How to implement software inventory management in large organizations

With the use of computers for each and every task in any organization, there are many systems available at any point of time in the network. Consider the number of software programs and the processes running those systems altogether. Each of the users might require a different program and those programs are installed for them from time to time.

After a certain period you find it difficult to track whether a program is available in a particular system. For this you need to have a software inventory for each of the systems in the organization. To have this list in place, you can go to the system, boot it up and see what are all installed in it. It is too hard to work in that fashion. You need some software program that can scan the entire network and give you a report of the type of hardware and the software that is used in that network node. That is where the network inventory management software comes. You can use this for software inventory management in your organization.

There are two methods to work with this program for efficient software inventory management. In one method called the agent-less method, the program gets the information about the remote machine through WMI. You get information like the operating system used in the remote machine, the software installed; the processes that are running at anytime etc. you can get a report on this machine in different formats. This gives a snapshot of the machine at a particular time. If you can take such reports from time to time, you can also compare the existing report with a history to find out the changes that are made to the remote machine.

In the agent-based method you need to install some additional software in the remote machine so that this addition software called the agent keeps track of the changes that is going on in the remote machine and lists the changes that are made to it from time to time. This agent sends the details of the remote machine to the main machine that has the network inventory management software installed. This software does not cost much. It comes for even less than $100, so it is worth the investment made.