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R Normalized Software Inventory DataThe Foundation for Software Asset Management, IT Service Management, and Security

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Execut ive SummaryImagine running a package delivery business without clear visibility into your vehicle fleet. How many vehicles do you have? Where are they located? What are their configurat ions, capacit ies and maintenance requirements? What is the status of their vehicle registrat ions? Without detailed data, you cannot manage them efficient ly. For example, you may inadvertent ly use high-capacity trucks to deliver small loads, which would drive up your costs. Or, because you do not have visibility into vehicle registrat ions status, you may have vehicles with expired registrat ions, raising the risk of fines and late payment penalt ies.

IT departments often find themselves in a similar situat ion. In much the same way as a package delivery business delivers products, IT delivers services to the enterprise. To make those deliveries, IT uses hardware assets such as desktops, laptops and servers, and software assets ranging from operat ing systems and virtualizat ion software to enterprise applicat ions and databases.

Reliable IT service delivery is crit ical to success for most businesses today. Yet many IT organizations struggle to manage IT assets effect ively because they do not have a clear picture of the assets they have deployed. Consequent ly, they may overpay business personal property taxes due to inaccurate hardware asset data, carry mult iple software products that provide the same funct ionality and pay maintenance on shelfware—that is, software that is not being used. Lack of visibility also increases risk. The IT staff may not be able to detect unauthorized software in the IT environment, creat ing an exposure to serious security

breaches. Moreover, hardware that contains proprietary data may have disappeared without the knowledge of the IT staff.

Flexera Software® helps IT organizations tackle the asset management challenge with FlexNet Normalized Inventory for Clients and FlexNet Normalized Inventory for Servers. These solut ions provide a comprehensive, detailed and normalized view of hardware and software assets across the enterprise—a single source of truth for inventory data. With this data, you can enhance business processes, not only within IT but also in other departments such as finance and security. As a result, you can drive down costs, increase IT staff product ivity and reduce security risk.

This paper discusses the need for effect ive IT asset management, how FlexNet Normalized Inventory solut ions help IT organizations meet the need, and the result ing business benefits. The paper focuses on software assets because they are more difficult to manage than hardware assets, and they have a significant impact on cost and risk.

Enhancing Business Processes with Normalized Inventory DataIT spend is typically two to four percent of revenue, and software spend typically accounts for 20 to 30 percent of that amount. To manage software assets effect ively and keep these costs in check as well as to minimize risk, IT needs clear and comprehensive visibility into these assets:

• What desktops, laptops and servers are deployed? Where are they located and who owns them—individual user, datacenter, business unit or cost center?

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• What virtual machines are deployed and on which physical hosts?

• What software assets are deployed and where, including precise quantit ies, versions and edit ions?

• Who uses the software and what is the frequency of usage?

• Is unauthorized software installed?

• Do we have mult iple software t it les with the same funct ionality?

Many IT organizations keep track of asset inventory manually—often using spreadsheets. Manual tracking has serious shortcomings:

• Tracking and updating inventory in spreadsheets consumes valuable staff t ime.

• The data may be inaccurate and incomplete and, with the rapid rate of change typical in most IT environments today, the data quickly becomes obsolete.

• Raw inventory data contains reams of file, package and registry evidence that must be analyzed to determine what software is actually installed, and the data is not normalized, making it difficult to extract meaningful information.

• Unauthorized software may escape detect ion, which could introduce security risks.

• Report ing is cumbersome and requires much manual effort.

FlexNet Normalized Inventory for Clients and FlexNet Normalized Inventory for Servers provide the answer. These solut ions not only automatically discover all hardware and software assets across mult iple client and server platforms, but also process the raw discovery data to provide a normalized list of installed software per device using industry-standard naming conventions. The solut ions maintain the normalized data in the FlexNet Normalized Inventory repository.

In addit ion, FlexNet Normalized Inventory for Clients and FlexNet Normalized Inventory for Servers integrate out-of-the-box with third-party enterprise solut ions to either collect other data or to populate the normalized software data into the third-party solut ions. Integrat ions include:

• �Configuration�Management�Databases (CMDBs) from companies such as BMC Software and ServiceNow®. The Flexera Software solut ions populate the CMDB with a normalized list of software t it les for each desktop, laptop and server device.

• Microsoft® Act ive Directory® and third-party human resources systems. This integrat ion allows the Flexera Software tools to access user and organizational data and associate assets with people and enterprise groups.

With the automation, data and integrat ion provided by the Flexera Software solut ions, organizations can enhance many IT processes such as software asset management (SAM), IT service management and security processes. The benefits include:

• Increased product ivity—by automating the discovery, inventory, software recognit ion and normalizat ion process, the solut ions eliminate much manual effort in tracking assets, increasing the product ivity of the IT staff.

• Lower costs—the normalized inventory data enables software asset managers to drive down costs by ident ifying and eliminating unused software, rat ionalizing and consolidat ing the software port folio and ident ifying opportunit ies for better volume discounts.

• Reduced risk—the normalized inventory data permits IT to ident ify and eliminate unauthorized software, reducing security risk.

• Improved IT service management—IT can leverage the normalized data to enhance incident, problem, change and other service management processes.

In addit ion, IT can share the normalized inventory data with other business groups within the enterprise, such as Finance and Procurement, to enhance their business processes. In this way, IT can align more closely with the business.

Realizing the ValueOnce you have built the normalized list of installed software, you can leverage it in many ways to gain insight into and control of your software estate. The following sect ions describe use cases that illustrate how normalized inventory can help you tackle software asset management, IT service management and security challenges.

Eliminate Unused Applicat ionsDuring the inventory collect ion process, applicat ion usage data may also be collected. This is part icularly true for desktop applicat ions. As Figure 1 illustrates, you can leverage the applicat ion usage data to ident ify and remove software that is no longer being used. As a result, you may be able to reduce software maintenance or subscript ion costs. For example, a Flexera Software customer found that about one third of its Microsoft Visio® licenses were unused. With this information, the company was able to reduce annual subscript ion costs by about $80,000.

Eliminate Unauthorized Applicat ionsIt’s crit ical that organizations ident ify and remove unauthorized applicat ions to eliminate a major source of security risk. Freeware, games and other unauthorized applicat ions may have software vulnerabilit ies that can be exploited by hackers.

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Normalized inventory tools can help by allowing IT to create software whitelists (authorized) and blacklists (unauthorized) as defined by company policy. Then, the normalized inventory data can be analyzed to show where unauthorized software is present in your environment. Figure 2 shows a dashboard that provides insight into authorized and unauthorized software in the IT environment. Once the IT staff has ident ified unauthorized software, it can take steps to remove it.

In addit ion, organizations can implement an enterprise app store, such as App Portal from Flexera Software, to permit users to easily request and receive authorized software (and only authorized software). The app store catalog contains the corporate-defined set of standard software t it les to be used by the business. An automated, self-service request, approval and delivery process makes it less likely that users will go around IT to get software by other means. An app store makes it easy for users to get the applicat ions they need to do their jobs, including Software as a Service (SaaS) applicat ions such as Salesforce.com®, Box and Microsoft Office 365®.

Rationalize and Consolidate the Software EstateFigure 3 shows the software categorizat ion view that presents software categorized by funct ion. This view enables IT to rat ionalize and consolidate the software port folio. The IT staff can ident ify and remove redundant applicat ions (mult iple products with the same funct ionality) and obsolete applicat ions (old unsupported versions). IT can then standardize on specific products and versions within each category to consolidate vendors and applicat ions. Those corporate standard applicat ions, versions and edit ions would be the ones listed in the enterprise app store catalog and/or the IT service management service catalog. (Note that, App Broker for ServiceNow makes the app store software catalog available to the ServiceNow Service Catalog.)

Software rat ionalizat ion and consolidat ion enables IT to reduce internal support costs by decreasing the number of applicat ions to patch, upgrade and maintain. It also allows the IT procurement team to reduce acquisit ion costs through higher volume discounts and improved negotiat ing leverage with a smaller set of vendors. In addit ion, it reduces security risks because fewer applicat ions mean fewer potent ial software vulnerabilit ies in the IT environment.

Enhance IT Service Management ProcessesAs Figure 4 shows, the Flexera Software solut ions augment CMDB data with normalized software inventory data, providing richer asset data that enhances ITSM processes. For example, a service desk technician can gain detailed visibility into an individual user’s hardware and software, permitt ing faster resolut ion of issues submitted to the service desk.

Figure 2: Ident ify unauthorized applicat ions

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Ident ify Users withUnused Software

Report DetailingReclaim Candidates

Figure 1: Ident ify unused applicat ions

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Be Prepared for Merger and Acquisit ion Act ivit iesMergers and Acquisit ions (M&A) can present many business challenges, especially when taking into account extensive software and hardware inventories across the separate business ent it ies. Part of the M&A due diligence process is to create a software port folio strategy based on a comprehensive software and hardware inventory. Here is how a comprehensive inventory can help during a merger or acquisit ion:

• Transparency of the actual software inventory of the M&A target

• Ability to rat ionalize redundant and obsolete applicat ions out of the environment after acquisit ion

• Visibility to new assets and potent ial liabilit ies after the merger

• Prepare for a software audit

Software audits may represent the most important reason to collect and normalize IT asset inventory data. Mergers can create enormous disrupt ion throughout an organization. There are business processes to rat ionalize, employees to transfer, real estate to manage, product inventories to value

and systems to integrate. Due to the complex nature of M&A act ivit ies, IT assets are often ignored or not given enough emphasis during the process. And because many software licenses contain specific language relat ing to mergers, M&A act ivity is often a primary trigger for software audits.

A Success Path to Software License OptimizationTo get IT costs under control, you must effect ively manage your software assets. As Figure 5 illustrates, organizations typically move up in software asset management maturity through four levels, culminating in software license optimization.

With FlexNet Normalized Inventory for Clients and FlexNet Normalized Inventory for Servers, you have the ability to achieve Levels 1 and 2. These two products are part of a broader Flexera Software License Optimization offering, FlexNet Manager Suite for Enterprises, which supports organizations all the way through Level 3 and Level 4.

FlexNet Normalized Inventory solut ions provide the foundation for a mature Software Asset Management program that can take your organization to the Optimization level—all without changing the underlying technology. As you move up in asset management maturity, you increase your return on investment on the solut ions from Flexera Software, adding business value every step of the way.

A Closer Look at FlexNet Normalized Inventory Solut ionsFlexNet Normalized Inventory for Clients and FlexNet Normalized Inventory for Servers have important capabilit ies that provide the foundation for software asset management, IT service management and security.

Figure 3: Categorize by software funct ion

INCIDENT CHANGE

EnterpriseData

Normalized Software Titles per Device

PROBLEM REQUEST

CMDB

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Figure 4: Populate the CMDB with normalized software data

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DiscoveryUsing both agent-based and agent less technologies, the solut ions automatically discover the assets deployed across the enterprise, tracking where they are located and who owns them. FlexNet Normalized Inventory for Clients discovers desktop and laptop hardware and software. FlexNet Normalized Inventory for Servers discovers physical and virtual servers and the enterprise software running on them. The solut ions can also import data from other discovery tools from such vendors as Microsoft, BMC Software, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and IBM®.

The hardware data tracked in the asset management database includes details such as serial number, asset tag, manufacturer, model, IP address, MAC Address, number of processors, processor type, number of cores, RAM, disk size, chassis type, number of hard disks, network cards, display adapters and parent/child relat ionships among hosts and other devices.

The solut ions also track software usage. In addit ion to capturing the init ial discovery date and the date of last use, the solut ions can access other usage data through out-of-the-box integrat ion with other inventory tools. For example, through integrat ion with Microsoft System Center Configurat ion Manager (SCCM), the solut ions can track, for each device, each t ime a part icular applicat ion is launched and when it is closed. This information is processed and summarized to provide usage data per applicat ion per device.

Normalizat ionAs Figure 6 illustrates, the solut ions scrub the raw software inventory data using the extensive Applicat ion Recognit ion Library from Flexera Software, which includes more than 192,000 software t it les from 16,000 publishers across mult iple plat forms including Microsoft® Windows®, Linux® (including Ubuntu), UNIX® and MAC OS X®. The result is

a comprehensive, consistent, and accurate normalized list of applicat ions per device. The software asset information includes publisher, t it le, version and edit ion.

The software ident ificat ion process supports the ISO 19770-2 software tagging standard and also supports custom applicat ions. The normalizat ion process filters out such items as hot fixes, patches, security updates and extraneous .exes for software asset management purposes. However, the solut ions maintain this information and make it available for software vulnerability management use.

Normalizat ion consolidates the data to facilitate analysis and report ing. For example, Microsoft Corp, Microsoft Corporat ion, Microsoft France, Microsoft Internat ional, Microsoft, Microsoft Research, Microsoft® Corp and Microsoft Corp Software all refer to the same vendor—Microsoft. The normalizat ion process consolidates all these entries under that single vendor name.

Normalizat ion also categorizes software using the United Nations Standard Products and Services Code (UNSPSC). Categorizat ion enables software rat ionalizat ion, that is, the ident ificat ion of redundant and unneeded applicat ions.

In addit ion, normalizat ion classifies software as commercial, freeware and other classificat ions, allowing the organization to take a closer look at certain classes of software, such as freeware, for security and other purposes.

Dashboards�and�Report ingThe solut ions include flexible management dashboards and report ing capabilit ies. The dashboard capability provides extensive visibility into the IT environment through a variety of views, including an organizational view that shows cost center, department, locat ion and other organizational information, and user/machine level views. You can drill down into the views to see more detailed information about

Figure 5: Four levels of software asset management maturity

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software and hardware inventory, as shown in Figures 7 and 8. Dashboards and reports enable IT to communicate inventory information both within IT and externally to other groups in the organization.

Desktop & DatacenterInventory

Recognit ion & Normalizat ion Process

• Files• Packages• Registry Data• ISO tags Applicat ion

Recognit ion Library

Reports

Asset Reports

List ofInstalledApplicat ions

Figure 6: Software recognit ion and data normalizat ion

Figure 7: Software Inventory

Figure 8: Hardware Inventory

ConclusionGaining insight into and control of your IT assets, especially your software assets, is essent ial to success in today’s technology-driven business environment. With FlexNet Normalized Inventory for Clients and FlexNet Normalized Inventory for Servers from Flexera Software, you can gain clear and comprehensive visibility into those assets across the enterprise. As a result, you can manage them more effect ively to drive down costs, increase product ivity and reduce risk. Moreover, you’ll posit ion your organization on a successful path to software license optimization.

About�Flexera�Software�Flexera Software helps applicat ion producers and enterprises manage applicat ion usage and increase the value they derive from their software. Our next-generat ion software licensing, compliance, security and installat ion solut ions are essent ial to ensure cont inuous licensing compliance, optimize software investments and future-proof businesses against the risks and costs of constant ly changing technology. Over 80,000 customers turn to Flexera Software as a trusted and neutral source for the knowledge and expert ise we have gained as the marketplace leader for over 25 years and for the automation and intelligence designed into our products. For more information, please go to: www.flexerasoftware.com

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