Most enterprise products today have a grace period when they enforce licensing (soft vs hard). So if a licensing server is unavailable it will start into a cou

Most enterprise products today have a grace period when they enforce licensing (soft vs hard). So if a licensing server is unavailable it will start into a countdown mode of days, weeks etc before the product changes it's state for this exact reason. On the flip side most licensing servers will alert when check-ins go offline for two, general, situations: operational product that become isolated (your example) or decommissioned environments. I don't know of any large scale products that don't approach it like this today simply because the vendor doesn't want to be responsible. I'm sure some smaller products might do this, that is until they lose a customer over one of those bad situations where a customer is trying to renew a contract and they get cut off before the PO clears the backend on the vendor side. But agreed, automated licensing does have it's fair share of pitfalls. Then again, it's like taxes. You should know, at any point in time, where you stand over the course of a year as it pertains to your over/under. The old school manual audits seem to be kept in place to keep the overages out of sight.