Tool identifies licence savings

Scalable Software's Survey is an all-encompassing asset management tool

Scalable Software is to launch in the UK an asset management tool with a difference. Called Survey, it not only finds what software is installed on company PCs but also which applications are actually being used, enabling firms to better control software licence costs.

Survey includes its own discovery functions but is not designed to replace products like Centennial Discovery. Instead, it complements them by providing true usage metering capability, Scalable said.

"Usage in many discovery tools simply means it has found the application there, but we have technology that can tell whether the user is running it and interacting with it regularly," said Peter Cook, European sales director at Scalable.

The tool is intelligent enough to analyse installed applications and work out whether they represent an instance of Microsoft Office, for example. By tracking usage, it can advise whether that user needs the Office Professional edition or whether the cheaper Office Standard would suffice.

"If you mail an MS Project file to colleagues, they will open it up and read it but they may not use Project apart from that," explained Scalable product and marketing director Nick Youell. "We look at whether you use it to create anything. If you do, it counts as a licence. If not, that instance can be replaced with a free viewer instead," he added.

Survey produces a report that shows for each discovered application how many copies are used frequently, how many are rarely used and how many are never used. This detail enables firms to go into licence negotiations with software vendors on a much firmer footing, according to Scalable.

A side effect of tracking application usage is that Survey can also flag how many pages are being printed on the network and how many printers there are.

"People are often surprised how many local printers are in use on their network," sad Youell.

Survey currently costs £45 per machine monitored, which Cook said is a small price to pay compared to the potential savings. "Some firms can have up to $390 (£198) worth of unused software on each desktop," he said.