SELECT `SELECT` FROM `FROM` WHERE `WHERE`=2” would work correctly.

Although this is a contrived example unless we learn all MSI-SQL keywords this could also happen in more realistic examples. So to be on the safe side we should escape all column and table names.

Perform the Resolution
In this snippet we perform the change necessary to fix our issue. In this case we have some alternate cases: the ALLUSERS value may not exist or it may exist with the non-prescribed value of 1.

The If statement on line 45 is true only if there is an ALLUSERS property in the MSI. We go on to extract its value using the “.StringData(1)” property. This extracts from the current record the value of the column in position 1 and returns it as a string representation. If the value does not already equal 1 we set it to 1 and then on line 56 we create a new view. The MSI-SQL statement here updates the property table and embeds the VBScript value of AllUsers. Note we must still execute that view but we do not proceed to fetch records from it.

The Else statement that begins on line 61 is true only if the earlier select statement failed to collect any records which means there is no ALLUSERS property (hence this is a non-standard per-user deployment). So in this case we should just insert the missing record into the property table.

Commit Changes and Make a Transform
Technically, at this point, we have completed our changes but since we opened the database in transact mode just closing the database will rollback any un-committed changes. So before we do that we must commit our changes.

In our last code snippet we see how to compare the changed database with the original read-only database to create a transform. This allows us to use this same script on a vendor MSI and express the same change without modifying the original vendor package. The line 149 shows how to make the transform more generic and not care too much when applying the transform.

Summary
In this article we have seen how to perform a simple check against the MSI database and fix it. Although fairly trivial, this example can easily be extended to perform more complex checks on different and multiple tables retrieving sets of records instead. However the resolution is just as simple and when applied to large packages generate massive time savings over the same manual operation.

We are pleased to announce that Flexera Software has completed the acquisition of SCCM Expert. We are extremely excited to be adding SCCM Expert's employees, products, partners and customers to the Flexera Software team. This is a very good fit for both organizations and we believe great news for our customers.

SCCM Expert is a Microsoft Gold Partner and founding member of the Microsoft System Center Alliance. SCCM Expert markets leading edge, customizable and affordable software solutions that maximize the capability of Microsoft's systems management technology, streamline operations, save time and reduce costs associated with managing enterprise-wide systems and software. From global corporations to schools and U.S. Government agencies, SCCM Expert offers the software and expertise to help any organization realize the long-term efficiencies and cost savings associated with automating routine IT processes. SCCM Expert also works with a network of partners, including software resellers and IT consultants, who recommend products, service and expertise to their own clients.

SCCM Expert's Self Service empowers employees with on-demand software provisioning through an enterprise app store, helping companies automate software request management and delivery. Flexera Software sees Self Service as a strategic addition that complements our Application Readiness and Enterprise License Optimization solutions. Together, these solutions offer the promise of providing IT complete visibility into their software assets and tracking them from initial purchase to software audit compliance. Flexera Software delivers strategic solutions to manage application usage across the application life cycle and Self Service helps broaden that vision.

We're very excited to be adding Self Service to our growing set of Application Usage Management solutions for enterprises.

You can read the press release here or watch a video discussing the acquisition here.

I’ve heard several people ask how to conditionally select a package based on the target machine’s system language. While InstallShield 2012 didn’t include a way to do this with a few mouse clicks, it does allow us to create our own extension condition. Extension conditions can perform any check desired, including randomly returning TRUE or FALSE results (though I would never suggest it). In this article I will walk through using Visual C++ 2010 Express with InstallShield 2012 SP1 to add a set of conditions that check the target machine’s language settings.

