As most of you are probably aware, with the 9.5 version of Express Software Manager we introduced a purchasing system and interface that allows for easy reconciliation of purchasing details with deployed hardware and software assets. One of the most basic and useful purchasing reports found within the product is the “License Unit Purchase History.” This report allows you to view both summary and detailed purchasing information for any given license unit group, manufacturer, or UPNSC category. Not only can you quickly determine how many licenses you’ve purchased for any given application, but you can also see how many purchase orders were executed, per unit (and summary) costs, and license type.

In the below example, grouped by manufacturer, you can drill in on the individual license unit to see, for any given order, the machines/users to which purchased items have been assigned. Additionally, this data can be exported to Excel for budgeting, planning, and executive reporting purposes. (more…)

Our featured Express Software Manager report this month is the “Suite Application” report.  At its highest level, this report helps you determine what components of suite products are actually being utilized, so you can ensure your software budget is being wisely spent.

Here’s a real-life example of how this information can be useful.  Let’s say that your company has 1000 employees, each of whom has a license for Microsoft Office 2007 Professional Plus.  The Professional Plus version of the 2007 Office suite is comprised of eight individual components.  We know that most people take advantage of Outlook, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.  But what about the other four components:  Access, Publisher, InfoPath, and Office Communicator?  (Based on what we hear from customers, a majority of most organization’s users don’t use any of these components – and come on, do you know anyone who uses Communicator?) 

Now, let’s assume that half of your users licensed for 2007 Professional Plus are not using Access, Publisher, InfoPath, and Communicator–meaning they could get by just fine with the Standard edition.  The delta between the MSRP of the Professional Plus and Standard editions of Office is around $100, which means you could save something to the tune of $50,000 by renegotiating your software contract.  Not a trivial amount when your boss is telling you there’s no budget for the Windows OS upgrade.

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When you think about reporting found within Express Software Manager, you probably think of IT asset inventory reports relating to hardware and software installations, application usage, and purchasing information. Did you know the Express Reports Console also contains reports that shows important administrative details about the machines you’re managing using Express Software Manager? For example:

• Which machines are using an Express Client license?
• Which machines don’t have the Express Client installed?
• Which machines are connected via terminal server?
• Which machines haven’t been inventoried recently?
• Which machines haven’t checked in recently?
• Which Express Clients haven’t been upgraded to the current version?

All these questions, and many more, can be answered using the “Express Client Status” report, found within “Administrative Tools” section of the reporting console.

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I wanted to notify existing customers that we’ve added some new topics to our webinar series.  These presentations are intended to help customers get the most out of their investment in Express Software Manager and take advantage of special features they may not be familiar with.  Below are the abstracts for our three most recent customer-centric webinar offerings. 

What’s New in Express Software Manager?
Friday, 8-Mar-2011, 10:00AM (PT), 1:00PM (ET)  — REGISTER NOW

In this live demonstration, we’ll discuss new feature enhancements made to our asset management software within the past year. The webinar will focus primarily on the Express Purchasing Module, a new IT purchasing system that transforms your ability to track and manage the countless details related to your hardware and software purchases.

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Have you ever wanted to collect data related to files that aren’t classified as traditional program files?  For example, let’s say you want to know how many MP3 files reside on a machine or group of machines, along with the disk space consumed by those files.  Well, you’re in luck… Information related to such “non-runnable” files can easily be collected by Express Software Manager.  All you need to do is configure additional file extensions in the Express Administrative Console.  To do this, simply go to:  Machines Menu > Client Options > Extensions. 

The “Non-Runnable Files” report can be grouped in three different ways:

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