AssetMetrix, a small Canadian developer of asset and license management solutions, is being acquired by Microsoft. Although AssetMetrix makes several products, Microsoft is mainly after the company's technology for identifying and reporting what software applications are installed on a computer. AssetMetrix has a library of more than 100,000 "fingerprints" identifying various software titles and versions. Microsoft plans to integrate this technology into its Systems Management Server (SMS) product before the end of 2006 and offer it at no charge to existing SMS customers. However, Microsoft did not say whether the AssetMetrix technology will be available to SMS 2003 customers or only to customers of SMS 2003 R2, which is currently in beta and will be released during the summer of 2006.

Integration of the AssetMetrix technology into SMS will make it easier for organizations to compare software license purchases against what software is actually installed, thereby helping make sure that they are in compliance and using their software assets efficiently. Although SMS 2003 can already inventory computers for installed software, the results depend on developers to properly register their product in Windows' Add/Remove Programs Control Panel application, which many products don't do. Furthermore, the software industry has no consistent approach to product versioning, a standardized list of publisher names, or standard ways of defining the relationships between multiple installed programs associated with a single license, such as how one license of Canon's digital camera software installs many different applications. For this reason, even with an inventory tool like SMS, it can be difficult to determine how many licenses each product needs.

The AssetMetrix technology allows each computer's SMS agent to run a scanning program that compares file properties and Registry entries against the AssetMetrix signature catalog and report the results back to the SMS server. As long as the software has a fingerprint in the AssetMetrix catalog, SMS can produce accurate summarized inventory reports that can be compared with records of software licenses purchased.

Information on the SMS Roadmap can be found in "Systems Management Server Roadmap" on page 3 of the May 2006 Update.

SMS 2003 was detailed in "Stronger Systems Management Server Worth a New Look" on page 9 of the Nov. 2003 Update.