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The best definition that we have found comes from a Microsoft forum. Here is their definition of Software Asset Management.
?¢?‚¬?“Software Asset Management can be defined as the treatment and management of software as though it were a physical asset. As such, the following needs to be in place: (a) a means to record software purchases; (b) a means to record software installations and removals; and (c) a periodic reconciliation of recorded values against real values.
Does this mean that we have to go from PC to PC to check out installed software? All people who have done so can attest that manual software inventory processes can be a very tedious endeavor. It can take as much as 5 minutes per machine to gather the software installed on the machine from the Control Panel, multiply this by the number of machines in the corporate network. Of course, their users are not really keen on allowing a 5-minute stoppage from their work to inventory software. Not to mention since a manual inventory most probably is an announced one, chances are illegitimate software are uninstalled prior to the inventory and reinstalled again afterwards, if users have the capability and knowledge to do these.
There is a big difference between physical assets and software assets. It is much easier to manage software assets compared to physical assets, since software lends itself to be inventoried, unlike physical assets that require physically being able to detect and tag the said asset. It is because Microsoft Windows contains a repository of all settings, called the registry. All software that is installed in Windows leave their mark in the registry. Therefore, being able to gather the required information from the registry, it is possible to glean information on software that?¢?‚¬?„¢s installed on a machine. Current software asset management utilities use this to gather software inventory information.?¢?‚¬?
The full post can be read at http://msforums.ph/blogs/jpaloma/archive/2006/02/19/112686.aspx
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