Tips for Effective Software Licensing Management Strategies

By Susan J. Campbell, TMCnet Contributing Editor

Despite the consistent focus on moving processes and applications to the cloud, the demand for solutions and software licensing is still strong. For the enterprise, a total management of all solutions is critical to ensure optimal performance and total network reliability.

As captured in this Flexera blog, software licensing management requires administrators to know what software is installed on which devices, the properties of the hardware on which the software is installed, if they are used from a local installation, or if they are a virtual application. Quality software licensing management requires an overview of the environment.

Most information about software is stored in the publishers’ packaging technology. But the recognition of software applications can also be assessed through software identification tags (called ISO 19770-2), which are contained in XML files added to the hard drive when installed. This approach is actually the most recently identified method for detecting licenses and has been the go-to method for most major publishers. In fact, it has been dubbed SAM – software asset management. 

It allows companies to prove that they are taking measures to ensure that their software licensing management protocol is in compliance with corporate governance requirements. It also takes steps that make sure there is a sufficient level of IT service management. For the most part, however, software licenses can be detected by looking at installation data on the hard drive.

The IT manager or administrator can also detect software licenses by scanning the installed files and looking specifically for the name of properties, like dlls, jar, and the keywords of the specific files that will bring the products up in a search.

The challenge in this method, however, is that if a piece of software is running on a shared drive, hard drive inventory won’t work. Looking at the list of applications running in the memory might turn up software licensing data, but only if the software can be located through port scanning. Effective software licensing management depends on more than software inventory alone for each device using it. And, user-based licenses require administrators to know which user is assigned to a device or use of the software.

Not every company will need to go out and buy new software licensing tools to inventory their data. If the accuracy of the current inventory tool is tested and found to be effective, then its inventory needs are likely already complete. But in some instances, the configuration management properties might require some tweaking to make sure the data they are collecting is valid/accurate.

Should a company need to invest in tools to track its inventory, many software licensing management tools have the capability to discover as well as inventory. This tool should aggregate data not from one resource, but from many, and give accurate position of software licenses for each and every product.