Can ServiceNow discovery identify if a product/application is installed as a part of suite or stand-alone on a device?

[Parul Chaudhary]

Can ServiceNow discovery identify if a product/application is installed as a part of suite or stand-alone on a device? For ex- Microsoft Word can be purchased as a standalone product or it can be available in Office suite along with other child components. How does ServiceNow discovery recognize if installed application (i.e. MS Word in this case) was installed as a child component from office suite or standalone product?

[Alex Panzarella]

Yes and no. ServiceNow Discovery or another 3rd party data source identifies the installs (Ex. Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, etc.) and ServiceNow SAM provides the logic. Most of the time you'll have to create your own suites using the software model components or select a DMAP with suite defined. However, if you have discovery models auto generated on (Software Asset>Properties) a DMAP with a suite defined could be auto populated.

Screenshot 1 - Shows the software model DMAP with the column "suite defined." This means there are components that auto populate if selected

Screenshot 2 - Shows the components that were auto populated. If 75% (inference percent) of those components are on a machine, the suite is taken.

[Parul Chaudhary]

Thank you Alex for your response.

I think to solve this issue, ServiceNow ITOM discovery should be able to identify if the discovered application is installed as a part of suite/bundle vs standalone. This is very important for accurate licensing of suite apps as well as their components which are also available as a standalone software purchase. Typically other sam tools are able to determine this using discovered application evidences like executable, file path, registry keys (e.g. HKLM\Software\Windows\Office\14.0\Word) and meta data included in executable files.

I understand that in SAMpro we are able to create/define the suite applications (parent-child relationship) in software models but this feature isn't helpful in scenarios where end-user has deployed a standalone version of specific software which is also available as a part of suite. In scenario like this full suite license is not required. Although we can customize the suite definitions in software model to calculate license for individual component only but then this will be applicable on all devices.

For ex- as we know Microsoft Word is available to be purchased both as a standalone software as well as in Office suite and therefore the standalone version must be covered via MS Word license vs full office suite license for optimized licensing but unless the discovery tool is not able to determine this we can not do accurate licensing.