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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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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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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As most of our customers know, software usage analysis is a critical component of effective IT asset management, offering a means to analyze whether software investments are being fully utilized, ensure concurrently-licensed apps are being used within proper usage limits, and evaluate usage patterns of unauthorized applications within your environment.  This month, we’ll take a look at the “Software Usage Statistics” report, one of Express Software Manager’s most widely used reports, which provides valuable insight into application usage patterns within your organization. 

The Software Usage Statistics report, when filtered by license unit, helps you determine the percentage of any given application launched within a specifed time frame, as well as more granular details such as average amount of time used (or unused) per day.  These statistics provide clues as to which applications may be underutilized and represent opportunities for re-harvesting and/or renegotiating license agreements to better reflect actul usage.   In other situations, the report can be used to examine the prevalence of unauthorized, harmful, or “nuisance” applications within your organization.  To investigate further, you can click on any of the displayed license units to see usage patterns for each application on individual machines, and even sort that data based on usage to see which machines show the highest and/or lowest amount of activity.   

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One of the reports I suspect few people know about is the Activity Log.  It’s actually one of the oldest reports found within Express Software Manager, dating back to version 3.0, when it was still a pure software metering tool!  Little known to many of our customers, the Activity Log is a fantastic troubleshooting tool that can be used in any number of situations (some of which are described below). 

The Activity Log summarizes application usage based on license unit(s), machine(s), user(s) or server(s), with a level of detail that you won’t find in any other of Express Software Manager IT asset management reports.  This can be used to pinpoint applications being launched on specific machines or by specific users, as well as what remote devices and/or users are accessing applications on your Citrix or terminal server.  With usage data such as start and end time, idle time, and total time launched, you can zero in on all kinds of activities taking place on your network that are extremely useful from a troubleshooting standpoint. 

Here are some ways our customers have used the Activity Log report.

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