Tracking use with a software license management server

A simple approach to software license management is find a utility to handle it for you. Trying to keep an accurate, up to the minute count of installed applications is nearly impossible without a system in place to do the work for you. If there is a software license management in place that is keeping an eye on all the computers on your network, you can capture software counts at any time on any machine through a forced audit. Otherwise, audits take place at a preset interval scanning the registry of computers and exporting that information to a software license management server where the data is then merged with a database.

A much closer watch can be kept on counts of software that requires a license to be used by running reports from this software license management database. These reports can be dumped into a spreadsheet or viewed directly from the console or viewer offered up on the software license management itself. Regardless of the software license management program suite being used, you can get machine names and the software that is installed on each machine. Or, you can get overall counts per application. If there needs to be a count of all the copies of a certain office program, for example, a report can be run from the software license management console that will provide total counts for that item.

Keeping track of actively owned licenses is an important task, as letting this fall behind puts the use of software that requires a per seat license at legal peril. Not that the police immediately come demanding you remove the software if you fall behind by a license or two, but the risk does exist that an audit could ultimately turn up the fact that you are out of compliance. Using a software license management solution prevents this from happening and makes keeping track of licenses a far easier task.