Chapter 1. What is simple content access?
Simple content access is a set of capabilities that enables a change in the way Red Hat manages its subscription and entitlement enforcement model. The older, classic model of attaching subscriptions can be error-prone and inconvenient for your operational workload requirements, while this newer model of content access and consumption results in fewer barriers to content deployment.
With simple content access, the enforcement model changes from a per-system requirement, where you must attach a subscription to a system before you can access content, to a per-organization requirement, where you can access content on a system without attaching a subscription to that system.
In its simplest form, simple content access provides unlimited access to any content for which you have at least one subscription.
Because of the added freedom and flexibility to consume content that simple content access provides, and in the absence of strict entitlement enforcement from the classic subscription model, it becomes important for you to keep track of how you are using your subscriptions. With the subscriptions service, Red Hat provides additional tooling to help you with tracking and compliance. The subscriptions service is a reporting solution that provides account-wide visibility of both subscription usage and utilization and aids in self-governance of your entire subscription profile.
When simple content access and the subscriptions service are used together, they enable a different and more flexible subscription experience. Overall, this experience removes or improves many of the time-consuming and complex business processes that are associated with the classic Red Hat entitlement-driven enforcement subscription model:
- Time-consuming processes that require multiple Red Hat tools and many steps for content to be accessed and used.
- Overly complex and sometimes highly manual processes that are needed to complete subscription reporting.
- Processes to resolve problems related to accessing content, under- and over-deployment, renewals, and so on, that resulted in significant business impact to Red Hat customers, including being blocked from content access.
You can choose to use neither, either, or both of these services. However, simple content access and the subscriptions service are designed as complementary services and function best when they are used in tandem. To learn more about the subscriptions service and how you can use it with simple content access, see the Getting Started with the Subscriptions Service guide.
