Implementing Software Metering Tools to Monitor & Utilise Usage Data

SAM Software / October 2024

How Important Is Software Metering?

Software metering is the process of tracking and analysing the software and applications in use across an organisation. Metering tools gather vital software monitoring data to provide a comprehensive view of usage while also controlling access.

This includes identifying and eliminating redundant software packages and maintaining or purchasing new licenses to enable smoother operations. As well as providing organisations with the self-analysis needed to use their software budgets wisely, only paying for what they need.

To access strategic software insights, organisations require software metering tools capable of tracking information on:

• The software applications in use
• How frequently they are accessed
• The users accessing them
• The workstations that have access

By understanding software use, IT teams can make better-informed decisions for your organisation, maximising the impact of software across departments and workflows while minimising IT costs. 32% of beginner’s (companies starting to develop SAM practices) desktop software tools are wasted or underutilised.

Beyond managing software expenses, metering also provides critical data for a range of SAM (Software Asset Management) practices, including SLM (Software License Management) and ITSM (IT Service Management). This allows IT admins to take a more strategic approach to overseeing software use, ensuring compliance, and implementing improved security practices.

Shortlist the Best SAM Tools For Your Software Metering & Usage Data Requirements

The use of SAM practices has contributed to significant savings in areas such as the reuse of licenses, maintenance spending on unused software, audit compliance, and more.

Using our sophisticated software finder tool (below), you can find a software asset management system that matches your requirements, budget, industry-fit, and deployment time scale

Types of Software Metering

Software metering can take many different forms, including:

• Tracking and monitoring licenses for compliance and ensuring the number of users at a given time does not exceed the terms of your agreement with the vendor
• Monitoring selected or all software use in real-time to identify unauthorised access, whether accidental or malicious
• Periodic reviews of software usage to report wasted resources and potential compliance issues over a fixed period rather than having real-time information
• More granular detail of software use to understand how long specific functions in the software are in use and to guarantee users remain active while taking up licenses

3 Key Drivers For Monitoring Software Usage Data

Software metering provides the data needed to spend money wisely, maximising the value received without overstepping and becoming uncompliant. Without software metering, it is impossible to balance these two outcomes.

Relying on anecdotal evidence and qualitative data leaves gaps in your knowledge while letting biases creep in. Real-time usage data offers raw, unfiltered information to reveal the true software usage among employees.

1. Taking Control of Software Spend

As your organisation grows and software requirements become more complex, it is easy for software spending to get out of hand. Coupled with poor off-boarding practices, and before you know it, you are wasting significant funds on unnecessary subscriptions and licenses.

Software monitoring data lets you:

• Understand how software fits into your workflows and internal processes to learn the baseline requirements of different teams.
• Translate this data into the required number and type of licenses of different software solutions to successfully run the business.

Using software metering to optimise IT budgets allows you to divert funds into new and exciting value-additive activities. This includes expanding into new areas or product R&D to improve your offerings.

2. Meet Compliance Audit Expectations

When you purchase software, you sign a licensing agreement detailing how the software can be used. In practical terms, the most common way to break this agreement is installing the software on too many machines or providing access to too many users.

Software metering tracks the software in use at any given time to identify potential compliance issues. This information allows businesses to protect themselves legally and prevent fines due to accidental non-compliance.

Additionally, organisations subject to audit have the data they need to prove compliance.

3. Increase Security & Close Back-end Vulnerabilities

Software monitoring data is a key enabling factor for enhanced security practices such as LPA (Least Privilege Access). By tracking software usage and determining who has access to what, software metering helps detect unauthorised or suspicious activity.

With active controls that limit software access, you can reduce the impact of an account becoming compromised in a cyber attack. Also, by preventing employees from using potentially malicious software you can protect against bad actors gaining access in the first place.

Finally, software metering allows you to track the versions of software solutions in use. You can protect against outdated, vulnerable applications not running the latest security patches.

How to Successfully Implement Software Metering Tools

Step 1: Selecting a Software Metering Tool

Identify the specific needs of your business, whether it is getting a handle on IT spending and reducing costs, ensuring compliance in a complex working environment, introducing new security measures, making the most of employee time, or all of the above.

Begin researching software metering tools available on the market while comparing your business needs to different features and capabilities. Key features to consider include:

• Usage Tracking: Passive data collection on the frequency and duration of software usage across the organisation.
• License Compliance Monitoring: Comparing usage against licensing agreements.
• Reporting and Analytics: Reports and dashboards that summarise and visualise detailed software usage data in a concise and helpful way.
• Access Control: Allows administrators to set permissions and restrict access based on license availability for proactive software metering.
• Alerts: Automated alerts for license expirations, compliance issues, or unusual usage patterns.
• Customisation Options and Rules: Create custom software metering rules aligned with your business needs.
• Integrations: Seamless integration into the wider SAM tech stack for a comprehensive view of software and hardware resources.

Step 2: Install and Configure the Tool

Once you have identified a software metering tool that fits your needs, you need to start configuring the solution for your business needs and install it on your network.

Configuration requires setting rules to track specific applications and define user access. This includes defining the users, devices or departments whose software usage will be tracked, setting thresholds for usage, and automating triggers for compliance issues.

Decide whether you want passive or active software monitoring. That means whether the software metering tool should simply record and report usage or actively enforce policies and compliance. Most commonly, this would be done through software metering rules that limit concurrent users and create a system (e.g., queue) for managing staff trying to access software when all the licenses are in use.

Step 3: Track Usage and Enforce Rules

The first step is to audit all of the software installed on your network and local workstations. Create a comprehensive inventory with their associated licensing information.

Next, compare your software usage to purchases and licensing agreements to identify instances of:

• Over-licensing: wasted funds on unused licenses
• Under-licensing: potential compliance issues or software users cannot access due to too few licenses

Finally, tools can generate reports to aid planning and optimise IT budgets.

Step 4: Optimise Software Resources

Review reports to understand usage patterns and determine how best to assign your resources while ensuring compliance:

• Adjust license allocation, provide access to users who need it, and scale down the licenses assigned to teams with underutilised software packages.
• Develop a more strategic approach to purchasing and managing renewals to maximise the impact of your IT budget.
• Regularly review the effectiveness of your software metering practices to meet updated business needs and consider new, potentially more effective, tools.

Do You Require Software Metering or Network Monitoring?

Software metering is sometimes confused with network monitoring. However, they serve different functions and focus on different areas of IT management:

• Software metering focuses on software usage to optimise resource allocation and track compliance.
• Network monitoring looks at the entire performance of an organisation’s IT infrastructure.

Network monitoring includes tracking network traffic, bandwidth usage, and device connectivity to ensure business operations are running smoothly.
Typically, it involves the use of dedicated monitoring tools to identify potential problems (downtime, bottlenecks, increased latency, security breaches, etc.) in real-time and perform root cause analysis to get systems back to expected performance. It also looks to fix small issues before they spiral into significant ones.