What is Bring Your Own License?
At its core, bring your own license (BYOL) is a licensing model that lets companies use their licenses flexibly, whether on-premise, or in the cloud. A platform for BYOL license management may also have the capacity for detailed usage reporting on things like license validity and user base efficiency.
The key features of BYOL
- Greater flexibility: With true license mobility, businesses are able to migrate to and from services with ease – without having to worry about managing multiple licenses for the same product across multiple platforms and services.
- Reduction/Removal of Upfront Cost: When upscaling use of software, being able to share and migrate your license means saving huge costs upfront. Concurrent licenses across multiple services can increase expenses by a large margin; BYOL lets companies avoid that issue.
- Increased Freedom of Use: Within the license terms, businesses have much more flexibility over how they want to use a service.
- In-Depth Tracking and Reporting: Because everything is managed in the cloud, and copies of licenses are no longer needed, it’s much simpler to keep track of license validity and usage.
For example, when migrating to Azure, Microsoft has enabled users to bring their current Windows Server licenses into cloud servers managed in Azure. This feature follows additional capabilities already in place, like migration from a SQL Server or SharePoint.
Another major cloud provider, Amazon, doesn’t issue its own BYOL licenses, but is dealing with BYOL compatibility by providing a new way to use Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud instances, dedicating them to specific workloads. That means licensees can bring their software over to AWS without voiding their licenses.
Benefits of BYOL
The issue with many traditional software licenses is their restrictive policies. A license, often, is tied to a specific server or to a specific type of server (e.g. on-premise), so it can’t be re-used when deployments happen in the cloud without violating the licensing agreement.
BYOL licenses let users allocate their licenses more flexibly; e.g. on an actual physical server (the dedicated host) with containers or multiple virtual machines. The user can then target and reuse specific physical servers while staying within the confines of their existing software licenses.
Why Bring Your Own License is Important
BYOL lowers the cost and minimizes the risk often associated with transferring to a cloud service by utilizing existing licenses. The lack of one to one connections between licenses and hardware devices means a strong increase in dedicated resource availability, which helps businesses meet compliance requirements, and reduces cost.
Migrating subscriptions from on-premises to the cloud alongside their respective applications involves several steps and considerations. Here’s our integrated solution description outlining the process on Google Cloud:
- Assessment and Planning:
- Evaluate the current on-premises subscription model and associated applications.
- Identify the cloud provider and services suitable for the migration (e.g., Google Cloud).
- Assess compatibility of applications with cloud environments, considering factors like dependencies, data storage requirements, and performance.
- Subscription Migration Strategy:
- Determine the best approach for subscription migration, whether it’s a lift-and-shift, re-platforming, or re-architecting.
- Consider factors such as cost optimization, performance enhancement, and future scalability.
- Ensure compliance with licensing agreements and any regulatory requirements during the migration.
- Application Migration:
- Prepare applications for migration by addressing any compatibility issues and dependencies.
- Choose migration tools or services provided by the cloud provider to facilitate the process.
- Test the migrated applications in the cloud environment to ensure functionality and performance meet expectations.
- Data Migration:
- Develop a data migration strategy to transfer on-premises data to the cloud securely.
- Utilize data migration tools or services to minimize downtime and ensure data integrity.
- Implement data encryption and access controls to maintain security during transit and storage.
- Subscription Configuration:
- Set up the cloud subscription according to the migrated requirements, considering factors like resource allocation, billing, and access controls.
- Configure subscription settings to optimize performance, scalability, and cost-efficiency.
- Testing and Validation:
- Conduct comprehensive testing of the migrated subscriptions and applications to identify any issues or discrepancies.
- Perform performance testing to ensure the cloud environment meets or exceeds on-premises performance benchmarks.
- Validate data integrity and security measures to ensure compliance with regulatory standards.
- Training and Support:
- Provide training to users and administrators on how to operate and manage subscriptions and applications in the cloud environment.
- Establish support channels and documentation to address any post-migration issues or inquiries effectively.
- Monitoring and Optimization:
- Implement monitoring tools and processes to track the performance, availability, and cost of cloud subscriptions and applications.
- Continuously optimize resource utilization, scalability, and cost to maximize the benefits of the cloud migration over time.
- Documentation and Knowledge Sharing:
- Document the migration process, including strategies, configurations, and lessons learned, to facilitate future migrations or improvements.
- Share knowledge and insights gained from the migration with relevant stakeholders to promote understanding and collaboration.
By following these steps and considerations, our customers can successfully migrate their subscriptions from on-premises to the cloud while ensuring the seamless transition of their applications and data.