Managed entitlements for AWS Marketplace

Automate software license tracking and entitlement distribution using AWS License Manager

Managed entitlements enable customers to distribute, activate, and track software license entitlements acquired in AWS Marketplace through AWS License Manager. Administrators can use AWS License Manager to automate the distribution and activation of software entitlements to end-users and workloads across accounts in their AWS organization. Managed entitlements also provide built-in controls that allow only approved users and workloads to consume licenses. You can subscribe to, track, and manage software licenses at scale, as third-party products purchased in AWS Marketplace create managed entitlements in AWS License Manager.

Visit the AWS License Manager Console to start managing your software licenses.

Benefits

Ease

Manage license entitlements for third-party software purchases from AWS Marketplace in one place, via AWS License Manager.

Speed

Programmatically distribute access to software entitlements across AWS accounts in your organization.

Visibility

Centralize visibility and tracking of third-party software licenses purchased in AWS Marketplace to improve clarity around organization-wide license use.

How it works

Use cases

Automate and accelerate entitlement distribution

Once subscribed to a third-party Amazon Machine Image (AMI), Container, or Machine Learning product in AWS Marketplace, you can automate the distribution of license entitlements across multiple accounts set up in AWS Organizations. This eliminates the need for each account to manually subscribe to each product.

Govern license access through account distribution

With a centralized administrative AWS account, you can govern license access by distributing entitlements to individual accounts on an as needed basis. This reduces the potential for duplicative buying or license overuse.

Share licenses across your AWS Organization

With a centralized administrative AWS account, you can share licenses to your AWS Organization by distributing entitlements to your AWS Organization ID. Licenses granted to an Organizations ID, will be automatically granted or revoked according to the AWS Account membership in that organization.

Success stories

Ally Financial

"This service works extremely well. Such a great idea and great implementation. Kudos to the team – it’ll make our lives so much easier. I was able to implement it for all beta-granted accounts very easily."

James Barney, Principal Cloud Enablement Engineer, Ally Financial

Crosscode Inc.

"Software license management is a major challenge that most software development teams face; it’s not core to the products they’re building but it is critical and necessary to the product’s business success. Current solutions are inefficient, and much of the time you must build it yourself. License management services through AWS addresses a big problem area that teams like ours face. With managed entitlements, Crosscode has directly reduced at least 8 weeks of development time and saved several hundred man-hours, in addition to measurable savings on long-term support and other costs that would otherwise be involved. Quite frankly, we’d be in big trouble without it."

Edwin Gnichtel, CTO, Crosscode Inc.

Cloudshare

"I found the UI and CLI for managed entitlements to be intuitive and simple to understand. We are excited to leverage this feature across our organization, since it fits our use case to help us govern grants on specific accounts more efficiently."

Moshe Tepper, Engineering Team Lead, CloudShare

Other Customers

Frequently Asked Questions

FAQs for Software Buyers

How do I get started?

To get started, you will need an active subscription to a third-party software product from AWS Marketplace. In the AWS Marketplace console, click on the license link on your subscription detail page to arrive at AWS License Manager, or navigate directly to the AWS License Manager console. Existing and new AWS Marketplace purchases, including free, paid, and Bring-Your-Own-License subscriptions, will produce a license that is shown within AWS License Manager. You can use AWS License Manager to track and manage your AWS Marketplace licenses. Your AMI, Containers, and Machine Learning product subscriptions can also be distributed to AWS accounts in your organization, as defined by AWS Organizations.
As an administrator, can I track and govern license use across AWS accounts in my organization?

Yes. As an administrator, you first define the management account that you would like to use to govern licenses. Then, use that account to subscribe to any distribution-supported software product type (AMI, Containers, Machine Learning) in AWS Marketplace. Each subscription will result in a license that appears in your AWS License Manager account. For each license, you can view detailed information, such as the product name, seller of record, and license start and expiry dates. Use the Grant function to distribute the license entitlement to other member accounts in your organization as defined by AWS Organizations.
As an administrator, how do I distribute or remove license access to AWS accounts in my organization?

You can distribute a license entitlement by providing the AWS account that you want to grant access to use the license. You can use AWS License Manager to distribute licenses via UI and API. You can also revoke license access by deleting the grant for the specified AWS account.
As an administrator, how do I manage and distribute AWS MP licenses to my entire organization?

You can use AWS License Manager to distribute AWS MP licenses to your organization ID. Once distributed, you can bulk activate and deactivate the license across all accounts in your organization. AWS License manager will keep track and distribute the license to new accounts added to the organization and disable the license when accounts are removed from the organization.

FAQs for Vendors selling licenses through AWS Marketplace

How do managed entitlements work for me as a seller?

Vendors with existing AWS Marketplace product listings will not have to do additional work. AWS Marketplace automatically creates licenses for customers in AWS License Manager on your behalf when they make purchases. AWS Marketplace will also backfill existing licenses purchased from AWS Marketplace into AWS License Manager for customers to manage.
How do customers get access to a license after they make a purchase?

When you sell your product through AWS Marketplace, a license is automatically created in AWS License Manager. The license is issued to the AWS account that purchased your product.
Can I use AWS to activate and enforce licenses so customers can use my software?

For licenses with resource-based pricing (e.g., by Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instance type), AWS only enables customers that have purchased licenses to launch your software on ECS/EKS, Amazon EC2, and Amazon Sagemaker. For all other license types, you can continue using existing AWS Marketplace APIs to verify customers’ licenses. You can also onboard onto AWS License Manager APIs instead, which provide the added benefit of tracking license use.
Can I enable customers to use my software purchased in AWS Marketplace between on-premises and AWS?

Yes. To enable entitlement management between AWS and on-premises on software purchased in AWS Marketplace, you need to integrate directly with managed entitlements through AWS License Manager. This enables you to support customers by centralizing their license management experience, whether the license is used in an AWS account or in an on-premises environment.