Software Licensing reports do not differentiate between paid and free software versions

Products

• Inventory Solution
• Asset Management Solution
• Software Management Solution

Issue/Introduction

When reviewing Software Product License Reports for Asset Management and Inventory Solution, it is noticed that software isn't differentiated between paid and free versions, such as the Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Environment

ITMS 8.x

Cause

It is beyond the scope of the out of box Software Licensing process to be able to automatically determine and categorize software versions and variations (such as paid and free versions) for the user. Instead, the user must manually configure these specifically by using Asset Management, Inventory Solution and Software Management Solution.

For Asset Management, Software Licensing must be configured with software purchases and software licenses for each software product to apply to Software Licensing. If this is not performed in its entirety, software may be misreported under the wrong software product, resulting in paid and free versions being seen as the same version.

Resolution

Configure different software products (Manage > Software Catalog > Add) for each version or variation (such as paid and free versions) of installed software to manage. These will then report individually on Software License reports.

Alternatively, the software product can have its Version information changed to a wildcard, which may (or may not) then include the desired version and variation. For example, refer to the following screenshot. WARNING: Changing the Version number may result in the failure to correctly identify the correct files! This may need to be experimented by the user to determine if this will or will not work for specific software inventory.

Additional Information

181658 How to use Asset Management's Software Product License Compliance