I start by creating a new Win32 project, called LangCond, and I select DLL for the application type. Because I want minimal run-time dependencies, I edit the properties under Code Generation, changing Runtime Library to /MTd and /MT instead of /MDd and /MD. Then so the proper functions are exported, I create a module definition file LangCond.def and add it to my Linker Input properties by setting Module Definition File to LangCond.def. Finally it’s time to talk C++. Following the instructions on Extension Conditions, I import COM information from setupsuite.exe and create six functions:

        HRESULT __stdcall User_Validate(IDispatch *pCondition);
        HRESULT __stdcall User_Evaluate(IDispatch *pCondition, VARIANT_BOOL *pbResult);
        HRESULT __stdcall System_Validate(IDispatch *pCondition);
        HRESULT __stdcall System_Evaluate(IDispatch *pCondition, VARIANT_BOOL *pbResult);
        HRESULT __stdcall OS_Validate(IDispatch *pCondition);
        HRESULT __stdcall OS_Evaluate(IDispatch *pCondition, VARIANT_BOOL *pbResult);

I want these conditions to respectively allow a match of a match of a target machine’s user locale (User), its system locale (System), or the default UI language (OS). Since we expect to support versions of Windows before Windows Vista, we will accept Locale IDs  (LCIDs) instead of Language or Culture Names. Thus the condition will take an LCID attribute, where exactly one LCID must be specified. If it matches, the condition will yield a TRUE result; if it doesn’t match, it will yield a FALSE result.

Let’s implement this in LangCond.cpp. Each kind_Validate call should verify the LCID attribute is an integer. Correspondingly each kind_Evaluate call should retrieve the current setting corresponding to the kind of condition (using GetUserDefaultLCID, GetSystemDefaultLCID, or GetSystemDefaultUILanguage), and then verify if the one listed in the LCID attribute matches. We will use wcstoul to implement both checks. To avoid repeating too much code, each validation will call a helper function ValidateLCID; each evaluation will call MatchLCID.

Finally let’s wire it up. Start a new suite project and add a package with an eligibility condition. Also add LangCond.dll as a support file. Then save and close the project, and edit it in your favorite XML editor. Add namespace attribute xmlns:language="LangCond.dll" to the root setup element, attribute Namespace="LangCond.dll" to the Resources/Resource element referencing LangCond.dll, and element <language:User LCID="1033"/> to the eligibility condition on the package. Once you build this suite, the package will run only on machines where the user has selected the US English locale. Swap 1033 out for 1041 to run only on a Japanese locale, or swap the whole language:User element for a language:System element to run only on machines that match the system locale. Or combine both conditions under an <Any> group to run on systems where the user is likely to understand the selected language, under the assumption that both the user and system languages that are selected on target systems reflect languages the user understands.

The attached LangCond.zip file contains the sample source code described here, as well as a built copy of LangCond.dll and a sample suite project. In the sample project, there are three packages. One will run only on a machine with US English settings. The second will run on a machine with Japanese settings. The third will run on either.

You can use the language condition in any condition field, such as in an exit condition to allow installation on a specific locale, or in feature conditions to configure the default selection state of language-related subfeatures. The latter is useful in a feature tree that looks like this (with conditions referenced):

• Dictionaries
  • …
  • English: <Any><language:System LCID="1033"/><language:User LCID="1033"/></Any>
  • French: <Any><language:System LCID="1036"/><language:User LCID="1036"/></Any>
  • German: <Any><language:System LCID="1031"/><language:User LCID="1031"/></Any>
  • …

Note that support for extension conditions is available in InstallShield 2012 SP1. To obtain SP1, see Q201298: InstallShield 2012 Service Pack 1.

Today’s organizations are facing a new workforce, one that uses computing devices in all parts of life, not just work. These new users expect access to what they need to do their jobs, regardless of location or device used. Computing devices are no longer just company-provided PCs as the proliferation of user-owned computers, smartphones, tablets, and thin-client devices continues to add to the picture. In order to address user expectations and reduce management costs, organizations are evaluating or implementing user-centric initiatives enabling a model that removes the dependency of traditional desktop computing management. The idea of user-centric computing is not new, but the ability of IT departments to implement and provide user-centric computing to the general workforce is just becoming a reality.

