Automatic Software Configuration Generation for License Reconciliation
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing remote network management platforms face ambiguity in determining compliance with software licenses due to the lack of established software configurations for certain applications, leading to unclear indications of compliance status and potential misinterpretation by users.
Innovation Solution
The system automatically generates a new software configuration for unsupported applications, associating it with the specific publisher, title, and version, and indicating zero rights allocation and consumption, ensuring accurate compliance reporting.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Measurement precision
If the system manually establishes software configurations for each application, then compliance tracking accuracy is improved, but operational complexity and time consumption increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system automatically discovers software applications on managed devices and self-generates software configurations without requiring manual user input. The discovery module collects application information (publisher, title, version) and the configuration generation module creates corresponding software configurations automatically, eliminating the need for users to manually establish configurations while maintaining accurate compliance tracking
Solution Approach 2:
The system performs preliminary discovery of software applications and automatic generation of software configurations before compliance determination can be made. By proactively collecting application information and pre-establishing configurations, the system ensures that all necessary data is ready for accurate compliance tracking without requiring subsequent manual intervention
2Productivity
If the system automatically discovers all software applications, then productivity is improved, but measurement precision of compliance status deteriorates due to lack of configurations for discovered applications
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary automatic discovery of software applications and immediately generates corresponding software configurations as part of the same discovery process. This ensures that whenever an application is discovered, its configuration is simultaneously established, maintaining both high productivity and accurate compliance measurement capability
Solution Approach 2:
The system uses the discovery module to automatically collect application information and the configuration generation module to self-create software configurations without external intervention. This self-service approach maintains accurate compliance tracking for all discovered applications while preserving high discovery efficiency
3Device complexity
If the system lacks software configurations for certain applications, then device complexity is reduced, but reliability of compliance determination deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The system automatically generates software configurations for all discovered applications without requiring manual configuration management. The configuration generation module creates appropriate software configurations autonomously based on discovered application information, maintaining simple operation while ensuring reliable compliance determination for all applications
Data Source
AI summary
A computing system may include a database and server device(s) disposed within a remote network management platform. The database may contain (i) discovery information for installations of software applications on computing devices of a managed network, and (ii) software configurations for a subset of the software applications, the software configurations respectively indicating rights allocations and consumption for each of the subset of the software applications. The server device(s) may be configured to: determine that the software configurations do not support a particular software application, where the discovery information indicates that the particular software application is installed on computing device(s) of the managed network; and responsively, generate a particular software configuration for the particular software application, the particular software configuration indicating: (i) a rights allocation of zero rights, and (ii) a rights consumption according to the discovery information; and update the database to include the particular software configuration.