Whether their organizations manufacture aircraft or integrated circuits, EDA managers depend on software tools to design their products. In this environment, ensuring users have access to tools isn’t just a courtesy or convenience—it’s a business essential. At the same time, however, the rising costs of licensing EDA tools can strain software budgets. These conflicting demands create a significant challenge for EDA managers charged with delivering projects both on time and on budget.

Most managers try to strike a balance between keeping users productive and controlling costs. Relying on whatever local usage information they have available, they allocate current licenses and estimate the number and types of licenses they will need in the future. How well does this work? The truth is—not very. Why? Because EDA managers lack accurate information about their overall software usage patterns. Without a global view of their licensing operations and actual usage data to base decisions on, they frequently miscalculate their licensing needs. As a result, they can make costly errors such as:

Over-licensing. To ensure users have access to all the design tools they need, EDA managers may buy more licenses than their organizations really need. While this eliminates denial of service problems, it also increases software costs and lowers corporate profits.

Under-licensing. In an effort to contain software costs, EDA managers may purchase too few licenses, resulting in denial of service when users try to access software tools. Although this approach cuts up-front software expenses, it can also cause delays that increase overall project costs. In addition, products that arrive late to market can erode profitability.

Both over- and under-licensing. Sometimes a software tool is over-licensed by one department and under-licensed by another within the same organization. Sharing licenses would save costs and promote productivity, but most EDA managers have only a limited, local view of their software assets, making it difficult to identify—let alone resolve—these kinds of allocation issues.

So is keeping users productive while managing software costs simply too fine a line for EDA managers to walk? Not at all. The secret to avoiding these licensing errors is knowledge—about what licenses and applications your organization is using, which individuals are using them, and how frequently they are being used. What EDA managers essentially need, then, is a software asset management solution that provides comprehensive information about actual license usage.

The advantages of implementing software asset management in an EDA environment are potentially enormous. First of all, EDA managers have a global view of all their licenses and licensing servers, allowing them to track current usage patterns across the enterprise and determine the optimal deployment of licenses. Equally important, software asset management gives EDA managers insight into how many and what type of licenses they will need for future projects. Instead of purchasing and renewing licenses based on best estimates, they can now base those decisions on accurate usage data derived from similar projects.

But what steps are involved in realizing these and other advantages from a software asset management solution? In a dynamic EDA environment, busy managers don’t have time to implement and maintain “solutions” that are as complicated as the problems they were designed to solve. Fortunately, implementing effective software asset management takes just four basic steps:

1. Centralize your licensing operations. Centralization allows you to inventory current software assets to see (a) which licenses are available and (b) when they will expire. Gaining an enterprise-wide view also lets you re-deploy underutilized licenses and share licenses between departments. This eliminates unnecessary purchases while boosting user productivity throughout the organization.

2. Collect usage statistics from licensing operations. Although some EDA managers may not realize it, many licensing-enabled software tools can provide invaluable usage statistics—including who is accessing the software, which features are being used, and which machine the software is running on. A software asset management solution that leverages this otherwise latent information allows you to take full advantage of the licensing capabilities already embedded in your software tools.

3. Analyze usage results. Instead of estimating your future software needs, you can run usage over time and usage summary reports to determine your actual needs based on tangible, historical evidence. The data in these reports can also be segmented by project or user group to help you determine future needs for similar projects or groups. Usage reports let you see where your organization is over- or under-licensed, allowing you to:

• Find opportunities to share licenses instead of purchasing additional ones
• Ascertain the correct number of licenses to renew or purchase
• Account for licenses on a department or project basis—particularly important when licenses are shared and some usage must be billed back to other departments or projects

4. Automate your licensing operations. Why reinvent the wheel by collecting data and generating reports manually each time you need to make a licensing decision? Why fill out time-consuming spreadsheets to calculate bill-back charges every month? Licensing decisions aren’t a one-time event—EDA managers must constantly reevaluate their usage patterns and reassess their licensing needs. Once you’ve determined what statistics and reports you need to make informed business decisions, automate your operations so that this information is updated regularly and always available.

Knowledge is power. For EDA managers, knowledge about licensing operations provides the power to optimize the value of software assets through better license allocation and better purchasing decisions. Software asset management opens the door to that knowledge by offering a global view of the licensing environment, as well historical usage data over time. Armed with this information, you can now find new opportunities to share licenses, re-deploy underutilized licenses, eliminate unnecessary software purchases, and prevent denial of service delays.

With software asset management, you can finally strike the right balance between keeping users productive while keeping software costs controlled. And what does that ultimately mean to you? It means projects delivered on time and on budget—exactly what every EDA manager wants to hear.

Jim Griffin is a senior product manager at Macrovision responsible for the business strategy and product directions for the company’s Software Asset Management solutions. He can be reached by email at jgriffin@macrovision.com.