Supporting User-Centric Computing

At its core, user-centric computing gives users control of their computing experience, providing them with access to any combination of computing environments, applications, settings, and data from any location or device. User-centric solutions provide the user with pieces of the computing environment (desktop, applications, data, and settings) on demand, where only the required resources are delivered based on the user’s device and location. When working from a company managed Windows PC, users can request applications that are delivered directly to their desktop. When using a non-Windows tablet device, the request for an application initiates a session-based connection to an appropriate server-based computing environment that already has the applications installed. In both scenarios, the user is not required or expected to supply the device type or location of the request.

User-centric computing requires more than just targeting users for resource delivery. The first step is to define the resources that require management. Applications, user data and settings, and computing environment are resources that must be managed in order to complete the solution. Applications, and the definition of applications, have changed over time. Today, applications are not only Windows® Installer (MSI) and executable-based installers, but also include application virtualization, session, mobile, and cloud-based.

Administrators must be able to support applications from many different vendors in various formats and produce resources in multiple formats supporting different user devices. User data and settings must roam to the appropriate endpoints to enable application usefulness. The last resource for user-centric computing is the computing environment, since most applications are built for delivery to Windows-based desktops. In scenarios where users are connecting from non-Windows-based devices, a Windows based computing environment from a session-based or Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) is required.

Next, user-centric computing solutions must orchestrate the delivery of the appropriate resources to users based on their location and their connecting device. User-centric models require delivery of the resources to traditional desktops, sessions, and VDI with logic that can identify the requesting user, location, and device type. Users working from home access a secure webpage that displays their accessible applications. On request, the self-service portal identifies the user’s location, device type, as well as any dependencies, and routes them to an appropriate delivery mechanism. If the user is accessing the application from a company owned laptop, the application can be delivered as a traditional installation or streamed as a virtual application with the appropriate data and settings. However, if the user is accessing from a home computer, a session or VDI based connection is initiated with the same application, user data, and settings applied on the delivery technology.

In a typical organization, management of a user-centric solution spans many IT technologies, thus the consolidation of management tasks and tools is critical for success. The starting point for user-centric computing is application readiness, as applications must be packaged in formats that support all of the delivery mechanisms, device types, users, and locations. Therefore, application readiness presents a limiting factor for adoption of new technologies like session, VDI, and Microsoft System Center 2012 Configuration Manager in user-centric computing.

Conclusion

Organizations are increasingly supporting employees’ desires to utilize additional types of non-managed devices. Supporting these additional devices and environments requires IT to change their approach to desktop computing, with processes and procedures that support user-centric computing. Supporting this new model of computing requires application delivery solutions that optimize the delivery of applications for users on multiple and different types of devices that access resources from any location.

In my last article I discussed the basics of, and motivation for, validating your MSI packages. You may also be aware of the InstallShield internal consistency evaluators (ICEs) and the InstallShield Best Practice rules which were all authored by Flexera Software; these are essentially custom rules that can be used to check additional facets of your MSIs. In this article we show how we can implement our own custom rules within the standard validation process.

Creating a Custom ICE Rule

The entire Windows Installer technology also enjoys the benefit of being open and hence extensible. As such you are at liberty to write your own rules and add them to the Microsoft rules. Once you have gone to the trouble of creating them, satisfying these custom rules should be just as important as satisfying the original Microsoft evaluators, so let us review making our own.

The best place to start here is to take one of the Microsoft rules as an example and modify it to suit your purpose. Most all of the supplied rules in DARICE.CUB are in a DLL format which makes them impossible to refit; however, ICE08, ICE09, ICE32, and ICE61 are available as VBScript which means they can be extracted from the Binary table, modified and reinserted as new rules.

This image shows the modification to the top part of one of those VBScripts to create a rule which checks the UpgradeCode of the MSI and ensures it has been changed from that value in the MSI template. Apart from the modifications of the script function name and descriptions, very little has been changed here, although near the bottom we are checking for existence of the Property table. Since the Property table is a mandatory table, this is technically unnecessary in this case but it does allow you to ensure a table exists before you inspect it. This is good practice, especially since the more recent versions of InstallShield drop empty tables, so you should not assume all your tables will always exist.

