Software Insights

The Definitive Software Library is a constantly evolving and growing repository of normalized descriptions of software titles, which are used as the software titles shown in Spend Intelligence. Associated with these normalized descriptions is a wealth of historic and continually added-to discovered descriptions, which combine to form the basis of the initial recognition where discovered descriptions are matched to a single normalized description. Discovered descriptions are continually being added to the DSL, with a particular focus on high profile software publishers such as Microsoft and Adobe. There are currently thousands of software publishers and tens of thousands of products in the DSL, providing a vast breadth of coverage.

If you would like to request some targeted recognition for a specific product or software publisher, raise a Support Request, which will be handled by the Data Team.

This recognition of discovered descriptions means, for example, that if your discovered data includes instances of the following items:

• MS SQL Server 2019
• Microsoft SQL Server 2019

they are both identified as Microsoft SQL Server 2019.

Similarly, if all minor versions of a product use the same license, they are reported in the form 10.x; and if a product is a component of a licensed suite or bundle, requires no license, or if all versions use the same license, then the version is reported as Generic. If the discovery data is insufficient for the DSL to confidently identify the version or edition, it is set to (Inconclusive).

Matching discovered software with items in the DSL also enables the dashboards to identify which software requires a license and which doesn't, and which software titles are SaaS applications. Other than for the Software Instances tile, only software that requires a license is reported on the Software Insights dashboards.

The Software Insights dashboards also report upgrade opportunities and end-of-life and software usage information on the Licensable Software dashboard, providing you with information to make informed decisions about your software estate.

To access the Software Insights dashboards, click Software > Software Insights in the left navigation pane. The home dashboard has 7 tiles:

• Server OS Instances: The number of instances of server operating systems in your estate.
  Click this tile to display the Server Software Insights dashboard, which includes charts showing the top categories of software that are installed across your server estate (excluding operating systems), the top 5 operating systems, the number of OSIs (Operating System Instances) with each partition type, and a grid listing the server operating system instances.
• Client OS Instances: The number of instances of client operating systems in your estate.
  Click this tile to display the Client Software Insights dashboard, which includes charts showing the top categories of software that are installed across your client estate (excluding operating systems), the top 5 operating systems, the top 5 software vendors by product, and a grid listing the client operating system instances.
• Licensable Software: The number of different software titles in your estate that use licenses.
  Click this tile to display the Licensable Software dashboard, which includes tiles displaying the number of software titles at or approaching their end-of-life, the number of software titles for which there are upgrade opportunities, and the number of software reclamation opportunities discovered.
  Below these tiles is a data grid that provides more information about the licensable software in your estate, including the number of instances of each of these titles, and the ability to mark software titles as Prohibited. Click a name in the Product column to display the related Product Family page (see Product families), which combines information about all versions and editions of the product onto a single dashboard.
  The Saved Searches menu enables you to select a saved set of filters for the data grid:
  • Microsoft 365 Installations: identifies local installations of Microsoft 365 in your estate
  • Oracle Java Installations: identifies installations of the JRE in your estate so you can uninstall them to avoid requiring a license
  • Prohibited Software: identifies installed software that has been marked as prohibited
• Software Inventory: The total number of software instances in your estate.
  Click this tile to open the Software Inventory component.
• Top Vendors – by Install: A chart showing the top 5 vendors in your estate by the number of software installations.
• Top Software Vendors – by Product: A chart showing the top 5 vendors in your estate by the number of products.
• Top Software Titles: A chart showing the top 5 most installed software titles in your estate that use licenses (excluding operating systems or software from Ivanti).

For performance reasons, the data on these charts may have been calculated up to 24 hours earlier, in which case the time that the summaries were calculated appears on the dashboard. For more information, see Spend Intelligence configuration.

You can click any of the chart segments to display a grid of the corresponding data. You can sort and filter the grids, click to clear filters, and click to export the grid data to Microsoft Excel (.xlsx) or Text (.csv).

Whenever a data grid includes an installation count, you can click this number to see details of the underlying records—either details of the software items on the selected device, or the devices for the selected software item as appropriate.

Whenever a data grid refers to a specific device, you can click its name to view the corresponding Device Details page. For more information about the Device Details page, see Devices.

There may be software titles that you do not want installed in your estate. You can mark such titles as Prohibited on the Software Summary data grid on the Licensable Software page, so that you can monitor the number of instances of such software.

To mark a software title as Prohibited:

1. On the Software Summary data grid on the Licensable Software page, select the check boxes alongside the titles you want to prohibit.
2. On the Actions menu, click Prohibit.
   The Prohibited column updates. You can use the Allow menu item to undo this action.

These values are also reported, and can be set, on the Software Inventory page. For more information, see Software Inventory.

Software at its end-of-life no longer receives support or security updates, so it's vital that you identify these vulnerabilities in your estate. The Licensable Software dashboard includes tiles called End of Life and Upcoming End of Life, which show the number of software titles in your estate that have passed the end-of-life date, or are due to in the next three months.

Click these tiles to see a grid listing the affected software titles, along with an installation count and end-of-life date for each title.

The Licensable Software dashboard includes an Upgrade Opportunities tile that shows the number of software titles in your estate that are not at the latest version. Click the tile to see a grid listing the software titles that can be upgraded, along with an installation count of each title and the title of the suggested upgrade.

The Licensable Software dashboard includes a Reclamation Opportunities tile that shows the number of licensable-software installations that have not been used recently. You can review these items to see if they can be uninstalled and so reduce your licensing liability.

Click the Reclamation Opportunities tile to display a grid listing all installed licensable software that has not been used for over 30 days. The grid shows the Display Name for the device running the software, and details of the unused software including the vendor, when the software was last used, when it was last scanned for this information, the number of days since it was used, and its Reclamation Chance.

The Reclamation Chance is calculated based on how long it has been since the software has been used:

LOW – between 30 and 60 days

MEDIUM – between 60 and 90 days

HIGH – over 90 days

Before uninstalling software, remember to check the date in the Last Scanned column to ensure that the other values are based on recent data.

You can choose which columns appear on the Reclamation Opportunities data grid by clicking .

Logging a reclamation ticket in Ivanti Neurons for ITSM from Software Insights

If you have Ivanti Neurons for ITSM (either Cloud or on-premise), and have configured a connection between Software Insights and Ivanti Neurons for ITSM using the Software Configuration page (see Connecting Software Insights to Ivanti Neurons for ITSM), then you can log an incident in Ivanti Neurons for ITSM to request the removal of a software title from a device directly from the Reclamation Opportunities dashboard.

To log a reclamation ticket from the Reclamation Opportunities dashboard:

1. On the Reclamation Opportunities dashboard, identify a software title that you want to remove from a device.
2. At the right of the row, click , then click Reclaim.
   A request is sent to Ivanti Neurons for ITSM to log the required incident using the values you specified on the Ivanti Neurons for ITSM tab of the Software Configuration page. The Reclamation Status column changes to Requested.

For rows where the incident creation has succeeded, the Incident ID is reported in the Reclamation Status column. If the incident creation fails, Failed appears. Hover your mouse over the Failed entry to see a pop-up that provides more information about the failure. When you have resolved the issue causing the failure, click , then click Retry reclaim.
Messages are also added to the Notifications panel, which you can access by clicking at the top of the page.