This was the phrase that started it all, this forced Open-AudIT founder Mark to develop the Open-AudIT software. Fast-forward almost 20 years and similar questions are still being asked in many organisations worldwide. What has changed though is the process of acquiring this information, 20 years ago Mark drove to each location and manually counted each install. Today to get this same information, a report can be run and it will take a few seconds. The more proactive user will have this report scheduled and waiting in an inbox whenever desired.
The goal extends further than a counting exercise, there is now a lot more at stake. Formerly, software licensing was the number of installs, but this process has expanded and become more complicated. Gartner has presented guidelines to leverage the current software licensing that is in place using Software Asset Management.
The first steps, however, are fundamental to what Open-AudIT does as an open source program. Device Discovery and Inventory Management are two core principles behind Open-AudIT and they also coincide with the first two steps in minimising your software licensing spend.