As organizations strive to optimize their operations, reduce costs, and improve productivity, one area where significant benefits can be realized is through the effective usage metering of software applications. By accurately monitoring and measuring software usage, companies can make informed decisions, improve cost controls, support portfolio planning, and strengthen audit defence. In this blog post, we will explore the crucial role of software usage metering tools and provide a checklist to help you evaluate the effectiveness of your current usage metering capabilities.

The Importance of Software Usage Metering

Usage metering plays a vital role in several key business process areas, enabling organizations to achieve tangible benefits:

Software License Cost Control

Effective application usage metering is instrumental in ensuring software license cost control. Many organizations install or make software available to their employees, only to find that it is underutilized or not used at all. This results in substantial financial waste, especially when scaled across the organization. By implementing accurate usage metering organizations can identify and address the issue of unused software, leading to significant cost savings.

Optimizing Cloud-Based Application Provisioning

The increasing adoption of self-provisioned, cloud-based applications or internal “App Store” models for application delivery has brought new challenges. Improper provisioning of applications can lead to unnecessary hardware and software costs. To optimize IT costs strategically, organizations must have improved usage metering capabilities. Accurate usage metering allows for better decision-making in provisioning applications, ensuring that resources are allocated efficiently.

Migrations

Migrations, whether to the cloud, a new operating system, or different applications, have become routine tasks for organizations of all sizes. However, these migrations can be costly, requiring compatibility testing and remediation. Software usage metering plays a crucial role in reducing migration costs by accurately identifying the applications that are actually used, eliminating the need to migrate unused applications. By leveraging active usage metering, organizations can streamline their migration processes and achieve significant cost savings.

Driving application adoption

In addition to the reduction in application license costs that is often a primary driver, driving the adoption of standard applications can benefit your company’s productivity, security, and bottom line in significant ways:  enhanced productivity, better collaboration, and a reduced burden on IT.

Active usage data shows what’s really going on – the how, where, and who of application adoption – providing customers with accurate, near-real-time data to baseline, drive adoption, and eliminate digital process friction.

Key considerations when Optimizing Software Utilization

To maximize the benefits of usage metering, organizations must understand which considerations are central to their goals . This is a checklist to help you evaluate and enhance your current software application utilization:

1. Minute-by-minute usage data: In-built usage metering tools don’t give enough detail on active usage; they fail to collect key information that’s needed to build an accurate picture of usage requirements. Best practice is to employ granular active usage analytics that can provide minute-by-minute insights into your organization’s true application usage.
2. Read/Write Detection: Determine whether the application usage is read-only or read/write to accurately identify license requirements and provide cost-effective solutions.
3. License Camping: Identify instances where users launch high-end applications merely to demonstrate the need for a license. Address this issue by analyzing actual usage patterns and optimizing license allocation.
4. Web Application Usage: Move beyond basic page load monitoring and focus on metering the time spent interacting with specific elements of web applications to gain a comprehensive understanding of usage requirements.
5. Plug-In Usage: Ensure that usage metering covers individual plug-ins or add-ons to software, as they can have significant licensing implications and impact migration plans.
6. Sub-Function Usage: For complex applications with modular functionality, configure usage metering to monitor and report on sub-function use to accurately determine genuine requirements.
7. Primary User Identification: Implement measures to accurately identify the primary user of workstations or applications, particularly in environments with hot-desking or resource sharing, to enable targeted decision-making.

Overall

Software active usage metering tools have become crucial for organizations seeking to optimize costs, improve efficiency, and make informed decisions. By accurately monitoring software usage, organizations can identify unused or underutilized software, reduce migration costs , and ensure effective governance. Evaluating the scope of usage metering capabilities and employing best practices, as outlined in the checklist provided, will enable organizations to unlock the full potential of usage metering and drive innovation while maximizing cost savings.