Software

The Software section provides information about the software installed in your estate, and how frequently it is used.

Software Inventory

The Software Inventory page under Software shows you software data aggregated from the Neurons Platform connectors you have configured (see Setting up connectors). The device data from these connectors is de-duplicated, and then the software data is compared with the Ivanti Definitive Software Library (DSL) to see if there is a match. To see a list of devices where each software title has been installed, click the links in the Installs column. To filter the list, click filter icon.

The Definitive Software Library and recognition

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, add a request in the Ivanti Ideas Portal (opens in a new window), including the Vendor, Version, and a link to the software download. For more information, see the How to get an item added to the DSL (opens the Ivanti Community in a new window).

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

  • MS SQL Server 2022
  • Microsoft SQL Server 2022

they are both identified as Microsoft SQL Server 2022.

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 left blank.

To see a list of devices where each software title has been installed, click the links in the Installs column.

DSL statistics

On February 1, 2024, the DSL included:

Prohibited software

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. On the Software Inventory 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.

To identify installed instances of Prohibited software:

  1. On the Software Inventory page, click filter icon.
    The filter definition area appears above the table.
  2. Create a filter that sets the condition Prohibited Equals Prohibited.
  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.

Exporting data

There are two sets of software inventory data you can export.

To export the list of software titles discovered in your estate:

  1. On the Software Inventory page, click Export.
  2. Select Microsoft Excel (.xlsx) or Text (.csv) as required.
    All of the software titles in your estate are exported.

To export the list of devices where a selected software title is installed:

  1. On the Software Inventory page, select the check boxes alongside the software titles you are interested in.
  2. Click Actions > Export Installs.
    The menu item shows the number of rows that will be exported. There is a row for each device where the selected software title is installed.

Software Usage

The Software Usage page under Software shows you information about how much the software installed in your organization is used. If you use Ivanti Neurons Discovery (see Discovery), the usage data is taken from there. If you do not use Ivanti Neurons Discovery, but have set up an Ivanti Endpoint Manager connector (see Ivanti Endpoint Manager connector), then the usage data is taken from there.

You can also access Software Usage from the Data Tools section of the Spend Intelligence navigation bar if you have the appropriate license.

At the top of the page are charts that show to top 5 most unused and most used software items. Click the columns in the chart to filter the grid below.

The grid on the page shows all discovered software and lists the number of installations of each, including the numbers of installations that have used the software in the previous 30, 60, and 90 days. Installed software that has not been used for 91 days or more is considered to be unused. Installations where no usage data is found are excluded from the grid.

Click the numbers in the Installs column to see more information about the usage of that product on each device where it is installed. This includes when it was last launched, the number of times it has been launched, and the number of minutes it was used for. Remember to check the Last Scan Date to see how recent the data is.