Reduce IT Costs Through Software Application Utilization
User interaction metrics identify savings opportunities via harvesting, freeware usage, and more.
Eracent Software Utilization
Eracent provides utilization monitoring and reporting for both software applications and hardware.
The Software Utilization function keeps management informed of what software is really being used by individuals, departments and entire business units.
Software Utilization data helps provide answers to questions such as:
What is being used? How long was an application open? What time of day is the application typically used?
How are applications being used? Are applications launched and left unused? What applications are actually active with interaction from the user?
What are the opportunities for savings? Is paying for a “true-up” the best choice to match licensing to actual use? Would a read-only version of the application meet the user’s needs?
How can asset management minimize risk? Are there any illegal applications that are being used from USB, Flash or CD-ROM drives? Is the complexity of the software on the network necessary or can security control be tightened without loss of user functionality? Are there inappropriate files like mp3 music on the hardware?
To answer these types of questions, Software Utilization collects and analyzes real-time hardware and software usage information for specific machines or groups of machines, regardless of their physical location and with minimal infrastructure.
End users typically have a number of different applications open on their workstations whether they are working with Windows, Macintosh or UNIX applications. With the level of accuracy and completeness available through the Software Utilization function, it is possible to review the application mix on a workstation or server and determine whether an application needs to be there.
Some of the detailed metrics provided include:
Usage data from other discovery tools can also be imported if it is enabled. For example, the Eracent Data Extractor (EDE) process for SCCM can import the usage data collected without deploying an Eracent agent. Note, however, that a smaller amount of usage data is collected by SCCM compared to the native Eracent usage monitoring process.
Automated License Reclamation and Harvesting
A Software Reclamation Savings dashboard details the status of your software reclamation process by publisher. You can define what level of usage is considered enough to warrant keeping the full license on a per application basis. Items reported in the dashboard include:
This data may be used as a basis for automatically harvesting under-utilized licenses using Eracent’s workflow processes.
