SOFTWARE LICENSING

Software Inventory is Critical to Improving Software Asset Management Capabilities

By Rachel Ramsey, TMCnet Web Editor

Applications no longer just help the business, they run the business. Yet most companies lack a strategic solution for software license optimization—the ongoing process of optimizing the management of software assets throughout the software lifecycle. Software License Optimization solutions such as Flexera Software's FlexNet Manager Suite for Enterprises represent the next generation software asset management solution required to meet today's business challenges. 

Flexera Software, a provider of strategic solutions for application usage management, also offers the FlexNet Manager Platform, which provides scalable hardware and software asset management across more than 14,000 publishers and 110,000 applications, providing insight into installed software and application usage while delivering purchased versus installed license reconciliation. The platform automates discovery and inventory of software and hardware assets in the enterprise across a wide range of platforms and also offers discovery and inventory of virtual servers.

In a recent blog post, Flexera explores software inventory as the foundation of software asset management. When increasing your level of SAM maturity, you begin to collect software inventory across your enterprise environment.

The amount of detail in these sources of IT asset inventory information is sufficient to meet the business need for which they were originally intended. For example, a configuration management database (CMDB) will contain hardware configuration information and may contain high-level information about software, such as the OS and primary application of servers.  But a CMDB will not generally contain true software inventory information. This gap means that CMDB data alone cannot provide sufficient detail to achieve true Level 1 SAM maturity; at best, CMDB data can provide an overview of deployed applications.

Image via Flexera Software

The lack of accurate software inventory means that the organization’s SAM maturity is built on a shaky foundation. A reliable way of collecting application evidence – installation evidence and, where required, registry data and file evidence – and correctly recognizing installed software, is critical to improving your SAM capabilities.

Your SAM maturity is only as good as your software inventory data, and if you are relying on inaccurate and/or incomplete inventory sources, you could, in turn, generate inaccurate or incomplete software license compliance results.  Use of a software inventory solution designed with the business requirements of software asset management and license optimization in mind can pave the way to an optimized, compliant state for your organization.