The second part of this script is the business end and begins with an OpenView method being called on the Database object. The SQL syntax selects the Property and Value column entries of the row called UpgradeCode from the Property table. As with any SQL select view, we must execute it before we attempt to fetch records out of it. Between the Execute and the Fetch, though, there is a little error checking. Failure at this point often points to the SQL statement not correctly matching the SQL schema.

After the Fetch we ensure the record is not empty (although the UpgradeCode should exist it may not and in that case we need not check its value). Then we proceed to inspect the first nine characters of the value. Notice how we refer to the fields in the select statement: by index number matching their position in the SQL select statement.

In this case finding the record with these characteristics is an error condition, so we flag the error by posting a message with the correct parameters. These are crucial so let us review them in a little more detail.

recInfo.StringData(0) = "ICE1007" & Chr(9) & "1" & Chr(9)& "This package contains the UpgradeCode of the repackaging template, the GUID must be 'spun'" & Chr(9) & "" & Chr(9) & "Property" & Chr(9) & "Value" & Chr(9) & "[1]"

The record has multiple parts delimited by the tab character Chr(9). The first part denotes the rule name. The second “1” denotes an error, “2” is a warning. Then there is a description of the issue and suggestion of the resolution. The next part here is empty but could be used to point to a URL for a more detailed external explanation. The last three parts locate the error by Table, Column and Row; you can equate this to a Latitude, Longitude and Altitude of the problem. Note however that the Row value is not and cannot be coded directly into this message since the message doesn’t know which row the problem lies in. Instead it refers to “[1]” which in this case matches the parameter index from the earlier select statement. This bit of the record is really worth doing correctly since it then allows the operator to double-click on the error message and jump to the error automatically.

Using Your Custom ICE Rules File

Once you have created the new VBScript containing your custom rule code, you insert it back into the Binary table of your DARICE.CUB with a different name. A reference must also be made in the CustomAction table to refer it and then a new row added to the “_ICESequence” table. Your final step is to use it from within InstallShield. From the Build -> Validate menu option you are able to browse for a new validation module (.cub).

When you have selected it once, it will conveniently appear in the Recent Validation Modules list at the bottom of that same Validate submenu.

Selecting the option will run your custom rules along with any existing rules, displaying errors and warnings as if they were native tests.

The Problem with ICE Rules

So we have been able to demonstrate how custom checks or business logic could be incorporated into any quality assurance process. We could leave it at that and move on, but if we could understand what is wrong with this seemingly useful approach perhaps we could improve even on this.

The main problem with the ICE rules is that they are nothing more than what their name suggests: evaluators. They go to great lengths to detect inconsistencies in your MSI (some of them containing hundreds of lines of code); however, they do nothing to resolve the problem for you. This is unfortunate since they know exactly where the problems lie and apart from a rather dry error message, they leave you to solve the issues on your own.

Another problem with the ICE rules is that there is no clearly defined line where we can say these rules are important to deployment or functionality and these are not so important. They are classified into warnings, errors and even failures but these do not directly translate into whether or not you will have installation difficulty. Usually the best advice is that errors and failures should not be tolerated in an MSI, but warnings can often be ignored, but even this approach has drawbacks. For instance it is possible to distribute and even use a product that has errors and failures. Many software vendors are less than conscientious when it comes to MSI validation. There are even cases where a package that has nothing but warnings will not be able to deploy, install or function correctly.

Hence the dividing line between what we fix and what we tolerate is crooked and in the absence of any industry standard on what should be fixed, we are left with the rather woolly advice as given above: Fix all errors and failures and as many warnings as you have time for.

There Must Be a Better Solution

The obvious extension to the error flagging phase of the ICE validation is the error correction phase, which has usually been a manual process. Once we have been around this iterative loop a number of times it soon becomes tedious and prone to being ignored or forgotten. Different validation operators may have different interpretations as to what needs fixing and what doesn’t. Even the same validation operator just before leaving for vacation may have a different opinion as to which issues need to be fixed and which do not. A systematic automated approach is required to reduce the human element during the cleanup process.

