AppClarity features by release
Summary
List of AppClarity features organized by the release they were implemented in. Links through to the features have been provided for convenience.
New features in AppClarity 8.1
This main release contains the following features:
Works with Tachyon Platform 8.1
No features or feature changes added in this release, but includes any hotfixes from previous versions.
AppClarity 8.0
Works with Tachyon Platform 8.0
No features or feature changes added in this release, but includes any hotfixes from previous versions.
AppClarity 7.1
AppClarity 7.1.105
This maintenance release contains a number of bug fixes:
Works with Tachyon Platform 5.2
No features or feature changes added in this maintenance release.
Features in the AppClarity 7.1 main release
This release introduced the following features:
Works with Tachyon 5.1
Windows Server OS LDC
New license demand for core based licensing of Windows Server OS (calculated with-in Microsoft Core LDC)
Compliance calculation is now based on new license demand
Support for Currency Conversion
When you can set a default currency (other than USD) AppClarity now renders all reporting and financial numbers (or graphs) only in that set currency
New UI controls added to improve usability:
Report refresh - ability to refresh reports on individual pages, and the ability to view the status of the last report refresh
UI Controls - ability to choose columns as either shown or hidden on individual screens
Installation mode change
AppClarity is now included in Tachyon Setup and can be installed and maintained this way
Hotfixing capability
Enhancements
Entitlement
New Active Entitlements Only toggle filter on Entitlement Summary page
The ability to export entitlement summary data
License Demand
Device names are now shown as hyperlinks on LDC reports
Compliance
Improved logic for rendering installs, and a new "Exempt" status on the compliance detailed table
Effective License Position (ELP) displayed for SQL Server components as it is for SQL Server entitlement
Reclaim
Reclaim product usage screen loading time is optimized for quick page load.
AppClarity 7.0
AppClarity 7.0 will significantly enhance your Software Asset Management (SAM) capabilities.
Improved Usability
The New UI experience is more user friendly compared to previous version, applying sorting, filtering etc is much easier
There are additional navigation options for operational ease
There are interactive charts in the Entitlement and Reclaim sections and more detailed compliance reports
There are suggestions on Top 10 reclaim policies users should create for maximum savings
Compliance and usage are shown in same pane for users to make informed procurement decisions.
SaaS Monitoring
Manage Renewals - monitor usage and renew only active subscriptions
Reallocate licenses: Monitor usage and reallocate under utilized subscriptions to other users
Compare usage of competing products - if users use apps from multiple vendors to achieve same things, consolidate to one/fewer vendors based on usage.
AI Powered Autocuration
Removes the delay in software identification so there's no delay in identifying software
Increases productivity, so users no longer have to spend hundreds of hours curating software, AI can help automatically match majority of the software as soon as they appear in the estate.
Avoids human errors, the AI is a more reliable and accurate source normalization
Users can enable AI-powered Autocuration to automatically identify installed software in the estate if recognized at a very high confidence level
If the confidence is lower than the threshold, it appears as a suggestion for customers to quickly add review and add the match rules, making it extremely quick to manage the unknown/unmatched software.
User-based Compliance
Ability to show license demand per user
Optimize procurement - customers can save significant cost by identifying when same users have access to same apps on multiple devices
Audit defence - gives users the ability to report accurately on apps that are licensed per user when vendor audits take place
There is software which can be licensed on both device as well as user metrics, AppClarity 7.0 will use entitlements of both metrics (user and device) to compute compliance and effective license position.
Compliance by Management Group
Entitlements can now be affiliated to specific Management Groups, allowing users to compute and view license demand for those Management Groups
Software Audits, entitlements are valid to be used only in a particular region
Internal Chargeback, budgets/profitability of a specific cost center
Specific Management Group Owner, when specific users view/monitor compliance for a specific Management Group.
Exempt Device(s) from license demand & Compliance
Exempt Device(s) from license demand and compliance calculations using Management Groups – exempt devices for accurate License Demand Compliance (LDC) reporting
Accurate reporting allows users to input company specific context into AppClarity so they don’t have to adjust the AppClarity report every time they need to assess their license position
Once the license exemptions are specified in the product, users do not need to worry about manually adjusting the numbers
MSDN: Devices used by MSDN subscribers for Dev purposes only
MSDN subscribers get umbrella access to numerous MS products including Visual Studio, Visio, Project, Office, SQL Server etc. These subscribers usually access a very well defined set of devices, which are used for development purposes only. Customers do not wish to count licenses for those software in LDC/Compliance reports as those are all covered under MSDN licenses.
Customers can exempt select devices, by adding those to a specific management group name (pre-defined template) to exempt those for Microsoft LDC and compliance reports
Helps customers compute accurate license demand for renewal/true-up
Test/Disaster Recovery/Admin/Third Party Devices - customers do not want certain devices to be considered for license/compliance calculations
There are devices purely used for Disaster Recovery, backups, testing, or belong to a third party and do not need to be licensed, customers can add exempt those devices (and all its installs) for a specific vendor or for ALL vendors by adding them to a specific Management Group.
The feature does not allow you to exempt devices for specific software, they can either exempt devices for all software from a particular vendor or all software of all installs.
RedHat LDC
Audit defence, users can respond to audits, compliance reports can help assess compliance position and mitigate risks
Optimization, reduce your software cost by applying the most efficient and cost effective way of licensing the estate
Renewal exercise, users can renew RedHat agreement using RedHat LDC reports
Users can compute license demand for RedHat products (LDC), counter on Sockets on devices
Users can compute Compliance position based on available entitlements and compute effective license position
Helps customers prepare for RedHat renewals/true-up exercise.
