BigFix Zeros In on Software Licensing Costs

BigFix on Jan. 13 announced the general availability of its new software asset management solution, Decision Support System - Software Asset Management.

The company specializes in high-performance enterprise systems and security management solutions, according to Jeff Spitulnik, director of product management at BigFix, and BigFix DSS SAM leverages the BigFix unified management platform to bring deep, continuous visibility and automation to software asset management, enabling enterprises to manage software licenses, deployment and usage with greater speed and accuracy than other approaches.

Indeed, by bringing new levels of visibility and efficiency to software asset management, DSS SAM can help enterprises cut IT costs stemming from unused software licenses, license misallocations, rogue and nonstandard software installations, software under-licensing penalties, and expensive software audit and true-up processes, Spitulnik said.

“We pride ourselves on the visibility and accuracy of the data we deliver,” he told eWEEK. “With a tool like DSS SAM you can get extreme visibility into all your endpoints, and you can turn software asset management from a difficult activity to an everyday activity.”

Case in point, Spitulnik said, is that during the beta process for the DSS SAM solution, an early adopter customer in the financial services sector took on DSS SAM as part of what was scheduled to be a 90-day activity to review all of their IBM software licenses. After a two-week period to install and get acquainted with the BigFix software, the customer was able to “reduce a 90-day activity down to a 10-minute process to produce a report. And they had 89,000 computers,” Spitulnik said.