Version 4 News

[Webmaster]

Please follow this thread for details on systemhound version 4 development.

Release Date
systemhound version 4 is currently scheduled for a release in Q3 2003.

We have a whole host of exciting new features in development but we would like to have your views as well. Please use this forum to give us your opinions on the product and what you would like to see in the future. At a later date, we will list here the new features and enhancements that will go into systemhound v4.

[Julian]

I am generally happy with the behaviour of the agent that sits on each of the machines.

I was particularly happy by the question I received from the users after I warned them I was going to install SystemHound on their machines : "Have you installed that tool on my machine yet?"  

I figure that they didn't even notice whether the client was installed, it was had just the right impact on their lives!  None!

However, I would like to see some improvements in the user-interface, which can be clumsy at times.

* Finding a particular software package in a list of over 2500 package can be slow. Add a search, or at least a list of page numbers that can be clicked.

* Allow filtering by (a) only software where licensing information has been entered and (b) only software where licensing information is violated.

* Allow me to nominate software that should be hidden on the web report via the web. Having to swap to a different machine to mark a particular piece of software is clumsy.

* Allow me to enter licensing information and filtering information in the same list, so I don't need to flitter back and forth.

* Allow me to enter a text description against each software package, so if I find a cryptic entry and have to hunt it down, I don't forget the information next time.

I hope these suggestions are useful to the SystemHound developers.

Regards

Julian

[Julian]

I have a number of Solaris and Linux machines on the system.  When I do a mass push of the SystemHound agent to all machines, I get error messages.

I understand these OS are not supported, and I SHOULD receive error messages.

However, the error messages I receive are inconsistent and uninformative.

It would be helpful if SystemHound recognized the problem and displayed the error message "This machine is not running Windows. SystemHound only supports Windows." or similar.

Regards

Julian

[hackenbow]

What will pricing be like for this version?  For both those on maintenance and those that aren't?

[DrLurch]

Hello, I am a new user to systemhound, we just installed the client on 400 systems, you are bring out a newer version, how will this effect us?

[gyrpema]

Hi!

I am a newbie to Systemhound and I really like the simpleness to install and view the inventory of our network clients. There are however a couple of things I'd like to see in a future version.

It would be nice to be able to login to Microsoft e-open through Systemhound and import the licensinformation instead of manually insert it.

As I installed the Systemhound client on our network computers I noticed that some inprovements in the wizard is to recommend.
I would like to split the wizard into an install and an uninstall with the following differenses. The install wizard should only find computers that don't have the Systemhound client installed and vice versa.
Also I would very much like to see a select all and unselect all button when adding computers to install the client on.

[Nish]

Pricing will not be decided until nearer release. V4 is not due until Q3; if you have purchased recently, you can upgrade to the new version if you wish. But I repeat that dates/pricing are not confirmed yet

[Julian]

Another suggestion:

Some products have free upgrades. For those products, it would be useful to associate licensing information with the whole group rather than an individual item.

For example, if I have 7 licenses from Product X, and System Hound finds 3 instances of Product X V3, and 5 instances of Product X V4, they should be flagged.

Let me make it a little more complicated: Sometimes the different versions have different names (product names and company names change). The user will have to select every item in the group.

Let me make it more complicated again: Sometimes when you upgrade a product on a machine, it appears twice in SystemHound, once under each version. There should be an option to ignore one of the copies in this situation.

[chnkysoup]

SystemHound does a great job of keeping track of software and hardware changes across my network. I have been very pleased with the software as well as the excellent, responsive customer support.  There are a few things I would add to the next version though, in order to give the user more control over the interface.

1) I have a laptop on my network that constantly reports that the processor has been removed or replaced.  I think there should be a feature in the interface that would let me ignore this change so that it won't appear on the website.  i.e. "Ignore processor changes from this computer"

2) It would be nice if there was a comment field that could be filled in when you view all the machines in the hardware page.  If this was added, I could sort the machines in the hardware page not only by machine name (default) but also by any other information that I wanted to tie in to each machine. For example, I would tie user names to each machine name.

I think this software does basic auditing quite well and if it gave the user a little more control, it could be a very powerful tool.  The changes made from version 3.0 to 3.1 were a step in the right direction and I'm glad to see that work is being done to continually upgrade teh software's functionality.

[gyrpema]

I read a question by Juliane in the 3.1 part of this forum and started thinking about the different lisencing methods from different companies.

Wouldn't it be nice if a software inventory application like Systemhound could have knowledge of such things and then automatically keep track of the software and connect it to the correct license.

Could it be done?

Since several companies have a lot of different type of licenses the administrator should be able to choose which type of licensing program he would like to use for his products.

Of course it is impossible to apply this for all applications but if you start with say the 5 most common application developers.

[Nish]

gyrpema, what do you mean 'connect it to the right licence'

can you expand a little, perhaps give an example, so I can understand exactly what you mean?

[Julian]

I think I understand gyrpema's concept, and it sounds very useful.

If Software Innovations maintained a database of the most popular applications from the most popular vendors, it could track the *types* of licenses that are used by those vendors.

E.g. If systemhound sees 6 copies of "Emacs", it can mark it as "Freeware. No need to worry."

If it sees 6 copies of Rational Rose installed, it can say "Rational Rose counts its own licenses. No need to worry."

Importantly, it would have to recognise that 3 separate and distinct items in the database are actually 3 versions of the same product.

If it sees 3 different versions of a product on a machine, and that product house charges separately for each version (say Photoshop) it can say "You need 3 licenses for this product: a license for version 1, an  license for version 2 and a license for version 3".

If it sees 3 different versions of a product on a machine, and that product house gives free upgrades, it can say "You need one license for this product."

These are the sorts of issues that cause me to scratch my head when someone asks me the question "How many free licenses do we have left for product X?"  I don't want to have to read the detailed EULA every time to resolve that question accurately.

[gyrpema]

Julian understands me good. However there is one more issue. Different licensing pack from the same vendor.

If we look at Microsoft as an example. They've got a lot of different license packs, which can be attached to almost every product they offer. With different license packs I mean for example:

• Open Volume
• Select
• Enterprise

Each of them is devided into smaller license packs.

Here the administrator need to decide which license should be attached to each application. There for you need to be able to manage licenses for each application manually too.

A feature like this may be very useful if you use the Microsoft Open Subscription License or another licensing methods where you rent the software. Systemhound could be used to count the applications and give a proposition on how many licenses should be payed for the next year.

As an administrator you should keep track on these kind of things but as you all know it is a heck of a job to do it. A feature like this could minimize the time spent to count applications on the network

[Nish]

this is 'intelligent licensing' but it would require maintaining an application database, and I don't think we want to go down that route. It would need to be comprehensive - and there's too many variables in play, e.g. todays freeware becomes tomorrows shareware. It becomes too costly to maintain.

The licensing does need to be more powerful, however, and a future version will try and incorporate more flexibility in the way licences are accounted for - we realise its more than just numbers! The next release will improve on the licensing, and will allow you to cater for subscription licensing for example, but it won't be the 'power-licensing' functionality you seek. It will evolve to that, but not just yet.

[Julian]

I have another idea I would like to see implemented.

Some of the machines we are managing are lap-tops and machines located off-site, connected via a modem or VPN.

These are difficult to manage because they are connected intermittently, and, depending how they are configured,  may not have direct visibility to our network.

It would be great if these machines could have a slight variant of the SystemHound client (manually) installed, which used SMTP instead of the current (http? another port?) protocols. That way the tool could gather the appropriate data each night, and the next time it is connected to a network (whether it is ours or out in the internet) a report would be emailed back (past the firewall) to be integrated into the main report.