Role Based Access Control (RBAC), access to screens/actions as per role/permissions provided to user
Control Access, avoid unwanted access to different SAM team members, ensure data security and governance
Users will be able to control access to screens and actions (read/write/edit) on each screen for every role
There are a few pre-defined roles with appropriate permissions, however, users can create their custom roles by selecting from the list of permissions for each role.
Custom SCCM Uninstall
Offers an alternative way of uninstalling software, customers using SCCM and building custom packages can trigger SCCM-driven software uninstalls based on reclaim policies defined in AppClarity
If customers have created apps/packages in SCCM they want to use for uninstallation, they can use SCCM to Uninstall software, users can choose SCCM collection type as Device/User/or Both for a given policy.
Identify Vulnerabilities
Identify Vulnerabilities – end of support date, Software Category, and Latest Known Version fields have been exposed on UI for users to be able to identify vulnerabilities.
End of support (EoS) date - helps users identify installs nearing EoS or Past EoS, prompting users to upgrade
Latest Version Known for a software in 1E Catalog - allows users to see if they're on the latest version of the software release that’s installed, once this new version is seen, other installations not updated will be identified as not on the latest version
Top Software Categories - shows you the number of different products you have in the same software category, for example, if users have 4 different BI products – that may be something like PowerBI, QlickView, Tableau and ThoughtSpot – it enables them to identify areas for consolidation and more effective negotiations for pricing on the consolidated title.
AppClarity 6.1
AppClarity 6.1.100
This maintenance release introduced the following enhancements:
Entitlement consolidation reports are automatically run when publishing entitlements.
Reclaim consolidation reports are automatically run when publishing reclaim policies.
Reclaim policies can now be created for any product that exists in the 1E Catalog, previously reclaim policies could only be created for software currently installed in the environment.
Pending administrative actions notifications are now displayed for Published Reclaim Policies when an action is expected of the AppClarity administrator. For example, the administrator needs to respond to a user opting out of a reclaim.
Overlapping/Overriding reclaim policies are now automatically published as disabled. This gives the administrator the opportunity to set the precedence before the reclaim policies become active.
Information on the Management Groups a reclaim policy applies to is now displayed on the Policy Precedence page. This gives the administrator the information they need in order to appropriately set the precedence for overlapping reclaim policies.
Ability to refresh only one License Demand Calculation (LDC) report at a time, previously refreshing an LDC also forced the refresh of the LDCs below it on the page.
License/Maintenance entitlements now provide an option to view Licensable products only.
FIPS support.
Support for TLS 1.1 and TLS 1.2.
Features in the AppClarity 6.1 main release
This release introduced the following features:
Entitlement - there are a whole set of features that help you model your organization's entitlements:
Create a centralized collection of all your entitlements in AppClarity, using an ISO 19770-3 aligned entitlement library
Create license, maintenance and agreement entitlements, with associated product usage rights. You can also attach Contracts, containing the proof of license ownership, to the entitlements
Bulk upload of entitlements using TSV files to create draft entitlements for verification, before bulk publishing them
Use SKU to create entitlements; SKU auto-populate product specifications and use-rights
Link one entitlement to another to help model complex agreements and contracts
Upload soft copies of contracts
Create separate sets of entitlements in different repositories
Schedule Entitlement consolidation to run at regular intervals
License Demand Calculation (LDC) Reports - AppClarity lets you calculate how many licenses you need for specific products with complex license requirements
Perform license demand calculations for complex license metrics. Currently related to Microsoft SQL Server, IBM PVUs, and Oracle Processors
Use LDCs to compute the optimum number of licenses required to cover your complex virtual/physical/clustered server environment, letting you see the best way to purchase new licenses or renew your subscription-based licenses
Review records that couldn't be processed by AppClarity for any reason to perform due diligence and mitigate risk
Schedule LDC consolidations to run at regular intervals
Compliance - these features let you gauge how well your entitlements cover your installations
View the compliance position of each software based on your entitlements
Optimally make use of licenses to compute your compliance position
Review records that couldn't be processed by AppClarity for any reason to perform due diligence and mitigate risk
View compliant and non-compliant installations
Create separate compliance repositories for separate environments by linking them to a unique set of Inventory and Entitlement repositories
Reclaim - these features let you reclaim software to minimize license costs or protect your devices
Reclaim software based on software usage
Create policies for software you want to reclaim
Create policies that are focused on particular management groups
If policies overlap across management groups, your can set their precedence to resolve conflict
Evaluate the impact of a policy by running a pre-flight report before putting it into production
View Software saving reports showing the value of software reclaims performed using Appclarity
Schedule reclaim consolidations to run at regular intervals so that you are viewing up to date information
SLA Platform - the new AppClarity is built upon the SLA Platform and is able to use its consolidated inventory data to derive software installations and usage.
SLA Platform now contains two new connectors:
Tachyon powered inventory - information gathered by Tachyon can be used to augment the software and hardware inventory and software usage data, normally found in Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager, or to enable AppClarity solutions to work in environments where no Configuration Manager or other inventory tools are available. Using the Tachyon inventory data source means that the information displayed in AppClarity will be more accurate and up-to-date than using Configuration Manager on its own. Each device will need to have the Tachyon Agent installed, which will enable Tachyon to bring inventory data where no other solution agents are present or where they are not responding. If you have Configuration Manager installed, but without the SQL MOF implemented, Tachyon will fill in the gaps in the Configuration Manager data to provide information about the SQL Server editions in your environment. Currently this is specific to SQL Server but will be extended to include more products in subsequent releases.
IBM BigFix inventory connector - an IBM BigFix connector has been added to the SLA Platform enabling AppClarity to work in environments where that product is being used to manage your computer software estate.
AppClarity Business Intelligence dashboard - The new Business Intelligence SLA Platform consumer provides several dashboard tiles that let you view and examine your AppClarity features graphically.