Is there a way to identify unused software?

3 comments

• 
  Martin Kretzschmar September 28, 2021 14:08 Official comment

  Hi Rick,

  Thank you for reaching out. Unfortunately, it is not possible without further ado to map inventory to usage data.

  Please find the KB article explaining this in greater detail here.

  I am sure you are aware of this already, but for the sake of completeness, I would like to point out the dashboards we have for this use case.

  Dashboard: Applications > Application Inventory
  Dashboard: Applications > Application Usage

  The first displays inventory information about the installed/not installed applications, while the second one displays information about actual application usage (meaning being used as foreground apps). Both dashboards have drilldowns built-in, to explore a great level of detail.

  Thanks, Martin

• 0
  
  Rick Horne September 28, 2021 16:54

  Thanks Martin.  I'm not aware of any other tool that would do this - SCCM has metering, but it's very noisy.  UberAgent may come the closest.
  I'll explore the data, even if not 100% accurate, it may give us what we need.  We have a regulatory requirement to remove unused software to reduce vulnerable surface area.
  Basically, based on the list of installed applications, we just need to see if some part of that app has run.  
  
  

• 0
  
  Martin Kretzschmar September 29, 2021 07:39

  Hi Rick,

  This makes absolute sense, thank you for the further explanation.

  Indeed, the most pragmatic approach here is probably to map the contents of the Application Inventory dashboard with those of Application Usage and/or Application Performance.

  Thanks, Martin