With the increase in virtualization and complexity of license models (discussed below), this multi-platform inventory automation is really the baseline for license optimization. Leaving any server out of the automated process may make it impossible to get a single, unified view of the current licensing environment and thus make optimization impossible.

License metrics in the data center are becoming increasingly complex. More publishers are moving to capacity-based licensing models, which make it difficult to calculate an accurate license position without automation. Organizations must be able to determine how many licenses are consumed based on the license model and the capacity characteristics of the installed machine (e.g. processors, cores and memory).

As a simple example, an organization must calculate processor-based license consumption based on the number of processors in each (physical or virtual) server to determine whether the appropriate number of licenses have been purchased and allocated in the optimal way.

Some examples of data center/server license models include: