Software Use Analysis Catalogue Customization

Welcome to the Software Use Analysis catalogue customization series part one. In this series we’ll demonstrate you how to customize your software catalogue using the IBM Endpoint Manager for Software Use Analysis.
Software Asset Management is one of the most important drivers to keep company costs under control and within budget. IBM Endpoint Manager for Software use analysis provides:

• near real time software inventory
• Near real time software usage
• Periodic release of updated software catalogue
• Easy customization of software catalogue

Let’s just focus on customizing the existing software catalogue. The  aim of customizing software catalogue is  discovering products that are installed in your infrastructure but are missing from the existing software catalogue or not reported.

What is software catalogue?

Today there is no standard way to universally determine installation of software, but software installation usually leaves fingerprints say files or registry entries.  SUA call these fingerprints “Software Signatures”.  Sua gathers evidence on the Endpoints like files and registry information through the execution of a scanner on the Endpoints. Scanned data is then sent to the SUA server. SUA compares the scanned data with existing software catalogue by performing that comparison SUA is able to produce software inventory report of the installed software.  If the software title isn’t in a catalogue then you have an option to customize the software catalogue and create your own signatures. You can perform this by simply go after the 5 key  steps.

Analyze the software

First you have to analyze the software and extend the software catalogue only with information that is related to products which are using your company but are not reported in the software catalogue. The administrator is the best source for gathering the information about the installed software, architecture and licensing model.

Examine the architecture

Investigate the product architecture to acquire a list of separately installed software which are important to discover for a licensing purposes, for each component find it’s :

• Version number
• Supported platform
• Licensing model

Seek Documentation

If the administrator is unable to provide the required information consult the available documentation in either in installation instructions, license agreement or online resources.

Review information about files

To indentify candidates for file signature, you can use several reports of SUA like:

• Package Data (contains information about packages that are installed)
• Scanned Files Data (contains information about files that are detected )
• Unrecognized Files (most commonly encountered files on your computer infrastructure but do not produces matches for any signatures)

Create Signatures

Obtain the best result by creating the signatures based on :

• Executable files
• Combine main executable files with package data
• Discover only one release
• Discover a particular release and its fix packs

I’ve got something interesting in the next release and I’ll demonstrate you to customize your software catalogue step by step.