Collection of installed software using Service Graph cloud connectors

[EricCfromAZ]

Hello SAM experts. My customer is reviewing the use of Service Graph connectors for some of the public clouds (Azure, GCP and Azure). Regarding collecting information on installed software for IaaS cloud resources, apparently if you use Service Graph connector installed software is labeled as "Basic SAM (from package manager). If you look at the Agentless Horizontal Discovery support for collecting "installed software" it is labeled as Enterprise SAM. I need to understand the difference. Can someone tell me what the difference is and what does "Basic SAM (from package manager) mean? Thx.

//EricC

[EricCfromAZ]

I received a reply from a ServiceNow employee part of the asset management team. 

Enterprise SAM (ACC-V and Agentless Horizontal Discovery):

• Purpose: Supports comprehensive Software Asset Management (SAM) use cases requiring deep software discovery, OS-level access, and advanced features like certificate management or Oracle GLAS.
• Methods:
• Agent Client Collector provides detailed insights at the OS and application levels
• Agentless Horizontal Discovery offers robust service mapping capabilities
• Better for complex SAM use cases (per core, virtualization, etc.)

Basic SAM (Cloud Service Graph Connector):

• Purpose: Addresses lightweight SAM needs, such as basic software inventory from package managers via API-based discovery.
• Method: Utilizes the Cloud Service Graph Connector to retrieve data directly from cloud providers (e.g., AWS, Azure) without requiring OS credentials or firewall access.
• Better for simple SAM use cases (per device, per user, etc.)

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I'm not a cloud expert so I'm trying to understand how "Package Managers" are used in cloud environments. 

Is Package Managers always used to deploy/configure IaaS systems?

Is there a possibility that Package Managers are not used to deploy/configure IaaS systems, therefore, no data would be returned when SG-AWS/Azure/GCP is implemented?
I have reviewed the use cases and that is good, but can someone provide the difference of the data returned  between package manager and a list of installed software via add/remove programs (assuming Windows host here).

Thank you.

[lesmayhead67282]

Thanks for this clarification - I would like to reuse that slide / venn diagram - do you have the original or could you please send me a link - thanks