Automate Your Software Asset Management

Do you have visibility into all the software installed or in use in your organization? Let’s face it, managing software is more like herding goats – that’s why most organizations dread it, though hiding from the issue solves nothing.  Lack of such visibility into the software supporting the growth of distributed IT environments in data centers and enterprise desktops can be a big problem. While organizations may have some visibility into their software licenses they must be able to match those licenses to a database depository to know what and when software is being delivered and the entitlement perspective on the install base.

With Nlyte’s Software Asset Manager in place, organizations gain full and accurate visibility into all aspects of their software licenses. With accurate software information organizations can then confidently make critical business decisions.

Here are the risks your organization faces if you lack this visibility.

Paying for Unused Licenses and Support

If you don’t know what software is being used and supported, you could be paying for thousands of applications while you’re only using hundreds.

Security of Unapproved Software

If you’re managing software in your organization, you’d better be sure no one is installing let’s say video games or even worse a Torrent on your server-class machines during after-hours exposing the company to risks. You wouldn’t be aware of this if your software installations were not chronicled in a data repository.

Audits

If organizations self-audit, then audit periods don’t have to turn into IT staff in “sweat mode” scrambling to find out what software is purchased and what has been installed. During audits you may have to re-establish relationships with your software publishers or service providers, to confirm installations. Remember that while you pay for the right to use software (licenses) you don’t own the software. If you’re non-compliant, your usage may be suspended, or your service disconnected. Remember when the city of Denver got hit with a $10 million fine from one software publisher and had to negotiate to $3 million – not to mention the publicity and humiliation?

Nlyte Software Asset Manager to the Rescue

Consider Software Asset Management as 80% process and 20% technology. The 80% software process will be a waste of time if the 20% technology is inaccurate.  This then helps your IT staff to better manage all your software assets from desktop to data center, UNIX to Linux – with full visibility into what you have installed across the board and who has access rights. It’s up to you to stay current on your hardware systems’ configurations--including additional or add-on systems. With no Software Asset Management in place however, you have no uniform license template to follow. And not all licenses are the same. Microsoft doesn't license the database the same way they license the Office Suite. SAP is no different - you can negotiate your own SAP license but must manually enter it into the system and do your own reconciliation.

Automation is key to understanding your user base, IT services, and software versions being delivered. And with full visibility you gain:

• Insights into regulatory environments like GDPR requirements. If your IT staff understands what you have, they can immediately link it back to usage.
• Cost reductions for not renewing unused licenses – or paying maintenance and support for items you’ve retired. You pay only for current usage.
• Confidence when negotiating with software vendors -- since you have full visibility into what you have installed and what is being used.
• Control over performing software version control to understand the entitlements, the changes over time and users of the applications – and furthermore application usage offers visibility from the user's perspective, so you know who has--or needs to have--the software licenses.
• Security -- so you avoid events like the Equifax scenario with Apache Strut.

Unique features of Nlyte Software Asset Manager

1. A proven scanning technology that is agentless and crawls through the network at a predetermined start and endpoint to discover software assets, regardless if they are physical or virtual assets.
2. Easy inventory for automatic processing of tables, demon servers and all other collected data for clear insight into all software assets. An automated process allows the technology to throttle-up and down and if standard protocols are disabled, our DeviceInspector® with an intelligent protocol, speaks directly to the hardware device or operating system making it protocol independent.
3. Full access to other parts of the IT infrastructure provides holistic business insights for the 80% process side of things that must be automated.
4. Full ERP, Order Management integrations to help find and reconcile purchase orders.
5. Access into HR systems for line-of-business reporting for security purposes.
6. Plain English archive searches that are intuitive and produce customized reports that empower intelligent business decisions.
7. Alerts that raise flags during scanning – and help the IT staff find a specific category or software publisher -- alerts and incident tickets generated help prevent risks.
8. Software measuring abilities that provide information on who's using which applications, how long the applications are being used, the software version and whether it lives in a file or a cloud service all the way down to the build number allowing organizations to retire software they’re not using.

For further details on how you can automate discovery, management, and reporting with Nlyte Software Optimizer agentless software, tune in to our recorded webinar.