The following sections provide an example scenario of how software metering in Configuration Manager 2007 can be implemented to solve the following business requirements:
- Determine how many copies of a specified
software application are in use on the company network.
- Determine whether there are any unused copies
of the specified software application on the network.
- Determine which users regularly use the
specified software application.
This scenario demonstrates how customers can use software metering to monitor applications in the enterprise to see where they are being loaded, how often they are being used, and also who is using them.
Woodgrove Bank has deployed Microsoft Office 2007 as its standard office productivity suite. However, to support a legacy application, the bank needs to maintain a number of copies of Microsoft Office Word 2003 on the system. To reduce support and licensing costs, these copies of Word 2003 need to be removed if the legacy application is no longer being used. The bank also needs to identify which users use the legacy application.
John Woods is Woodgrove Bank's IT systems manager. He learns that Configuration Manager 2007 software metering will allow him to accomplish the stated business objectives. He decides to follow this course of action:
- John checks that the bank's Configuration
Manager 2007 site is enabled for software metering, and he does not
change the default data collection schedule of once every seven
days.
- He adds a new software metering rule, named
woodgrove.exe, to monitor the bank's legacy application.
- John waits for seven days, after which the
client computers in the bank's Configuration Manager 2007 site
begin to report usage data for the woodgrove.exe
executable.
- John uses the Configuration Manager 2007
report Install base for all metered software programs to
report which computers have the application woodgrove.exe
loaded.
- He then uses the report Computers that
have a metered program installed, but have not run the program
since a specified date, specifying the software metering rule
and a date six months in the past. This report identifies 30
computers that have not run the program in the past six months.
- John contacts the owners of each computer to
confirm that the legacy application is no longer in use and
arranges to remove both the application and the copy of
Word 2003 on the computer.
- John continues to check the metering reports
weekly and take remedial action where necessary.
For procedural information about these steps, see the following topics:
- Prerequisites for
Software Metering
- How to Enable or Disable
the Software Metering Client Agent
- How to Add a Software
Metering Rule
- About Feature Reports
for Software Metering