Contract Management overview
In the Mid Tier interface, by using contract management, you can track contract information and contract lifecycle.
Contract administrators can create contracts in conjunction with the suppliers to acquire new CIs. You can create non-software or software contracts and relate them to the CIs. You can also create stand-alone contracts or contracts that are related to CIs. In BMC Helix ITSM, you can create contracts for lease, warranty, support, maintenance, and software maintenance. BMC Service Level Management monitors if there is a breach of these contracts.
You can watch the following video for overview of contract management:
The following table describes the contract types that BMC Helix ITSM provides:
Contract type | Description |
|---|---|
Lease | Contains details associated with leasing equipment. For example, if you lease several servers from a company, you might have a master lease contract that shows the general terms and conditions, and you can have subcontracts for each server. |
Maintenance | Provides a routine maintenance contract with a vendor. For example, when you purchase a network printer, it might come with a maintenance contract. Or, you might decide to purchase an additional or extended maintenance contract. |
Master Contract | A comprehensive contract with a company for which you have additional related contracts. The related contracts can include software licenses, support contracts, and any other type of contracts. |
Other | Your administrator can create additional contract types, such as a statement of work contract. To create additional contracts, see Creating-contract-types. |
Software License | Tracks compliance and use of the license. For information, see Managing-software-licenses. |
Support | Tracks contracts you might buy for the support of a product. For example, if you buy a scanner, a support contract provides you access to customer support for any problems or questions you have about the scanner. |
Warranty | Provides you a guarantee of the equipment against mechanical imperfections and defects. For example, if you buy a scanner, a warranty contract replaces any defective parts for the scanner, for a defined period. When you buy a piece of equipment, it might come with a warranty contract. You might buy an additional or extended warranty for the equipment. |
Software contracts
Software contracts serve as a high-level contract with the vendor for a product or a set of products. After the software contract is purchsed, it is tracked in BMC Helix ITSM. You create records of the software contracts in BMC Helix ITSM.
The following figure shows a software contract from the supplier (vendor) EZnet for Microsoft products:
Software license certificates
Individual purchases of licenses are tracked by license certificates. These license certificates are related to a software contract. A license certificate can be part of only one software contract.
In BMC Helix ITSM, you can track multiple products with different versions and their license certificates.
The following figure shows products with manufacturer Microsoft Corporation and Product name Microsoft Visio. Because there is no version defined, it covers all the versions of Microsoft Visio products.
Certificate groups
If you have multiple software licenses with different expiry dates for a software product, you can group all the license certificates to consolidate the tracking of the license certificates. A master certificate is grouped with individual child license certificates. The CIs are attached to the master certificates. However, license allocation numbers are attached to the child license certificates.
When you group license certificates, the following updates are made to the child certificate and the master certificate:
- The connection details from the master license certificate apply. For example, if you group two site licenses, the site specified on the license certificate that you select as the master certificate is used by the license engine when connecting CIs to the certificate. If you group license certificates for two different sites, such as New York and Boston, this can have unintended results.
- If you group license certificates that calculate the cost per asset, but the certificates have different costs per asset, you must update the cost on the master certificate.
Master certificate
Typically, as incremental purchases of licenses are done over a period of time, each product can have multiple certificates. Because managing multiple certificates can be cumbersome, BMC Helix ITSM helps you to group these certificates into logical groups. This grouping of certificates provides a roll up view of the licenses of a product that are in use and available. Instead of managing multiple certificates, the multiple license certificates can be grouped together. This is termed as Grouping of certificates and is essential as it allows a roll up view of the licenses of product that are in use and that are available. This also helps with the maintainability of the certificates and the products.
The following figure shows a sample Master certificate that groups multiple license certificates:
Sequencing of child certificates
A master certificate consists of multiple children certificates and each child certificate consists of multiple licenses. You can sequence the child certificates in a specific order. After the licenses from one child certificate are used, the next certificate in the sequence is used. If the number of deployments exceeds the number of purchased licenses, the certificate that is last in the sequence for a product is marked out of compliance.
Product categorization
If multiple certificates of the same product are not grouped, the SWLM engine flags them as exceptions. An asset manager needs to set up a certificate with the right License Model based on the terms of contract.
You can use the Related Product Categorizations feature to relate the various products that the certificate covers. The certificate covers multiple versions of a product. For example, Allen Allbrook in Calbro Services has a certificate for Visio that covers all the versions numbers of Visio. Allen adds a product categorization with Manufacturer = Microsoft Corporation and Product Name = Visio, and leaves the version and other categorization tiers blank.
To set up related product categorization, the products must exist in the Product Dictionary and must have the Requires Contract option set to Yes. A license certificate can be defined only for products that require a contract and that are in the Product Dictionary. For more information about Product Dictionary, see Managing the Product Catalog.
The following figure shows multiple versions of Visio in Product Catalog Console:
When licenses are to be shared within a certain organization structure, certificate grouping should be created at the organization level. The jobs created for these instances should also be created at the organization level and the CIs should be set up with the organization attributes. Only the Master certificate relevant to the organization is found by the engine and appropriate CIs belonging to the organization are connected.