Practical Management of Software Compliance

This is the largest domain and the heart of SAM Professional. The goal is to turn raw data into a defensible, reconciled license position and then act on it.

Entitlements, allocations, and use rights

An entitlement records what your organization is legally permitted to do with a software product: how many rights you purchased, the license metric that governs counting, the publisher/product, the purchase and contract references, and any upgrade, downgrade, or second-use rights. Entitlements are matched to software models so that rights line up with the licensable units that installations normalize to.

An allocation assigns specific rights from an entitlement to a particular user or device. Allocations matter most for named-user and per-device metrics, where the question "who/what is this license assigned to?" determines compliance. Use rights (upgrade/downgrade rights, multi-use, virtualization rights, and product use rights published by the vendor) modify how raw consumption is counted — for example, a license for a newer edition may cover an older installed edition through downgrade rights.

Reconciliation and the Effective License Position (ELP)

Reconciliation is the engine that compares rights owned (entitlements) against rights consumed (normalized installations and measured usage) for each software model, then produces a software model result with a compliance status: compliant, over-licensed (surplus), or non-compliant (shortfall/exposure). The reconciled output is the Effective License Position — the single number that tells you, per publisher and product, whether you have enough licenses.

Reconciliation depends on three things being correct: (1) installs normalized to the right software model, (2) each model carrying the correct license metric, and (3) entitlements matched to those models. If a model has installs but no license metric, reconciliation cannot count consumption for it — a frequent exam trap.

True-up is the corrective purchase that closes a shortfall surfaced by the ELP; the reconciled position is what you take into a vendor true-up or audit defense. Surplus positions feed cost-optimization (harvesting and not re-buying).

License metrics

A license metric defines how consumption is counted. You must recognize the major families:

• Per-device / per-installation — one right per installed copy or per machine.
• Named user — one right per uniquely identified user; usage and allocation to users drive the count.
• Concurrent user — rights consumed by simultaneous active users.
• Per-core — count physical (or virtual) cores on the host; requires accurate CPU/core data on the device CI.
• Core factor (Oracle) — physical cores multiplied by a core factor taken from the vendor's core factor table (processor-type-dependent), then rounded per vendor rules. Oracle Processor licensing for Database and options (Partitioning, RAC, etc.) uses this.
• IBM PVU (Processor Value Unit) — cores multiplied by a per-core PVU value from IBM's PVU table; total PVUs determine licenses. RVU (Resource Value Unit) is a related IBM metric.
• Sub-capacity — licensing only the virtual capacity actually allocated (e.g., vCPUs in a VM) rather than full host (full-capacity) capacity, subject to vendor eligibility and tooling rules. Accurate VM-to-host relationships are essential.

Per-core, core-factor, PVU, and sub-capacity all break if the host's core count, processor type, or virtualization topology is wrong — which is why this domain leans heavily on the host CI being accurate.

Remediation

When the ELP shows exposure or waste, remediation closes the gap: reclaim unused installs (uninstall/harvest where usage data shows software unused), reassign harvested rights, purchase additional entitlements (true-up) where reclamation is insufficient, or apply use rights you had not been crediting. Software usage data (last-used date, run frequency) is the primary evidence for reclamation candidates.

Exam traps (Domain 3)

• A software model with installs but no license metric cannot be counted — fix the model, not the entitlement.
• Allocation (to a user/device) is distinct from entitlement (what you own). Multi-select questions test the difference.
• Sub-capacity is not automatic; it requires correct virtualization data and vendor eligibility.
• True-up is a purchase action driven by the reconciled shortfall, not a recount.