In the Software Asset Management industry, we have had software metering/usage in several tools for quite some time now. But what most SAM vendors call software metering/usage is in fact nothing more than how long your software is running a process in the Task Manager, not how much it is actually used by the user. Xensam provides this data set, which we call Total Usage. However, we also provide data on how much you actually use the application. We call this Active Usage.

Active Usage enables cost savings in several ways. For example, CAD software, Cloud applications, or expensive office applications like Microsoft Project, and Visio, can be uninstalled or replaced with more cost-effective editions or even free “viewer” software if the Active Usage is too low. Traditional Total Usage does not present the right picture of usage, on the contrary, it manipulates the data.

With Xensam’s Active usage you can make better decisions on investing in Cloud applications. Cloud providers often present multiple choices and by using Xensam, users with low Active Usage can swap to a product with fewer features and functions. For example; Office365 E1 instead of an E3.

The real difference between E1 and E3 is that with E1 the user must use Microsoft Office online, which means that files needs to be stored online either with SharePoint or OneDrive.

So, the first question that you should ask yourself before your organization moves to Office365 is if the organization is fully prepared to make the move at the given time? If it’s not ready, all your users will end up with E3 or E5 suites and you will pay more than you did before, but you will not use the capabilities of the Cloud (what you actually are paying for) and you can’t utilize E1 and save money. It’s a lose-lose scenario.

With Xensam’s agent you will get Active Usage on all installed applications and you can evaluate how many users will need E1 and how many will need an E3 or E5 license. If you do this you can save up to $12 per month per user: $144/year per user. Of course, Active Usage can be used for all standard applications too, leading to strong cost savings for your costly CAD environment.

With the Next Generation of Software Asset Management, you can for the first time, pay for what you are actually using and not for what is running as a process in your task manager (which is what you have to do with tools from previous generations).