SiTech consulting services uses the data collected by your discovery tool (SMS, SCCM, LANDesk, Altiris, etc.) to provide you with a complete and accurate picture of your software environment. Unlike discovery tools, SiTech will help you identify 100% of your installed software applications. In addition, SiTech will further classify each Licensable application to the Type of License required and assign each a software category using UNSPSC standard categories
Software Publisher Identification:
The first phase of our unique process is to identify, from your data, ALL of the Publishers in your IT environment and prepare a report showing you a complete list of Software Publishers in your environment, how many total and unique EXE files each has resident on your systems and which computers contain those files. This report also contains a link to the publisher's web site to assist in your software asset management project. Other information available on the report is an indication if the publisher produces licensable and commercial applications. Publisher producing licensable applications are those you should focus your attention on for your SAM projects.
Registry - Add/Remove Analysis:
The second phase of our unique process uses the Registry-Add/Remove Programs (ARP) information to identify which of those records represent a licensable asset. At the conclusion of this phase we will provide you with a summary report showing ALL the licensable ARP programs along with the license type (commercial, freeware, open source, dependent, bundled) and what software category the program falls into. A side benefit of this process is identification of Red Flag Programs (i.e., programs that should not be present in a business environment) such as "XXX Toolbar". XXX Toolbar is a malicious executable program that is usually installed without user consent or knowledge. XXX Toolbar may have the ability to secretly monitor, record, and transmit computer activity. Another good example would be a peer to peer file sharing program such as Limewire. We have found such programs in ALL of our client's IT environments. At the completion of this phase, we have found that our average clients will have identified 82% of the total applications in their environment for about 10% of the cost or effort of a traditional File Analysis.
Unaccounted For Publishers Analysis:
For a variety of reasons some software publishers do not follow the Add/Remove Registry conventions during the installation of their programs. Some of these applications are harmless drivers, OEM programs of bundled utilities. This phase consists of the file based analysis of the files installed on your systems for publishers NOT represented in the system registry. From the results of Phases I and II our clients have the knowledge to specify which publishers warrant further research and identification. At the conclusion of this phase we will provide you with summary and detail reports showing ALL of the licensable (file based) programs along with the license type (commercial, freeware, open source, dependent, bundled) and what software category the program falls into for the selected Unaccounted for Publishers. Our clients then select the specific publishers that they want us to identify, based on files, the programs installed by those publishers. At the completion of this phase, we have found that our average clients will have identified 95% of the total applications in their environment for about 17% of the cost or effort of a traditional File Analysis.
Orphan File Analysis:
Certain files on every computer do not contain sufficient embedded (meta tag) information for identification of the publisher that created the EXE file. The results from Phase I will show how many total and unique Orphan Files exist in your environment. These files are the most difficult to research and identify and require significantly more time to identify. Identifying all of the Orphans can increase project cost by more than 400%. However, from a licensing standpoint, we do not believe there is a great deal of exposure with Orphan files, especially to penalties. This is because the publisher has not followed the normal Windows conventions and hasn't even included their name in the EXE file's metdata. Therefore, Orphan File Analysis is generally not recommended.
Ongoing Maintenance Services
Software asset management is an ongoing process that requires continual updating. In response that that need SiTech offers Ongoing Maintenance Services for our clients to insure that the valuable data created in any of our Phases remains current. Our maintenance services are available in monthly, quarterly, semi-annual or annual periods depending on each client's needs. Please contact our Sales Department to determine the best Ongoing Maintenance Services for your organization.
