Automated license management
AssigneeMicrosoft Technologly Licensing, LLC
InventorsClifford Didcock, Corinne Stroum, Jono Luk, Girish Chander
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
Licenses to software services are assigned automatically to users as a function of one or more user attributes. An attribute can include membership in a group such as a license group or a security group, among other things such as location. License assignments can also be retracted automatically upon changes in one or more user attributes.
Claims20
A license management system, comprising:
- one or more processors;
- and
- one or more computer-readable media having stored thereon computer-executable instructions that are executable by the one or more processors to cause the license management system to assign software licenses to users, the computer-executable instructions including instructions that are executable by the one or more processors to cause the license management system to perform at least the following:
- receive, from a remote computer system, a set of a plurality of software licenses that have been assigned to an organization associated with the license management system;
- identify one or more license rules stored at the license management system that specify criteria for automatically assigning software licenses in the set of software licenses to users within the organization, including identifying at least one particular license rule that specifies one or more user roles that must be matched for the particular license rule to apply to a user;
- identify a particular user within the organization to which the license rule applies, based at least on determining that a role of the particular user matches the one or more user roles specified by the particular license rule;
- and
- automatically assign a particular license of the set of software licenses to the particular user, based at least on having determined that the role of the particular user matches the one or more user roles specified by the particular license rule.
A method, implemented at a computer system that includes one or more processors, for automatically assigning software licenses to users within an organization, the method comprising:
- receiving, from a remote computer system, a set of a plurality of software licenses that have been assigned to an organization;
- identifying one or more license rules stored at a license management system that specify criteria for automatically assigning software licenses in the set of software licenses to users within the organization, including identifying at least one particular license rule that specifies one or more user roles that must be matched for the particular license rule to apply to a user;
- identifying a particular user within the organization to which the particular license rule applies, based at least on determining that a role of the particular user matches the one or more user roles specified by the particular license rule;
- and
- automatically assigning a particular license of the set of software licenses to the particular user, based at least on having determined that the role of the particular user matches the one or more user roles specified by the particular license rule.
A computer program product comprising one or more hardware storage devices stored thereon computer-executable instructions that are executable by one or more processors to cause a license management system to automatically assign software licenses to users, the computer-executable instructions including instructions that are executable by the one or more processors to cause the computer system to perform at least the following:
- receive, from a remote computer system, a set of a plurality of software licenses that have been assigned to an organization associated with the license management system;
- identify one or more license rules stored at the license management system that specify criteria for automatically assigning software licenses in the set of software licenses to users within the organization, including identifying at least one particular license rule that specifies one or more user roles that must be matched for the particular license rule to apply to a user;
- identify a particular user within the organization to which the license rule applies, based at least on determining that a role of the particular user matches the one or more user roles specified by the particular license rule;
- and
- automatically assign a particular license of the set of software licenses to the particular user, based at least on having determined that the role of the particular user matches the one or more user roles specified by the particular license rule.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.