News

Altiris Offers Help with Tracking Licenses

• By Scott Bekker
• 06/13/2001

At any time, Microsoft Corp. can issue an enterprise a letter demanding that all software licenses be accounted for.

Finding documentation for software that may be several years old and purchased by some long-gone IT professional could be impossible.

Altiris Inc. this week unveiled a product called the Altiris Licensing Toolkit designed to help administrators get ahead of that problem.

"Lately, major software vendors, including Microsoft, have become more aggressive in auditing and enforcing software licenses," Altiris president and CEO Greg Butterfield said in a statement. "To be truly prepared for an audit, you need more than just an accurate and thorough inventory of installed software."

Butterfield contends an enterprise must know how license are being used for a software audit.

The Altiris toolkit is also designed to help companies make sure money isn't being wasted on unused or underused licenses.

A software inventory component, called Altiris Inventory Solution, provides data capture capability for Windows PCs and servers, allowing files to be grouped as applications or as suites.

The Altiris Application Metering Solution component measures if or how often applications are used.