The mission statement of such an automated tool would be: If you know what is wrong and you can fix it then do so. Such a script would check a particular facet of the MSI based perhaps on an ICE rule or best practice and loop through the relevant tables seeking a problem. Once an issue has been identified, it would be resolved automatically if it can. The automated procedure would mean that hundreds of errors or warnings can be corrected in seconds, accurately, without the need for human intervention or specialised knowledge. The important thing to note here is that having built a custom ICE rule you have done 80% of the work in creating an automated fix.

Such resolution scripts exist today, I call them Manipulating Internal Consistency Evaluators (MICE), and in my next article we will create one from scratch, step by step.

The Microsoft Windows Installer format is a powerful and robust installation technology but, as is often the case in life, ultimate power does not come without certain responsibilities.

Validation Is Your Responsibility

The MSI database is often likened to the SQL database. Indeed when using the Windows Installer automation interface, the syntax statements are very SQL like, although it is not a full SQL implementation. Therein lies the problem; a full implementation of a relational database within the MSI file would have made the engine too large. Remember the first version had to be distributed on a 1.44Mb floppy disk. This means things like foreign key relationships are not being checked on entry, which in turn means the MSI tables, rows and columns can hide all manner of inconsistent entries. To counter this we validate the built MSI package.

Validation is not new by any means. It predates Windows Installer, though you may not have realised. Before the MSI tables structure, installations were generally controlled by a script which was, at least in part, compiled into an executable. As part of this compilation, the syntax of the script is checked. It was a mandatory part of building the installer and essentially is validation.

The Windows Installer equivalent is called validation and uses a slightly modified MSI file with the extension .CUB (pronounced cube) to hold a number of checking routines known as Internal Consistency Evaluator rules (ICE rules). Collections of these rules come in slightly different varieties covering logo compliance for Windows 2000, Vista and XP as well as the full suite of rules which includes all tests.

Validation can be done within the InstallShield 2012 tool from the build menu as well as from within AdminStudio tools such as Application Manager, Conflict Solver and Package Expert.

If the validation options are not available on your build menu, either you have not yet built the package or the type of validation is not applicable to the type of project you are developing.

Updating the Existing ICE Rules for Windows 7

Although these ICE rules have been around since the inception of Windows Installer, some of the newer innovations have somewhat bypassed the older rule sets you may still be using. You may well have seen this being reported:

ICE27  ERROR  Unknown action: 'MsiConfigureServices' of InstallExecuteSequence table. Not a standard action and not found in CustomAction or Dialog tables

It says that the action MsiConfigureServices is unknown. Although it is a standard action “now” it is an extension of the standard services tables which became available in Windows Installer v5.0. Or perhaps you have seen this one:

ICE45  WARNING   Row 'ReadyToInstall.InstallNow' in table 'Control' has bits set in the 'Attributes' column that are reserved. They should be 0 to ensure compatibility with future installer versions.

It says that the InstallNow push button has some unknown attributes, even though those attributes are known “now”: they assign the UAC control icon to the button.

So unless we obtain an updated .CUB file, these appear to be problems we will just have to live with. However, in these instances, that is not the case. As mentioned earlier the .CUB file is just an MSI file with custom tables, so you can use your favourite MSI editor to open it. When we inspect the content we find that the ICE rules themselves have been written to retrieve their parameters and working values from these custom tables and are not using hard-coding inside the rule itself. We can use this to our advantage.

To update the ICE27 we add the MsiConfigureServices row into the _Action table:

And to update the ICE45 we change the UsedBits column of the _ReservedBits table. Here we change the existing value 8126503 by adding the additional allowed attribute for the UAC shield icon 8388608, giving 16515111.

Of course there are also some rules which are plain annoying. Understandably you may never want to fix or even know about them. Further inspecting the .CUB file we find that the _ICESequence table, which controls which rules are used and in which order, has a Condition column. Inserting a suitable logical condition which can never evaluate to true— for example, “1=0”—essentially turns off that rule.

