You might know 1E for their NightWatchman brand, famous for switching off PCs at night when they are not in use and saving energy.

1E boasts some 16 million licenses across 1400 customers and the company claims that over 90% of their customers use the Microsoft SCCM platform for systems management. So it’s a logical step for a company focused on eliminating IT waste to take a look at software usage.

AppClarity is an agentless solution that allows Software Asset Managers to automatically reclaim unused software via policy decisions

The company is taking a focused and pragmatic approach to helping companies save money on licensing. The steps are as follows:

1. AppClarity identifies unused software via SCCM
2. The value of unused software is quantified to support policy choices
3. Unused software is automatically removed via policy decisions
4. End users can participate or be educated as part of the process (see screenshot)

I think the most important step here is point 3. Software is automatically identified and removed by design.

For example as SAM manager you can set a policy to automatically remove any copies of Microsoft Project that are not being used. Not only will this be acted upon automatically within SCCM but it also includes all the communication necessary and a positive user experience with the end user. It won’t guarantee compliance or be a silver bullet to resolve your license management problems but it builds in efficiency in the front end.

I look forward to reviewing AppClarity in more detail over the coming months. In particular – setting up software usage monitoring within SCCM is not exactly an out-of-the-box experience so I would be interested to see how they handle this without an agent.

More details here: https://www.1e.com/softwareproducts/appclarity/index.aspx