Monitoring and reporting software usage

Software usage statistics contain details about the usage of specific software that is installed in your environment, such as how many times it was used and when it was used for the last time. Based on this information, you can quickly identify used and unused software. This analysis can help you reduce the license costs when planning license renewals or upgrades.

About this task

BigFix Inventory collects information about the running processes and, based on that, measures software usage for all software instances that are discovered with usage signatures.

Important: 9.2.15 Starting from application update 9.2.15, BigFix Inventory introduces a new method of reporting usage for Java. Paths to Java processes that run on a computer are matched with paths in which the software is discovered. Based on this information, BigFix Inventory can determine exactly which Java instance is used. It is possible to distinguish between usage of BigFix and Oracle Java that is installed on a single computer.

Software catalog in version 9.2.15 does not contain usage signatures for Java any more. To report usage of Java, ensure that the BigFix client and BigFix server are in version 9.5.10 or higher, and that you upgrade the BigFix Inventory server to version 9.2.15.

Monitoring and reporting of software usage is enabled by default if during the initial configuration you choose the default scan settings. For more information, see: Default scan configuration. Otherwise, follow the instruction for manual scan configuration to enable the collecting of software usage statistics.

Procedure

  1. Log in to the BigFix console.
  2. In the navigation tree, click Sites > External Sites > IBM BigFix Inventory v9 > Analyses.
  3. To measure software usage, activate the Application Usage Statistics analysis. Right-click the analysis, and click Activate.
  4. Run the Initiate Software Scan fixlet. For more information, see: Initiating software scans.
  5. Run the Upload Software Scan Results fixlet. For more information, see: Uploading software scan results.
  6. Wait for the scheduled import or run it manually.

Results

The results of the analysis are reflected on the following reports:
  • Metering Data shows the aggregated usage statistics from all instances that are discovered on each endpoint based on given binary file.
  • Software Classification panel lists the discovered software components with the details about usage statistics.
  • Usage per Computer panel provides an overview of the software usage statistics that are aggregated for all instances on product level and presented in the report for each computer.
For more information about the reports, see: Available reports.
Tip: To view information about usage on the reports, configure the report view to display the columns that collect software usage statistics. To do that, hover over the Manage Report View icon Manage Report View icon, select Configure View and choose the applicable columns.

What to do next

If you are in the initial deployment phase, or if you do not need information about software usage, you can disable the collection of this information to improve the BigFix Inventory performance and shorten the import time. For more information, see: Disabling the collection of software usage.