[BESAdmin-Announcements] IBM BigFix Inventory and IBM License Metric Tool application update 9.2.6 is available

[Announcements for BES Administrators]

IBM BigFix Inventory and IBM License Metric Tool application update 9.2.6 
is now available.
This update contains key features that extend software discovery and 
enhance license reporting to help you manage and reduce software costs. 
The key features include:
?       Enhanced discovery of Microsoft Exchange Servers to properly 
categorize their editions (BigFix Inventory only)
Microsoft technical notes and best practices were applied to categorize 
editions of the discovered Microsoft Exchange Servers and provide a more 
accurate inventory and license management control.
Benefits: You can obtain an accurate inventory of Microsoft Exchange 
Server editions and verify how many licenses are needed for each edition 
to ensure license compliance.
?       Reporting high water mark of Oracle Database user sessions (BigFix 
Inventory only)
BigFix Inventory retrieves the number of user sessions that are registered 
into the Oracle Databases deployed in your environment and provides the 
high water mark of these sessions.
Benefits: You can use this information to visualize the number of user 
sessions that are executed on the Oracle Databases and to count the 
required licensing demand for the Oracle Named User Plus licenses.
?       Metering application usage on Mac OS X (BigFix Inventory only)
The Software Installations report includes application usage statistics 
for software that is installed on Mac OS X.
Benefits: You can verify whether extension of license is needed for 
particular software instances based on their frequency of use.
?       Searching the software catalog by part number from IBM Passport 
Advantage
Part numbers of IBM products and associated license metrics were added to 
the Software Catalog report. This information facilitates the process of 
software classification, and allows for verifying whether a particular 
part number is in the current software catalog, and thus influences IBM 
product automated bundling. 
Benefits: You can now easily verify which products are represented by the 
part numbers from your IBM Passport Advantage account and what license 
metrics they use. 
?       Utilization of the Install Seats metric for products discovered by 
SWID tags
The All Metrics report is extended to include information about the 
utilization of the Install Seats metric for non-IBM products that are 
discovered by SWID tags. 
Benefits: You can see the number of installations of software that is 
discovered by SWID tags but for which the software catalog does not define 
license details.
?       Support for new operating systems and virtualization technologies
You can detect software that is installed on Windows Server 2016, Ubuntu 
16 for IBM Power Systems, and SUSE Linux 12 for IBM Power Systems on 
Little Endian Architecture. You can use XenServer and Citrix XenServer as 
supported virtualization technologies on selected operating systems.
Benefits: You can now perform inventory and license management for 
software hosted on running on the listed virtualization technologies and 
operating systems.

Preview features
Preview features give you a chance to take a sneak peek at features that 
are currently under development and share your comments to influence the 
final shape of the features. While preview features evolve with every 
release, they are also officially supported by IBM Support.
?       Reporting of physical core-based metric for Microsoft SQL Servers 
(BigFix Inventory only)
This is the first part of the improvements planned to be delivered in 
BigFix Inventory to report utilization of core-based licenses for 
Microsoft products that use this license metric. Currently, the primary 
focus is on Microsoft SQL Server versions 2012, 2014, and 2016 (Standard 
and Enterprise edition).
        Benefits: You can now apply proper license management for 
Microsoft SQL Server licenses.
?       Extension of the Software Classification panel
The Software Classification panel introduces a new way of looking at 
software inventory and relations between the discovered components and 
licensable products. It provides a flat structure with software 
installations broken into single components, which makes it easier to view 
software assets and manage relations between them. The preview panel is 
extended with the following functions: 
o       Selecting the license metric of a product to which you are 
assigning the component
o       Excluding a product or component from license calculations, for 
example when it is a trial version 
o       Viewing information about components that were installed during a 
specific period and their assignment 
Benefits: You have a better control over which products and components are 
taken into account during license calculations. You can also assign a 
specific license metric to a product to ensure that software 
classification reflects your actual purchases. 

Action to take
To learn how to get the application update and deploy it as well as to 
view the full list of new features and APARs that were fixed in this 
application update, see the following links:
BigFix Inventory: http://ibm.biz/bfi_update_926
License Metric Tool: http://ibm.biz/lmt_update_926 
During the upgrade, new versions of the software catalog and PVU table are 
uploaded. The versions that are uploaded are the newest ones that were 
available during the release of the application update to which you are 
upgrading.

Questions
If you have any product-related questions, please post them on one of the 
following fora:
http://ibm.biz/BFI_Forum
http://ibm.biz/ILMT_Forum



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