Introducing Application Management
Application Management provides administrators with visibility on installed applications and link the applications to the business cycle. It allows for the correlation of software inventory data between purchased / licensed software to installed software and used software.
The application management nodes provide different approaches to monitor the applications installed on the remote clients in the network:
- It allows for the monitoring of applications to ensure acceptable performance on the remote clients.
- It allows administrators to monitor which applications are used and to stop the execution of unauthorized software.
- It provides the possibility to define ways of self-healing for the installed applications.
- It allows administrators to match the installed and used application base to the purchased licenses.
Components
Application management is composed of the following components:
Parameter | Description |
|---|---|
Software Inventory | The software inventory collected by the Client Management - agent is the basis for most of the application management operations. It provides the list from which the applications to be managed are chosen. |
Custom Applications | The Custom Applications view is a container for all applications which are to be managed on the devices of your infrastructure, that is to say they are to be either monitored for performance, restricted in their execution, defined for selfhealing or monitored for license surveillance. These applications can be listed directly under the node or be sorted in folders for easier classification. |
Software Catalog | The software catalog collects all software and applications that are part of license units. |
Application List | An application list is a collection of one or more applications that are managed in a certain way, which is defined by the application type. |
Application Type | The application types are the three different types of application lists, identified and named after their function: monitored, prohibited and protected applications. |
Schedule Template | Applications can either be prohibited from use at all times in which situation the prohibited application can directly be assigned to the targets without further limitation. However, it is also possible to deny the use of application only at specific times and allow the users to launch these, for example for their private use at lunchtime or after regular working hours. The same is true for monitored applications, protected applications, however, are protected all the time and cannot be assigned to a schedule. Schedule templates are a sort of a timetable of time-slots in which the application usage can be denied or allowed or monitored. |
Application wizard | CM also provides a wizard which guides you through the different stages of creating and managing your managed applications. |
Licensed Software | A licensed software collects all applications that are subject to a specific license. This might just be one single application, it might be a group of applications, such as MS Word, MS Excel, etc, which are part of the Microsoft Office Suite, or it might be all different flavors of an operating systems such as Windows 7. After the licensed software is defined it can be assigned to individual devices or device groups for license evaluation. This evaluation verifies, if the assigned devices are in compliance with the license specifications, that is, if the application is only installed on those devices it is supposed to. |
Application Management licenses
Application Management is part of the BMC Client Management - External Integration license and does not require a license of its own. However, CM provides two optional license that can enhance the Application Management functionality:
- Software Catalog
This license activates the software catalog. The software catalog collects all software and applications that are part of license units. - Software Catalog Updates
This license provides regular updates for the software catalog to ensure that it contains always the most up-to-date information.
Application Management capabilities and access rights
To be able to work with applications and software licenses and their monitoring, an administrator needs specific capabilities and access rights for the different objects.
Application Management
- Application Management top node: Managed Application - View .
- The capability Managed Application - Manage is required to create and manage custom applications as well as to access and manage the contents of the software catalog.
Schedule Template
- To create, modify, delete and assign schedule templates: capability Schedule Template - Manage as well as Write access rights.
Application List
- To create, modify and delete application lists: capability Application List - Manage as well as Write access rights.
- To assign application lists: capability Application List - Assign as well as Assign access rights.
Licensed Software
- To create, modify and delete software license units: capability Licensed Software - Manage as well as Write access rights.
- To assign software license units: capability Licensed Software - Assign as well as Assign access rights.
- To configure the Software License Management : capability Licensed Software - Configure as well as Write access rights.
Devices
- To be able to view and assign the target devices for application and license monitoring the capabilities Device and Device Group - View and Read access rights are required.
- To view the inventories of the target devices the Inventory - View and Read access rights are required.
For more information about application management see the BMC Client Management - Application Management manual on the PDFs page.