Home
Software inventory and license utilization
You can classify the discovered software so that reports in BigFix InventoryBigFix Inventory reflect your entitlements and properly show utilization of license metrics by particular products.
Software classification
After new components are discovered, they are assigned to products based on bundling rules. If the initial assignment does not reflect your entitlements, work with the software inventory until it matches the entitlements. To make metric calculation accurate, assign each component to a product, exclude, or suppress the instances that should not be included in the calculation, and confirm your actions. After you confirm the actions, the classification is complete, and the metric calculation is accurate.
Setting the number of metric units convertible to FlexPoints
Available from 9.2.13. When a software product is assigned to a FlexPoint bundle, BigFix Inventory converts the number of metric units that the product used to FlexPoints. If the product uses a license metric whose utilization is not calculated by BigFix Inventory, you can manually set the number of metric units to be converted into FlexPoints.

Software inventory and license utilization
You can classify the discovered software so that reports in BigFix InventoryBigFix Inventory reflect your entitlements and properly show utilization of license metrics by particular products.
- Vendor-specific predefined reports
  Vendor-specific predefined reports provide software discovery and licensing information for specific software vendors of BigFix Inventory customers. These reports help Software Asset Managers manage software for their vendors and prepare for contract negotiations and license audits. To view the reports, click on a vendor in the vendor-specific dashboard.
- Reported license metrics
  BigFix Inventory reports utilization for a number of license metrics for IBM and non-IBM products. It also shows products that are assigned any BigFix metric even if calculating utilization is not yet supported for this metric. It gives you an overview of all IBM metrics for which you should have licenses.
- Software classification
  After new components are discovered, they are assigned to products based on bundling rules. If the initial assignment does not reflect your entitlements, work with the software inventory until it matches the entitlements. To make metric calculation accurate, assign each component to a product, exclude, or suppress the instances that should not be included in the calculation, and confirm your actions. After you confirm the actions, the classification is complete, and the metric calculation is accurate.
  - Bundling Assistant
    Bundling assistant assigns instances of discovered components to products based on five bundling rules: bundling tags, part numbers, partition collocation, infrastructure collocation, and stand-alone product discovery. Results of this assignment are shown on the Software Classification panel.
  - Software Classification panel
    Available from 9.2.7. Software Classification panel provides an overview of your software inventory and the relations between the discovered software components and licensable products. It provides a flat structure with software installations broken into single components, which makes it easier to view your software assets and manage relations between them.
  - Using BigFix Inventory to calculate license for BigFix products
  - Setting entitlements
    It is recommended to first import IBM owned part numbers to improve bundling accuracy. Starting from BigFix Inventory 10.0.2, you can manually mark products as entitled through Product & Metrics panel. You can also clear entitlements of previous entitled products.
  - Assigning components to products
    Available from 9.2.7. After new components are discovered, they are associated with products based on bundling rules. As a result, most components are automatically assigned to products. Correct assignment of software components reduces the cost of software ownership and ensures audit readiness. Compare the automatically created bundles with information in your license agreement, confirm the accurate assignments, or reassign the components to right products.
  - Excluding and suppressing software instances
    Available from 9.2.7. If a software instance should not contribute to license metric utilization, you can exclude it on the product level or suppress it on the component level. Exclusion applies to all components that are assigned to a product and are installed on the selected computer. Use it if license information specifies that the product should not contribute to metric utilization under specific circumstances. Suppression applies to a single component that is installed on the selected computer. Use it when a component is improperly discovered.
  - Confirming assignment of software components
    Available from 9.2.7. When the assignment of a component to the product is correct, you can confirm it. The task is optional. However, components whose assignment is not confirmed can be automatically reassigned to different products. It might happen when a new software catalog is uploaded or when a different product is suggested as the best bundling option based on the new results of bundling assistant. To avoid such a situation, it is recommended to confirm the assignment of all components.
  - Creating and managing custom rules
    Available from 9.2.7. You can create custom rules to automate the process of software classification. The rules automatically perform the action that is defined by the rule criteria. For example, when you create a custom rule while assigning a component to a product, the rule is applied whenever the exact same component is discovered in the future.
  - Assigning products to Cloud Paks
    Available from 10.0.1 When you purchase a product as part of a Cloud Pak, assign instances of this product to the proper Cloud Pak to improve software tracking and calculate utilization of license metrics by Cloud Pak bundles.
  - Assigning products to FlexPoint bundles
    Available from 9.2.13. When you purchase a product as part of a FlexPoint bundle, assign instances of this product to that bundle for improved tracking and to calculate utilization of FlexPoints.
  - Setting the number of metric units convertible to FlexPoints
    Available from 9.2.13. When a software product is assigned to a FlexPoint bundle, BigFix Inventory converts the number of metric units that the product used to FlexPoints. If the product uses a license metric whose utilization is not calculated by BigFix Inventory, you can manually set the number of metric units to be converted into FlexPoints.
  - Viewing history of installed components
    Available from 9.2.7. You can view information about components that were installed in your infrastructure during a specific period and their assignment. You can use this information to view details of components that contributed to the overall license utilization for a specific period. You can also reassign and exclude uninstalled components if their original assignment was incorrect and impacted the license metric utilization.
  - Monitoring and reporting software usage
    BigFix Inventory collects listing of running processes and associate this data with detected software using usage signatures or by matching path.
- Software catalogs
  To correctly identify components of software products in your infrastructure, ensure that your software catalog is always up-to-date. Periodically import a new catalog that contains the most recent software products. Also, manually add products that are installed in your infrastructure but do not have corresponding entries in the catalog.
- Reports
  Reports provide detailed information about the computers in your infrastructure and the software items that are installed on these computers. By viewing the reports regularly, you can check whether actual installations reflect the software inventory information and ensure that the capacity values are assigned to products correctly. You can decide what type of information you want to display by choosing the appropriate type of report. You can also customize the type and amount of information that is displayed in a report and save the report settings to reuse them.
- Enterprise applications inventory
  Software components are discovered during software scans. The scans correlate data that is collected from the computers with the content of the software catalog, and thus determine whether a component is installed. However, software scans do not discover details of some enterprise applications, for example licensable options of Oracle Database or editions of Microsoft Exchange. The details are discovered by dedicated fixlets. If you are interested in discovering additional details of enterprise applications, run the dedicated fixlets apart from scheduling software scans. Otherwise, running the fixlets is not required.
- License metrics
  BigFix Inventory provides two types of information about license metrics utilization: aggregated utilization and raw utilization. The former shows utilization of the assigned license metric by all instances of a particular product within the reporting period. However, it is limited to a subset of license metrics. The latter shows data that is collected from .slmtag files. It shows raw utilization of all license metrics that can be used by a particular product. The data is not aggregated and requires further processing.
- Contracts management
  The contracts management group shows all contract-related reports in one place. This allows you to easily manage all your contracts.
- Software discovery in containers
  BigFix Inventory supports discovery of software in container images through standard discovery methods that includes catalog signatures, template signatures, installation registry and ISO SWID tags to cover traditional model of software deployment.
- Software data harvesting tool

