Software metering is the monitoring and controlling of

software Software consists of computer programs that instruct the Execution (computing), execution of a computer. Software also includes design documents and specifications. The history of software is closely tied to the development of digital comput ...

for

analytics Analytics is the systematic computational analysis of data or statistics. It is used for the discovery, interpretation, and communication of meaningful patterns in data, which also falls under and directly relates to the umbrella term, data sc ...

and enforcing of

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. It can be either passive data collection, or active restriction.

Types

Software metering can take different forms: * Tracking and maintaining

software license A software license is a legal instrument governing the use or redistribution of software. Since the 1970s, software copyright has been recognized in the United States. Despite the copyright being recognized, most companies prefer to sell lic ...

s. Making sure that the number of concurrent users of the software do not exceed the terms of the license. This can include monitoring of concurrent usage of software for real-time enforcement of license limits. * Real-time monitoring of all (or selected) applications running on the computers within the organization in order to detect unregistered or unlicensed software and prevent their execution, or limit their execution to within certain hours. The

system administrator An IT administrator, system administrator, sysadmin, or admin is a person who is responsible for the upkeep, configuration, and reliable operation of computer systems, especially multi-user computers, such as Server (computing), servers. The ...

can configure the software metering agent on each computer in the organization. * Fixed planning to allocate software usage to computers according to the policies a company specifies and to maintain a record of usage and attempted usage. A company can check out and check in licenses for mobile users, and can also keep a record of all licenses in use. This is often used when limited license counts are available to avoid violating strict license controls. * A method of software licensing where the licensed software automatically records how many times, or for how long one or more functions in the software are used, and the user pays fees based on this actual usage (also known as 'pay-per-use')

Types

References

See also