The software asset management ecosystem has changed dramatically over the last decade. On-premise software still holds majority share in the total software spend and several SAM vendors use the discovery and data in the CMDB to solve an overarching conundrum around being compliant.
CMDB and Discovery sets the foundation for enabling software asset management and the quality of normalized discovery data is imperative for the reconciliation engine to accurately calculate compliance. It is an undeniable fact that many organizations are either struggling to identify a single source of truth for the deployed software in end-user client devices as well as physical and virtual servers.
Let's take an example of Oracle Database Server installed in your server infrastructure. Raw discovery data from Linux and Windows servers may provide versions of installed software. If you use different discovery sources for Linux and Windows, then you may end up with non-standardized publishers & product information.
For Example:
- Discovery tool for Linux: Publisher --> Oracle Corp.
- Discovery tool for Windows: Publisher --> Oracle.
Version and Edition Information plays a vital role in categorizing the Software Model, which then can be used in software entitlements and will be leveraged during reconciliation of compliance position.
Software Model (Oracle DB Server Enterprise)
Reconciliation Results (by Product)
ServiceNow normalization process compares the discovered publisher, discovered product, and discovered version values against the ServiceNow content repository to get normalized equivalents. Matches are added to the corresponding normalized fields (publisher, product, and version) of the Discovery Model table. The normalized fields are then used to match up entitlements purchased, and to compute license positions.
Software Asset Management Content Service is a crowdsourced service for ServiceNow SAM customers, which enable customers to send un-normalized/partially normalized datasets anonymously to ServiceNow software librarians for content research. Customers can pull updates to their Normalization Library in weekly schedule in an automated way. The new content service will improve normalization hit ratios and enable standardization of@ the discovery data. This service is included with the new SAM offering from ServiceNow.
Normalized data helps in standardization and improves process efficiency around license compliance. Learn more about the normalization and content services from ServiceNow Jakarta release.
