Managed Entitlements in AWS License Manager Streamlines License Tracking and Distribution for Customers and ISVs

AWS License Manager is a service that helps you easily manage software licenses from vendors such as Microsoft, SAP, Oracle, and IBM across your Amazon Web Services (AWS) and on-premises environments. You can define rules based on your licensing agreements to prevent license violations, such as using more licenses than are available. You can set the rules to help prevent licensing violations or notify you of breaches. AWS License Manager also offers automated discovery of bring your own licenses (BYOL) usage that keeps you informed of all software installations and uninstallations across your environment and alerts you of licensing violations.

License Manager can manage licenses purchased in AWS Marketplace, a curated digital catalog where you can easily find, purchase, deploy, and manage third-party software, data, and services to build solutions and run your business. Marketplace lists thousands of software listings from independent software vendors (ISVs) in popular categories such as security, networking, storage, machine learning, business intelligence, database, and DevOps.

Managed entitlements for AWS License Manager
Starting today, you can use managed entitlements, a new feature of AWS License Manager that lets you distribute licenses across your AWS Organizations, automate software deployments quickly and track licenses – all from a single, central account. Previously, each of your users would have to independently accept licensing terms and subscribe through their own individual AWS accounts. As your business grows and scales, this becomes increasingly inefficient.

Customers can use managed entitlements to manage more than 8,000 listings available for purchase from more than 1600 vendors in the AWS Marketplace. Today, AWS License Manager automates license entitlement distribution for Amazon Machine Image, Containers and Machine Learning products purchased in the Marketplace with a variety of solutions.

How It Works
Managed entitlements provides built-in controls that allow only authorized users and workloads to consume a license within vendor-defined limits. This new license management mechanism also eliminates the need for ISVs to maintain their own licensing systems and conduct costly audits.

Each time a customer purchases licenses from AWS Marketplace or a supported ISV, the license is activated based on AWS IAM credentials, and the details are registered to License Manager.

Administrators distribute licenses to AWS accounts. They can manage a list of grants for each license.

Benefits for ISVs
AWS License Manager managed entitlements provides several benefits to ISVs to simplify the automatic license creation and distribution process as part of their transactional workflow. License entitlements can be distributed to end users with and without AWS accounts. Managed entitlements streamlines upgrades and renewals by removing expensive license audits and provides customers with a self-service tracking tool with built-in license tracking capabilities. There are no fees for this feature.

Managed entitlements provides the ability to distribute licenses to end users who do not have AWS accounts. In conjunction with the AWS License Manager, ISVs create a unique long-term token to identify the customer. The token is generated and shared with the customer. When the software is launched, the customer enters the token to activate the license. The software exchanges the long-term customer token for a short-term token that is passed to the API and the setting of the license is completed. For on-premises workloads that are not connected to the Internet, ISVs can generate a host-specific license file that customers can use to run the software on that host.

Now Available
This new enhancement to AWS License Manager is available today for US East (N. Virginia), US West (Oregon), and Europe (Ireland) with other AWS Regions coming soon.

Licenses purchased on AWS Marketplace are automatically created in AWS License Manager and no special steps are required to use managed entitlements. For more details about the new feature, see the managed entitlement pages on AWS Marketplace, and the documentation. For ISVs to use this new feature, please visit our getting started guide.

Get started with AWS License Manager and the new managed entitlements feature today.

– Kame