Autodesk's license models are complex and confusing

Gartner’s report, Software Vendor Auditing Trends: What to Watch for and How to Respond (May 23, 2012) contains this snippet about Autodesk network licenses:

Autodesk: “…Autodesk's license models are complex and confusing, particularly the way in which subscription entitlements and prior version rights work… Autodesk products are notoriously difficult to audit and many clients find that their incumbent tools are unable provide the necessary information to demonstrate compliance with negotiated license terms and conditions…” – ref

Cascade Licensing for Autodesk Products explained shows some of this complexity.

Cascading Sequences for Autodesk 2013 Products let you know in what order cascade licensing checks for available licenses in Autodesk 2013 products and here are the Autodesk FlexNet Feature Codes with descriptions that are useful to understand Package licenses and prior version support as well as Prior version support and license usage of Autodesk Suite products.

Many have found JTB World’s JTB FlexReport useful to monitor and audit their Autodesk license usage. There are many different reports that can be generated in chart or list form. There is still room for improvements though. JTB FlexReport supports email notifications when licenses are denied but when cascading is used there will often be denials when the license cascade from one feature to another. Another problem with the cascading is that there is no way from the license server logs to see what actual Autodesk product was started by the user, hopefully Autodesk can do something about this in the future. If it is of interest to know that information we have JTB Process Monitor that will be able to tell if it was AutoCAD or Revit or whatever product being used and how much.