Solution Overview

For us, the tools that we’ll be using to help us automate things are the various different components of ENT Server.

ENT Server includes various auditing agents that will allow us to automate the collection of information about the software that we have installed on the network. ENT Server also comes with a number of built in reports – one of which will enable us to compare information about the software that is installed on the network(s) that you manage to the licenses that you own for those (and any other) software products.

The only thing that ENT Server doesn’t automate for you then is collecting information about the licenses that you own. There is, of course, no practical way to obtain this contractual information automatically, so this information will have to be supplied by you.

However, the Inventory module in ENT Server certainly provides a repository where you can record the licenses that you hold for software products that you own and use, and various features that will facilitate modeling how these licenses relate to the installations of those software products on the network(s) that you manage.

So to summarize what we’ll be doing: