This documentation supports the 21.3 version of BMC Helix ITSM: Asset Management. To view an earlier version, select the version from the Product version menu.

Monitoring software usage

This use case describes how to monitor software usage.

Scenario

Calbro has set up the software contract and software license management process for Microsoft Corporation and Adobe System applications being used across the organization. Now, Calbro wants to monitor the software usage of these products.

Calbro notices that currently, though the Adobe Acrobat version 7 certificate is in compliance, it is approaching out of compliance status. Instead of buying new licenses, they want to locate users who are not using the software, so that they can uninstall the software from their systems and their licenses can be reused.

Workflow

The following table describes the typical actions that are performed to monitor software usage:

Console

User

Action

Reference

Software Asset Management (SAM) console

Contract user

Open the AST:ConfigUsageProvider form, where you can set up the provider for usage.
BCAC is the namespace for the BBCA discovery and BCAC_Software_Usage is the federated class.

Software Asset Management (SAM) console

Contract user

  • View the usage of the Adobe Acrobat 7 certificate.
  • Analyze the data by using various predefined queries available from the navigation bar.
  • The product has not been used in the last 180 days.

Incident Management console

Incident users

Create a ticket to uninstall Adobe Acrobat from the machines on which it is not used.


Manage License Jobs console

Contract manager

Re-run the license job.

Software Asset Management (SAM) console

Contract Admin

Re-run the license job for Adobe.

Result

Re-running the license job shows two extra licenses. 

Benefit

Monitoring the software usage helps you to optimally manage the existing resources of the organization.

 

Tip: For faster searching, add an asterisk to the end of your partial query. Example: cert*