You may also perform the same trick from InstallShield Tools -> Options -> Validation -> Customize by turning off any rules you want to ignore.

In this article we have explored the motivation for MSI Validation and looked in more depth at the standard .CUB file. In my next article we will discover that we can extend this regime to cater for our own business rules by implementing our own custom logic.  Our ultimate aim is to improve our overall package quality.

In Suite installations, InstallShield lets you define actions that an end user triggers when using some of the various wizard interface controls. See the Configuring an Action for a Control on a Wizard Page or Window help topic for more details about the actions. If you need to perform an action in your Suite installation that is not natively supported by InstallShield, you can create an action that calls a function from a .dll file. This .dll file can perform any function that you require, such as verifying a serial number.

The first step in creating an action that calls a function in a DLL is to write the DLL. InstallShield requires a precise prototype for an entry-point function in a DLL called as the result of an action. Flexera Software does not provide technical support for Windows programming or DLL debugging. You are responsible for correctly writing any DLL functions. Prototype your DLL functions as shown below. Any variation in return type or type and number of parameters can cause the action to fail.

HRESULT __stdcall Foo(IDispatch*)

InstallShield uses the function prototype to pass the ISuiteUIExtension COM interface pointer to your DLL, which enables you to access the following functions available in the Suite bootstrap (Suite_UI.dll):

• BrowseFile
  
  HRESULT BrowseFile(BSTR bstrCaption, BSTR bstrInitialFile, BSTR* pbstrFile)
  
  This function launches the Browse for Files or Folders dialog box when an end user clicks the control. The string of instructions that are displayed on this dialog box are typically the value of a string identifier that you specified by the bstrCaption parameter.
  
  The initial file that is selected on this dialog box is the full path and file name of the file that you specified by the bstrInitialFile parameter.
  
  If the end user selects a file in this dialog box and clicks the OK button, the dialog box closes, and the function sets the pbstrFile parameter to the full path and file name of the file that the end user selected. If the end user clicks the Cancel button, the function returns E_FAIL.
  
  If the function succeeds, it returns S_OK.
  
  
• BrowseFolder
  
  HRESULT BrowseFolder(BSTR bstrCaption, BSTR bstrInitialFolder, BSTR* pbstrFolder)
  
  This function launches the Browse for Folder dialog box when an end user clicks the control. The string of instructions that are displayed on this dialog box is typically the value of a string identifier that you specified by the bstrCaption parameter.
  
  The initial folder that is selected on this dialog is the full path of the folder that you specified by the bstrInitialFolder parameter
  
  If the end user selects a folder in this dialog box and clicks the OK button, the dialog box closes, and the function sets the pbstrFolder parameter to the full path of the folder that the end user selected. If the end user clicks the Cancel button, the function returns E_FAIL.
  
  If the function succeeds, it returns S_OK.
  
  
• DoModal
  
  HRESULT DoModal(BSTR bstrDialogName, LONG* pnResult);
  
  This function shows a secondary window that you specified by the bstrDialogName parameter as a modal window.
  
  If the end user clicks the OK button, the modal window closes, and the function sets the pnResult parameter to IDOK. If the end user clicks the Cancel button, the function sets the pnResult parameter to IDCANCEL.
  
  If the function succeeds, it returns S_OK.
  
  
• MessageBox
  
  HRESULT MessageBox(BSTR bstrMessage, BSTR bstrTitle, LONG nType, LONG* pnResult);
  
  This function shows a modal dialog box that contains a system icon, and a brief message that you specified by the bstrMessage parameter.
  
  When the end user closes the message box, the function returns and sets the pnResult parameter to an integer value that indicates which button the end user clicked.
  
  
  
• SetActivePage
  
  HRESULT SetActivePage(BSTR bstrPage);
  
  This function moves to a specific wizard page that you specified as the bstrPage parameter of this function.
  
  If the function  succeeds, it returns S_OK.
  
