BigFix app aims to cure software license bloat

Enterprise IT managers looking to cut costs could eliminate spending on existing software investments by taking an inventory and tracking usage across their environment.

“During economic downturns software vendors have added incentive to make up for lost revenue by auditing their customers,” said Patricia Adams, research director at Gartner, in a statement. “As a result, software customers need to be proactive about software license compliance. To do this, IT organizations need cost-effective means to gain visibility into installed software asset inventories. These tools should be used to actively manage software inventories and spending. Enterprises require up-to-date inventory counts, usage analyses, comprehensive software catalogs, license compliance measurements all supported by low-cost, easy-to-use tools to perform these functions.”

One such vendor, BigFix, recently took the wraps off an add-on application developed to track software license usage and ensure enterprise IT departments are getting what they pay for.

BigFix Decision Support System - Software Asset Management (DSS SAM) is a software application add-on that works with BigFix's unified management platform to discover and track software assets and license usage. The application could be put to work finding unused software licenses and helping enterprise IT departments cut costs without impacting business needs, BigFix says.

"The software allows our customers to leverage data from BigFix and correlate that with finance and accounting systems to uncover unused software, which could help IT departments recover costs or renegotiate vendor contracts," says Jeff Spitulnik, BigFix director of product management. "The information can also be used to maintain license compliance."

The Web application includes a data warehouse that is populated by existing BigFix agents distributed across the customer environment. DSS SAM uses a software identification catalog that includes some 100,000 signatures to identify assets in the environment. Agents deliver asset and inventory information back to the data warehouse, which enterprise IT managers can access to view reports and determine how to better manage software licenses.

DSS SAM is available in a bundle with the BigFix Systems Lifecycle Management pack, which includes patch management, power management, remote desktop for Windows, software distribution, software inventory, software usage monitoring, and asset discovery for $20 per desktop or mobile computing device, $52 per Windows Server, and $84 per Unix/Linux/Mac Server. DSS SAM is also available a la carte at $10 per endpoint and as an add-on to existing BigFix SLM or Asset Management customers for just $4 per endpoint.

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Denise Dubie is senior editor with Network World.