Setting the number of metric units convertible to FlexPoints

Available from 9.2.13. When a software product is assigned to a FlexPoint bundle, BigFix Inventory converts the number of metric units that the product used to FlexPoints. If the product uses a license metric whose utilization is not calculated by BigFix Inventory, you can manually set the number of metric units to be converted into FlexPoints.

Before you begin

User role

You must have the View License Metrics permission to view the IBM FlexPoints report, and Manage Software Classification permission to set the number of metric units to be converted into FlexPoints.

About this task

You can manually set the number of metric units convertible to FlexPoints only for metrics whose utilization is not calculated by BigFix Inventory. For the list of metrics whose utilization is calculated in BigFix Inventory, see: Metrics for which utilization is calculated.

Procedure

Log in to BigFix Inventory, and go to Reports > IBM FlexPoints and IBM Cloud Paks.
To display the list of products that are assigned to a FlexPoint bundle, click the name of that bundle.
Click on the product for which you want to specify the number of license metrics.
Click on the pencil icon under the Metric Quantity column. A Set Metric Quantity dialog box appears.
Enter the metric quantity value and click Set.

What to do next

To refresh the data that is displayed on the report, click Recalculate. Metric units that you specified are converted into FlexPoints. All Metrics - Recalculate

All Metrics - Recalculate