Beyond traditional software asset management, software license optimization brings about the most immediately apparent business justification for acquiring advanced engineering software management tools. However, it is an ongoing process that must always start with a full understanding of your true software license usage.

As the complexities of software entitlements and the IT environments of global enterprises increase, determining their actual license usage becomes more difficult. True concurrency of usage across different time zones must be taken into consideration. A distinction must be made between active and inactive license usage. User behavior must be examined. And many other factors must also be regarded before the actual license usage can be ascertained.

Here are five reports that could help increase your level of awareness of your company’s true license usage.

I. Enterprise Overview

An enterprise overview provides a glimpse of the total license usage for all software applications across the entire enterprise. A quick comparison between the maximum number of available licenses and the maximum number of licenses that were checked out concurrently would give an idea of the actual licensing needs. Looking at the maximum number of licenses in use and comparing it with the total elapsed time could show which applications are frequently checked out and which ones are used for longer periods of time. And factoring in the number of distinct users and the number of denials could show how popular the application is. Comparing the number of distinct users with the maximum number of licenses in use could expose potential user behavior issues.

However, enterprise overviews cannot tell the whole story. For that, we need to dig deeper and break down the information.