If you were to ask IT managers to list their favorite job duties, managing software licenses probably wouldn't be at the top of their lists. After all, most IT managers would much rather be applying technology to solve business problems than dealing with the administrative headaches of ensuring their organizations' license compliance. Unfortunately, the reality of today's business environment requires that you diligently walk the line between overpurchasing software and software piracy. If you can't reconcile your installed software with the licenses you own, you're either wasting scarce budget dollars or inviting costly fines should the Business Software Alliance (BSA) or the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) audit your organization. Thus, most IT managers toe the line, regardless of their lack of enthusiasm for that duty.
Traditionally, managing software licenses involves three tasks:
- assessing your organization's software needs
- collecting software-inventory data so that you know which software programs your
organization has purchased and on which machines those programs are installed
- tracking and controlling software usage
Although these tasks might seem simple, the devil is in the details—and the details have been multiplying since the first PC landed on a business desk. One detail is that managing software licenses typically is an interdepartmental endeavor that requires cooperation between the purchasing, accounting, and IT departments. As if keeping everyone from these departments on the same page weren't enough, software vendors continually change their licensing models (e.g., Microsoft's move to Licensing 6.0). Another detail is that few IT departments can claim absolute control over the entire desktop fleet. On the contrary, many IT managers would be hard-pressed to tell you with complete certainty what software is installed across their organizations, much less claim control over what software gets executed.
The good news is that the marketplace has responded to the need for tools to help manage licenses. The bad news is that numerous tools are available that have a wide range of features and functionality, and finding the tool that best suits your needs can be daunting. Although you might find a tool that fits your needs exactly, you might discover that you need more than one tool or a tool that can augment existing capabilities in your environment. The challenge is finding the right match without compromising functionality or blowing your budget.
Assessing Software Needs
Although assessing software needs is a logical step that most organizations take before making a software purchase, you need to analyze your organization's software usage to verify that your initial assessment is accurate. IT departments can waste a lot of money by making an assumption that their users need, for example, Microsoft Office XP Professional when, in reality, they need only Office XP Standard because few of them use Microsoft Access. Thus, passive software metering is an important aspect of software-license management.
Passive software metering lets you track application usage. Some metering solutions simply tally the number of times users access an application. More sophisticated metering solutions can discern the times that an application is actually being used versus idle time, such as when the application is minimized. One such solution is Vector Networks' PC-Duo Enterprise, a suite of desktop management modules that snap into Microsoft Management Console (MMC). One of the six modules, Software Metering 2.0, distinguishes between active and minimized applications.
Tally Systems also offers a passive software metering module—the Usage Module—for its asset-management application, TS.Census 2.1. By combining software metering with TS.Census's already robust inventory collection, you can get detailed information about software usage in your organization and hence make more informed software-purchasing decisions.
Other products that offer passive software-metering as part of their larger suite of management tools include ManageSoft's ManageSoft 6.5, Executive Software's Sitekeeper 2.0, and PowerQuest's (formerly Cognet's) Cognet Observer 4.1. Each product's software-metering capability is a component of a larger suite. For example, ManageSoft and Sitekeeper have strong application distribution and management capabilities along with inventory collection, whereas Cognet Observer more closely resembles TS.Census in functionality. Whether you need the additional functionality of these suites' accompanying tools depends on your organization's particular needs.
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