Client/server based counts in contracts?

Usage and Config BFI
1

Does BFI support client/server based counts where there is no client app?.. Here’s the use case:

Company uses a piece of software that is client-server / web based and is licensed based on how many unique users. BFI of course can detect the software, but will only be one instance (the server) with no indication of number of users.

Can BFI handle this data and do a contract / delta calculation?

I can write a policy action in BigFix to periodically run a script to gather the user count and put that value into a registry key or whatever then pick that value up in a property and bring that into BFI… But that is a computer property which is not very useful for a contract / delta calculations.

Does BFI even handle this type of data where it’s not a 1-1 computer-software relationship?

Thanks,
-chad

2

@TheChad
You could leverage Resource Utilization:
http://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSKLLW_9.5.0/com.ibm.bigfix.inventory.doc/Inventory/softinv/c_other_slm_comsumption.html

All you need to do is generate slmtag using your scripts.

3

Was getting some advice through another channel and was on the path of the ISO-19770 standard. 19770-2 is the identification (.swidtag), and 19770-4 is for utilization. I’ve found a tag maker for -2 here, but can’t find much information on -4 standard. Seems the standard is in development. Looks like maybe the .slmtag you linked above is IBM’s take on the -4 standard?

4

Yes, those are ISO-19770-4
Here is community that has a list of enabled IBM products:
https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/forums/html/topic?id=b03261e2-730f-48f0-8fc8-0b06f9bfa64e&ps=25