Today, all discovered Mac software is based on package data only. It is not normalized through the Software Catalog. This leads to large amounts of orphan software products in the BFI database with a generic Publisher called “Unclassified Mac Software because the information about the publisher is not available directly.”
85 Mac computers generated 27900 (!) software components.
Software Product installation reports in BFI are incomplete for customers that have both OS X and Windows-based computers due to the lack of real publisher data for cross-platform products from Publishers such as Adobe and Microsoft.
As it stands, this requires consolidation of software asset data outside of BFI, and defeats the purpose of having BFI…
I submitted the above Idea to HCL last October, and as of January it was under “Future Consideration”, perhaps within a year. If you think this is something that should be accelerated, consider voting for the Idea here: Implement Software Scanning on Mac OS X and add Mac software to the Software Catalog
Consider also providing a response here in the Forum with your experience and business impacts.
Thanks