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Managing software inventory and metric utilization
Learn how to classify the discovered software so that reports in BigFix Inventory reflect your entitlements and properly show utilization of license metrics by particular products.
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.
Expanding the custom software catalog
To ensure that all software items that are installed in your infrastructure are discovered, create custom signatures. You can create them from scratch or directly from the Package Data and Scanned File Data reports. You can also create extended signatures to discover software that is not detected by using file or package signatures.
Software discovery process after customizing the catalog
Software matching your catalog customizations can be identified in one of two ways depending on the custom signature.

Managing software inventory and metric utilization
Learn how to classify the discovered software so that reports in BigFix Inventory reflect your entitlements and properly show utilization of license metrics by particular products.
- 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.
  - Updating the software catalog to ensure accuracy of software discovery and reporting
    The software catalog is automatically updated during every upgrade of . However, as an exception, you can manually update the software catalog for troubleshooting purposes.
  - Checking product components and their signatures
    You can browse the software catalog to check what components belong to a particular product and what signatures cause that these components are detected.
  - Expanding the custom software catalog
    To ensure that all software items that are installed in your infrastructure are discovered, create custom signatures. You can create them from scratch or directly from the Package Data and Scanned File Data reports. You can also create extended signatures to discover software that is not detected by using file or package signatures.
    - Catalog customization process
      The process of adding custom signatures to the software catalog requires careful planning and consideration. It starts with identifying products that you expect to discover but are not reported or are missing from the software catalog. Next, you should organize your work to ensure that the most important products are given the highest priority. Then, you determine what files or packages can be used to detect the software and report its usage. Finally, you can create the signatures.
    - Creating signatures
      You can use the built-in functionality to extend your custom catalog with the software products that are installed in your infrastructure but are not present in the HCL® catalog.
    - Creating signatures from package data
      You can use package data to expand your custom catalog. You can add signatures for software products that are installed in your infrastructure but are not present in the HCL® catalog.
    - Creating signatures from scanned file data
      You can use scanned file data to expand your custom catalog. You can add signatures for software products that are installed in your infrastructure but are not present in the IBM catalog. You identify the file name, or another item of information that can be used to identify the software and add the signature.
    - Adding a new product to software catalog
      The software catalog consists of a list of standard software products. Use the Add Product feature to define a custom product with the accompanying information, such as a publisher name, license metric and release.
    - Assigning an additional metric to a product
      Available from 9.2.8. The pricing calculations are based on the relation between a product and a metric. The software catalog consists of an inventory of standard relations. To define a custom relation, assign one of available metrics to an existing product.
    - Changing end of support date
      Available from 9.2.11. Set or change the end of support date for your software components to have a comprehensive overview of your software inventory.
    - Software discovery process after customizing the catalog
      Software matching your catalog customizations can be identified in one of two ways depending on the custom signature.
  - Exporting and importing custom signatures
    You can export custom signatures to an XML file and import them to a different instance of BigFix Inventory to augment you software catalog. It is useful if you maintain separate instances of BigFix Inventory for test and production sites. In such case, you can reuse the custom catalog content instead of creating the new one. You can also import signatures that are published on the signature community or export your custom signatures and contribute them to the community.
  - Deprecated: Synchronizing software catalog content
    You can export your custom catalog content from one instance of BigFix Inventory and import it into another to merge the custom data. It is useful if you maintain separate instances of BigFix Inventory for test and production sites. In such case, you can reuse the custom catalog content instead of creating the new one.
- Enterprise applications inventory
  Software components are discovered by 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Software license optimization
  BigFix Inventory helps you optimize your software licenses. You can analyze the software inventory in your environment and maximize the utilization of your assets. Learn how to minimize the costs of acquiring and maintaining licenses and track license compliance for the software products that are installed in your environment. You can verify the needs and requirements of your environment and then apply the most appropriate license model.
- Reports
  Reports provide detailed information about the computers in your infrastructure and the software items that are installed on these computers. 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.
- Contracts
  You use contracts to track license compliance for the software products that are installed in your environment. When you purchase a software license, you create a contract that contains information about the cost of acquiring and maintaining the license, and the period of entitlement. You use that information to track spending that is associated with software licenses and manage costs of extending or downsizing licenses for the software products. You can also avoid costs that are related to license non-compliance by ensuring that enough software licenses are purchased.

Software discovery process after customizing the catalog

Software matching your catalog customizations can be identified in one of two ways depending on the custom signature.

Case 1: Common executable files or other popular file types

If you created a custom signature, which is based on package data or file data such as common executable files, then you need to run a data import to pull the latest scan data from the BigFix server. The new data is compared with the latest catalog and the updated software inventory is displayed in the web user interface.

The popular file extension list includes the following file types: *.exe, *.sys, *.com, *.ear, *.ocx, *.sh, *.bin, *.pl, *.ear, *.SH, *.BIN, *.PL, and *.EAR.

When you create signatures based on these file types, the custom content version of the software catalog remains the same, because no new catalog is created. The data is pulled from your endpoints and matched against the signatures on the server side.

Case 2: Non-standard file types

If you added new software signatures to the software catalog and those signatures are based on files other than common executable files, you must either wait until all the following steps in the catalog data flow complete or perform those steps yourself.

When you create signatures based on non-standard file types, the custom content version of the software catalog changes, because the new catalog is created and distributed to your endpoints. The catalog with the new signatures is matched against the data on your endpoints.