As we turn our sights toward 2012, I wanted to take a brief moment to thank all our customers, both new and old, for their trust and loyalty. Those who’ve used our software for an extended period of time know we are deeply committed to listening to our customers and evolving our IT asset management offerings in ways that help make their jobs easier. We also take enormous pride in the quality of our customer service, both within the sales and technical support departments. Where else can you speak directly to a developer about a custom report you need or have more than a reasonably good chance of speaking to a live person when you run into technical issues?
While these are areas our customers experience on a day-to-day basis, I thought it would be fun to highlight a few other aspects of our corporate culture that you’re probably not aware of that will make you feel additionally good about doing business with Express Metrix!
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Topics: Updates
From time to time, customers ask whether we have an API to import data into Express Software Manager from their enterprise purchasing systems. Although it’s not something we promote directly on our web site (perhaps we should?), the answer is “yes.” Our API provides for two-way data flow; you can pull data either from Express Software Manager for integration into an external purchasing system, or vice versa. The API does not currently have connectors for specific purchasing systems, but with a little development expertise, you can have it up and running in no time.
If you’re interested in knowing more about our API, please contact your account representative.
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Tags: Express Software Manager, licence tracking, license reconciliation, purchasing API
Topics: Best Practices, Updates
One of the likely reasons you invested in Express Software Manager is because of its outstanding software recognition. We can all thank the Express Software Identification Database (ESID) for that. Under development for over a decade, the ESID is recognized throughout the industry as the most accurate and comprehensive database of commercial applications, enabling proper identification of software installed and used across corporate desktops and servers.
Despite the database’s completeness, there will likely be occasions that you find one or more unrecognized applications within your environment. If this is ever the case, be sure to use the machine scanning technology found within Express Software Manager to capture the information needed to add the application(s) to the ESID! It takes just a few minutes, and helps ensure there are no gaps in your IT asset reporting.
To contribute unrecognized apps to the ESID, simply follow the steps below:
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Tags: ESID, Express Software Manager, software identification, software recognition
Topics: Technical Tips
For those of you who may have noticed a lack of blog entries over the past month, we’ve been very busy working on some exciting product enhancements! Today we’re pleased to announce the official release of Express Software Manager for SCCM, a new asset management offering that enables IT staff to leverage their Microsoft SCCM implementations for more effective oversight of and management of their hardware and software investments.
In recent months, we’ve been hearing from a lot of prospective customers that they want to take advantage of inventory data stored in their SCCM database for their software license management efforts. This is often the situation at companies whose network teams don’t want to deploy another client and/or can’t secure authorization to invest in a dedicated asset management solution when certain data already exists within the SCCM that has the potential to be transformed into more useful IT asset reporting.
With Express Software Manager for SCCM, inventory data is imported from SCCM and processed using our own catalog of normalized application titles, allowing not only for superior software recognition, but also a distinctly license-centric view of the desktop and server environment. The resulting normalized software titles, along with hardware data collected by the SCCM client, can be enriched with an organization’s own purchasing data and reconciled with inventoried assets for the purpose of managing license compliance, IT budgeting and reporting, chargeback purposes, and other functions that contribute to better fiscal management.
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Topics: Industry News, Updates
Happy holidays to all! As we wrap up 2011, we have a final Report of the Month to highlight within Express Software Manager: Software Installation by Version. This report, while simple in conception, has a whole host of uses, from ensuring your users have successfully upgraded to the latest version of Application X to verifying the install path of your end users’ software.
The Software Installation by Version report, depicted in the screenshot below, shows which versions of any given application title are installed across your organization, along with the specific machines upon which those versions reside. The second screenshot zeroes in on Microsoft Office Professional 2007, revealing which of its components are installed on a particular user’s muchine, along with associated service packs.
Screenshot #1)
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Tags: Express Software Manager, Report of the Month, software inventory
Topics: Industry News, Technical Tips
Do you ever find yourself wishing for a dynamic view of what’s changing within your environment, versus an inventory snapshot representing a single point in time? One supremely useful report that satisfies this need is the “What’s Changed” report. Its purpose is to help you determine what has changed from a hardware and/or software perspective in your environment between two specified dates. From a hardware perspective, the “What’s Changed” report shows when hardware attributes such as RAM have changed. For software, the “What’s Changed” report shows machines on which applications have been installed and/or removed. As you can imagine, there are countless situations in which this information could be useful.
For example, let’s say you roll out 200 new computers to your sales department in November, and everything was working beautifully. But in January you begin fielding calls from the users saying their machines are running slowly. You look at the “What’s Changed” report and discover that nearly every sales rep has installed both iTunes and Plaxo on their new machines, causing performance issues.
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Tags: Report of the Month
Topics: Technical Tips, Updates
Jenny Schuchert, Content & Development Director, IAITAM
Every year around this time, asset management vendors like ourselves take to the blogs to share their opinions and takeaways from the IAITAM Annual Conference & Exhibition. This year, however, I was interested in hearing the insights of an insider at the organization that actually hosted the event. Specifically, I wondered how the conference has evolved over time in terms of attendee profiles, vendor participation, and topics of interest.
I reached out to Jenny Shuchert, Content & Development Director of the International Association of IT Asset Managers (IAITAM), and she was kind enough to share her observations about this year’s conference, as well as those of years past. Enjoy!
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Topics: Industry News, Updates
From time to time, we have the privilege of circling back with individual customers and hearing their inside stories about the strides they’ve made over the years through the use of our product. Last month, we were able to connect with Luke Fine, IT Coordinator at ACS Technologies, who has used Express Software Manager for over four years, and has since become one of the product’s strongest customer advocates.
Here’s a brief summary of his story:
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Tags: customer snapshot, Express Software Manager, IT Asset Management
Topics: Case Studies, Updates
We were so impressed by the response to our recent customer Haiku contest (held in honor of Customer Appreciation Month) that I felt compelled to publish an additional blog post featuring some of our other favorite Haikus, whose authors have been awarded honorable mentions.
If you don’t see your Haiku here, it’s not because we didn’t love it! It’s possible that it didn’t adhere to the strict definition of Haiku (3 lines comprised of 5-7-5 syllables), or we simply ran out of ideas for awards. Keep practicing, and next year you could be our big winner!
Winner of Kindle 3G Wi-Fi
Overall Best in Show: Steve Peretti, Chief Leschi Schools
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Topics: Updates
The start of October marks the end of Customer Appreciation Month here at Express Metrix. We dedicate every September to letting our customers know that we’re grateful for the opportunity to support them day after day and year after year with their IT asset management initiatives. Between the customer referrals, great product feedback, ESID machine scans, and occasional comic relief we receive from our end-users, we want you all to know how much we appreciate your continued business and loyalty.
In our last newsletter, we announced we’d have three challenges, the nature of which would be explained in three emails that would arrive over the course of three subsequent weeks. Each winner would receive a Kindle 3G Wi-Fi.
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Topics: Industry News
