1.5 Suites and Software Collections

In addition to standalone products, Asset Management can maintain license compliance for suite products such as Microsoft Office and OpenOffice.org. Suites are included as discovered products in the ZENworks Knowledgebase. A suite discovered product includes information about the suite members.

When an Inventory scan discovers a suite installed on a device (for example, through the registry settings), the installation is counted toward the suite’s installation total rather than the suite members’ installation totals. For example, if Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, and Microsoft PowerPoint are installed as a Microsoft Office suite on a device, the installation is applied to the Microsoft Office discovered product and not the Word, Excel, and PowerPoint discovered products. However, if these applications are discovered as standalone products (no Microsoft Office installation), the installation is applied to each individual discovered products.

Software collections are administrator-defined suites. You can use them to account for suites that are not included in the ZENworks Knowledgebase. With a software collection, you define the member products and specify which member products must be installed on a device to qualify as a software collection installation. If all required member products are installed on a device, the installation counts towards the software collection. If some required member products are missing, the member product installations count towards the individual discovered products.