  
• OpenDocument
  
  HRESULT OpenDocument(BSTR bstrDocument, BSTR bstrVerb);
  
  This function performs an operation on a file that you specified by the bstrDocument parameter. The bstrVerb parameter specifies the action to be performed.
  
  It calls the ShellExecuteEx Windows function. Typical verbs include open, edit, print, and runas. For details about the verb, refer to the lpVerb member of the SHELLEXECUTEINFO structure.
  
  
• LogInfo
  
  HRESULT LogInfo(BSTR bstrMessage);
  
  This function writes a message that you specified as the bstrMessage parameter to a log file for your Setup.exe.
  
  If the function succeeds, it returns S_OK.
   
• get_Property
  
  HRESULT get_Property(BSTR bstrProperty, BSTR* pbstrValue);
  
  This function retrieves the value of a specific property that you specified as the bstrProperty parameter.
  
  If the function succeeds, it returns S_OK.
   
• put_Property
  
  HRESULT put_Property(BSTR bstrProperty, BSTR bstrValue);
  
  This function sets a specific property that you specified as the bstrProperty parameter to a specific value.
  
  If the function succeeds, it returns S_OK.
   
• FormatProperty
  
  HRESULT FormatProperty(BSTR bstrValue, BSTR* bstrReturnValue);
  
  This function substitutes properties using a format string in a string that you specified as the bstrValue parameter. When the function returns, the substituted string is set to the bstrReturnValue parameter.
  
  
• ResolveString
  
  HRESULT ResolveString(BSTR bstrStringId, BSTR* bstrReturnValue);
  
  This function resolves a string identifier that you specified by the bstrStringId parameter. When the function returns, the value of the string identifier is set to the bstrReturnValue parameter.
   
• get_Attribute
  
  HRESULT get_Attribute(BSTR bstrName, BSTR* pbstrValue);
  
  The function is reserved for future use. It currently returns E_NOTIMPL.

To access the ISuiteUIExtension interface from your DLL, you need to incorporate the type library information from the SetupSuite.exe file that is installed with InstallShield. The default path is:

C:\Program Files\InstallShield\2012\Redist\Language Independent\i386\SetupSuite.exe

The example below shows how to display a message box when an end user clicks a control:

#include "stdafx.h"
#include <atlstr.h>
#import "C:\Program Files\InstallShield\2012\ Redist\Language Independent\i386\SetupSuite.exe" no_namespace raw_interfaces_only
named_guids

HRESULT __stdcall Action(IDispatch *pDispSuiteUIExtension)
{
    CComQIPtr<ISuiteUIExtension> spSuiteUIExtenstion = pDispSuiteUIExtension;

    long lResult = 0;
    return spSuiteUIExtenstion->MessageBox(CComBSTR(L"Hello"), CComBSTR(L"DLL Action"), MB_OK, &lResult);
}

Once your DLL is ready, you must add the DLL to your Suite installation, and design an action to call the entry-point function. The following is the syntax of the action statement that calls a DLL function.

{DLLName::FunctionName}

For example, to call a function called Action in TestDLL.dll when an end user clicks the control, enter the following action statement:

{TestDLL::Action}

To add a DLL action to your Suite project:

1. In the View List under Behavior and Logic, click Support Files.
2. In the Behavior and Logic explorer, select the Language Independent node and add TestDLL.dll.
3. In the View List under User Interface, click Wizard Interface.
4. In the Wizard Interface explorer, select the dialog that you want to modify.
5. Do one of the following:
   • To configure the action of one of the navigation controls (the Next, Back, Cancel, Install, or Finish buttons)—In the right pane, expand the settings for the control whose action you want to modify
   • To configure the action of any of the other controls—In the wizard editor, select the control whose action you want to modify.
6. In the Action setting, enter the action statement to call a DLL function in TestDLL.dll.
   {TestDLL::Action}

Note that actions that call a function in a DLL require InstallShield 2012 SP1. To obtain SP1, see Q201298: InstallShield 2012 Service Pack 1. For information about the InstallShield 2012 release, see the InstallShield 2012 demo.