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.

Inconclusive versions and editions

A discovered software title comprises two values: a Program string and a Version string. This pair of values is matched to a normalized title in the DSL during a process called recognition. The normalized title in the DSL is identified by three mandatory values (Vendor, Product, and Version), and an optional Edition value for products such as Microsoft SQL Server. If the discovered values do not provide sufficient information to uniquely identify all of the values required by the DSL, then parts of the software title will be reported as (Inconclusive).

For example, if a discovered title has the Program string Microsoft SQL Server Standard and the Version string 15.0.4249.2, the system can identify the Vendor as Microsoft, the Product as SQL Server, the Version as 2019, and the Edition as Standard to give the DSL title as Microsoft SQL Server Standard 2019.

However, if a discovered title has the Program string SQL Server and the Version string 15.0.4249.2, the system can identify the Vendor as Microsoft, the Product as SQL Server, and the Version as 2019, but cannot identify the Edition. As a result, the DSL title is reported as Microsoft SQL Server (Inconclusive) 2019.

To access the Software Insights dashboards, click Overview > Software Insights in the Spend Intelligence navigation bar. The home dashboard has the following 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 Software Insights performance: pre-calculating summaries.

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). If you export a large amount of data and there are changes to the data being exported while this is in progress, you may see duplicate entries in the exported data.

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 and then identify the installed instances of such software so that you can initiate your organization's software removal procedures.

To mark a software title as Prohibited:

1. Click Software > Licensable in the Spend Intelligence navigation bar.
   The Licensable Software page appears.
2. On the Software Summary data grid, select the check boxes alongside the titles you want to prohibit.
3. On the Actions menu, click Prohibit.
   The Prohibited column updates. You can use the Allow menu item to undo this action.

To identify installed instances of Prohibited software:

1. Click Software > Licensable in the Spend Intelligence navigation bar.
   The Licensable Software page appears.
2. On the Software Summary data grid, select Prohibited in the filter at the top of the Prohibited column.
   The data grid updates to show only prohibited software.
3. Click the number in the Installs column.
   The Installs data grid for the software title appears, showing the devices where the software is installed along with the user's name.

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. Similarly, it is good to identify where you have software installed that can be upgraded to a later version.

Click Software > Licensable in the Spend Intelligence navigation bar to see the Licensable Software dashboard, which includes the following tiles:

• End of Life: shows the number of software titles in your estate that have passed the end-of-life date, including the number that have become end-of-life in the previous 90 days and which have been end-of-life for over a year.
• Upcoming End of Life: shows the number of software titles in your estate that are not at end-of life, highlighting the number that are due to become end-of-life in the next 30 and 60 days.
• Upgrade Opportunities: shows the number of software titles in your estate that are not at the latest version.
• Reclamation Opportunities: shows opportunities for reclaiming software that is not being used. For more information, see Identifying opportunities to reclaim licenses.

Click the End of Life tile to see a grid listing the software titles that have passed their end-of-life, or click the Upcoming End of Life tile to see a grid listing the software titles with an end-of-life in the future. These data grids include an installation count for each title and some columns whose exact definitions may vary for different vendors, so check with the vendor. These columns, with indicative descriptions, are:

• End of Life: the date when a vendor stopped selling or updating the version of the product.
• General Availability: the date when a vendor first made the version of the product available for purchase.
• End of Support: the date when a vendor stopped providing support for the version of the product.

Click the Upgrade Opportunities 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.

Alternatively, under Data Tools, click End of Life, Upcoming End of Life, or Upgrade Opportunities.

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 or click Data Tools > Reclamation Opportunities 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, the number of times it has been started, the number of days since it was used, the number of minutes it has been used for, when it was last scanned for this information, 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.