<div><font size=2 face="Arial">IBM BigFix Inventory and IBM License Metric
Tool <b>application update 9.2.6</b> is now available.</font><p><font size=2 face="Arial">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:</font><p><font size=2 face="Symbol">· </font><font size=2 face="Arial"><b>Enhanced
discovery of Microsoft Exchange Servers to properly categorize their editions
(BigFix Inventory only)</b></font><p><font size=2 face="Arial">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.</font><p><font size=2 face="Arial"><b>Benefits:</b> 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.</font><p><font size=2 face="Symbol">· </font><font size=2 face="Arial"><b>Reporting
high water mark of Oracle Database user sessions (BigFix Inventory only)</b></font><p><font size=2 face="Arial">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.</font><p><font size=2 face="Arial"><b>Benefits:</b> 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.</font><p><font size=2 face="Symbol">· </font><font size=2 face="Arial"><b>Metering
application usage on Mac OS X (BigFix Inventory only)</b></font><p><font size=2 face="Arial">The Software Installations report includes
application usage statistics for software that is installed on Mac OS X.</font><p><font size=2 face="Arial"><b>Benefits</b>: You can verify whether extension
of license is needed for particular software instances based on their frequency
of use.</font><p><font size=2 face="Symbol">· </font><font size=2 face="Arial"><b>Searching
the software catalog by part number from IBM Passport Advantage</b></font><p><font size=2 face="Arial">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. </font><p><font size=2 face="Arial"><b>Benefits:</b> 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. </font><p><font size=2 face="Symbol">· </font><font size=2 face="Arial"><b>Utilization
of the Install Seats metric for products discovered by SWID tags</b></font><p><font size=2 face="Arial">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. </font><p><font size=2 face="Arial"><b>Benefits</b>: 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.</font><p><font size=2 face="Symbol">· </font><font size=2 face="Arial"><b>Support
for new operating systems and virtualization technologies</b></font><p><font size=2 face="Arial">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.</font><p><font size=2 face="Arial"><b>Benefits:</b> You can now perform inventory
and license management for software hosted on running on the listed virtualization
technologies and operating systems.</font><p><p><font size=2 face="Arial"><b>Preview features</b></font><p><font size=2 face="Arial">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.</font><p><font size=2 face="Symbol">· </font><font size=2 face="Arial"><b>Reporting
of physical core-based metric for Microsoft SQL Servers (BigFix Inventory
only)</b></font><p><font size=2 face="Arial">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).</font><p><font size=2 face="Arial"> <b>Benefits:</b>You can now apply proper license management for Microsoft SQL Server licenses.</font><p><font size=2 face="Symbol">· </font><font size=2 face="Arial"><b>Extension
of the Software Classification panel</b></font><p><font size=2 face="Arial">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: </font><p><font size=2 face="Arial">o Selecting
the license metric of a product to which you are assigning the component</font><p><font size=2 face="Arial">o Excluding
a product or component from license calculations, for example when it is
a trial version </font><p><font size=2 face="Arial">o Viewing
information about components that were installed during a specific period
and their assignment </font><p><font size=2 face="Arial"><b>Benefits: </b>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.
</font><p><div><font size=2 face="Arial"><b>Action to take</b></font><p><font size=2 face="Arial">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:</font><p><font size=2 face="Arial">BigFix Inventory: </font><a href=http://ibm.biz/bfi_update_926><font size=2 color=blue face="Arial"><u>http://ibm.biz/bfi_update_926</u></font></a><p><font size=2 face="Arial">License Metric Tool: </font><a href=http://ibm.biz/lmt_update_926><font size=2 color=blue face="Arial"><u>http://ibm.biz/lmt_update_926</u></font></a><font size=2 face="Arial"></font><p><font size=2 face="Arial">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.</font><p><p><font size=2 face="Arial"><b>Questions</b></font><p><font size=2 face="Arial">If you have any product-related questions,
please post them on one of the following fora:</font><p><a href=http://ibm.biz/BFI_Forum><font size=2 color=blue face="Arial"><u>http://ibm.biz/BFI_Forum</u></font></a><p><a href=http://ibm.biz/ILMT_Forum><font size=2 color=blue face="Arial">http://ibm.biz/ILMT_Forum</font></a><p><p></div></div><BR>