FrontRange simplifies software asset management

Software asset management is now a boardroom issue

Infrastructure management firm FrontRange Solutions is to launch a new version of its License Manager product tomorrow, featuring capabilities designed to help firms save money and boost compliance efforts by streamlining software asset management projects.

License Manager 3.1 features support for Microsoft's Systems Management Server 2003, allowing customers to take a direct feed from the server management product to ease data collection and discovery.

The new version also makes it easier for enterprises to get software licence data into the Manager product, reducing the risk of error, according to Matt Fisher, director of marketing at FrontRange.

"With the first couple of iterations it was a bit of a chore," he explained. "With 3.1 we've created a bulk data upload tool as a way of allowing end users to populate a spreadsheet with all the licence agreements they have, and we pull that into the License Manager."

Finally, the firm has expanded its Nexus online database, adding to the hundreds of thousands of vendors' licence records which already populate the tool. The technology is designed to alert customers as soon as they enter licence data into the Manager if there is a discrepancy between their figures and those of the vendor.

"If there is a small discrepancy we can normalise it, but where we can't we'll flag it to the end user," said Fisher. "Historically the Nexus was launched for Microsoft products, but as software asset management maturity has grown we've had to include other vendors."