Now that you’ve identified and normalized all the Software Publishers in your environment you can begin the task of identifying and normalizing each publisher’s applications. As with the publisher information there are several areas on your system that will contain the information you need. You’ll also see a lot of variation with how a publisher provides this information. The data is not normalized and different versions or even releases of a given program will be represented differently.

Software publishers identify their applications a myriad of different ways and that information about the publisher’s applications can be stored in several areas on your system that can be collected by your quality discovery tool.

Those areas are:

  1. System registry, Add/Remove programs section. You can view this information using “Regedit” and navigating to:
Registry FolderHKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
Registry FolderSOFTWARE
Registry FolderMICROSOFT
Registry FolderWINDOWS
Registry FolderCurrentVersion
Registry FolderUninstall (aka Add/Remove)
Registry FolderKeys

Information contained in these Registry Keys often, but not always, include a publisher “alias.”

WARNING: Editing information contained in the Registry can stop an application from functioning properly or at all.

  1. Information embedded in an executable file header can include a publisher “alias.”
  2. The folder (directory) containing an executable file can include a publisher application name.

The most efficient way to begin this process is the analysis of the Add/Remove (ARP) Program data stored in a systems Registry.

The remainder of this blog discusses how to best identify and normalize ARP data. A subsequent article will discuss file based identification.

Prior to beginning this process you must make a determination of which applications you are most concerned with. In other which software programs do you want in your “Managed Software List.”

Literally ALL the applications on your system are covered by a license of some sort or another. Types of licenses include:

  1. Commercial/Shareware
    1. Contractual
    2. Shrink wrap
    3. Click wrap
  2. Freeware
  3. Dependent
  4. Bundled
  5. Open Source
  6. Subscription

Please note that we include and treat shareware the same as Commercial. In our experience the time required to determine the Shareware restrictions or limitations are simply not worth the effort required. Therefore, we recommend you treat Shareware the same as Commercial software.

As with Publisher information Discovery tools have not done their job to normalize this data. As with most data elements in your discovery data you’ll find some or all of the following:

  1. Inconsistent application names
  2. Garbage or information that is unusable.
  3. Missing application names
  4. Applications that do not represent a licensable application

The following graphic is an example of inconsistent information we’ve seen.

The following graphic is just a example of the Garbage data that we’ve seen.

Despite its apparent problems using ARP for software identification is the most efficient and cost effective method for producing your Managed Software List. From our experience you can accurately identify 90% of the licensable applications in your environment from ARP and do so at a cost that is a small fraction of traditional file base analysis.

The actual task of identifying and normalizing ARP data is relatively straight forward. What you want to be careful of is that you use consistent program naming conventions throughout your project. This will insure that when subsequent audits are performed that the information will be consistent. Decisions you’ll want to make include:

  1. Application naming rules
    1. Include or exclude publisher name
    2. Capitalization rules
    3. Include or exclude version and release data
  2. Concise definitions of License Types (see above) to insure consistency
  3. Versioning rules
    1. Separate major and release versions
    2. What do use when the version is missing from data
    3. Using versions that are inconsistent between the ARP application name and version field
  4. Determination of software category (if you desire this additional information). We use the UNSPSC category list in our knowledge base.

We can assist you; for the first time ever, SWident has decided to license its ARP Knowledge Base of over 24,000 ARP based applications.

This is NOT what you would normally expect in a database of this nature. We provide you with the following fields of information about each ARP string:

  1. Normalized publisher name
  2. ARP String
  3. Type of String including:
    1. Licensable
    2. Associated
    3. OEM/Driver
    4. Operating system
    5. Proprietary
    6. Malware/Spyware/Adware
    7. Red Flag (Note Applications, such as peer-2-peer file sharing applications are designated as Red Flag do not belong in a business environment.)
  4. Normalized application name
  5. Major Version
  6. Release Version
  7. License Type including:
    1. Commercial
    2. Freeware
    3. Open Source
    4. Dependent
    5. Bundled
    6. Subscription
  8. Software category

Stop struggling and wasting valuable resources identifying software publishers

For more information contact us today, we’ll license you our database and assist you in identifying the ARP applications that we don’t have and all at a very reasonable license/service fee.