Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) is widely used for discovery and inventory, of hardware and software, in the Windows environment. It can also be used for software deployment and removal, again only on the Windows platform.

These capabilities are traditionally what has been expected from ITAM tools, but are not designed or capable of critical Software Asset Management (SAM) capabilities, which is a problem when trying to adopt SAM.

If you are looking at using SCCM for software asset management to enable compliance or are looking at going further and optimizing your license position to reduce costs, then you will encounter quite a few difficulties.

Software metering – vital for optimization

One of the critical shortfalls of SCCM concerns software metering or application monitoring. Whilst it will carry out this important task, it does not work out of the box, is complex and requires an SCCM trained expert to set it up. Once setup, you need to wait many days before you can begin to analyse the information it produces.

SOURCE: certero.com