What is Tracker?
Tracker is the first commercial tool to provide PRODUCT level tracking, analysis and forecasting for Acresso FLEXnet™ Publisher licensed products.The LinkRight Tracker accumulates software usage information from a variety of collection sources for input to the Software Investment Planner that produces analytics that help a business to more effectively manage their digital resources.

What unique capabilities does Tracker have?
Tracker has the unique ability to predict usage and cost of software usage based upon historical data and current trends. Tracker can use acceptable denial rates and acceptable buffers in its analytics. Tracker provides unique views of software usage that allow license administrators to make software purchase decisions with confidence. Tracker can monitor software products running on Microsoft, Unix/Solaris and HPUX and Linux platform. Also, tracker works for products that are either protected or unprotected by digital licensing.

How many products can tracker monitor at once?
Tracker has a scalable architecture that can analyze all the products identified to the system. Implemented with an enterprise level database, Tracker is limited only by the amount of physical resources provided to the system.

What are the outputs from Tracker?
Tracker provides an organization with snapshots and analysis of current events and trending analysis. Tracker provides a vast array of graphing capabilities, analytical reports and up to the moment display of activities within an organization.

How fast will I realize a return using Tracker?
The returns from Tracker can start the moment you invoke the tool. The ability to understand events occurring within your organization can provide vast insight into the needs of an organization. Over time the collection of trend data increases the ability of the user to further understand the dynamics of the organization and the software needs and resources to support that need. If you have existing data it can be imported into Tracker and analysis/benefits can occur immediately.

How will Tracker save money?
Savings are derived by using analytics from the Tracker Software Investment Planner to take the guesswork out of software purchasing. Through understanding of usage profiles, shortages can be identified and filled either by reclaiming of underused software and pool remixer products, by purchasing only what's needed, or by remixing the software pool as contractually allowed. More importantly, by eliminating software shortages, bottlenecks can be avoided making company operations more efficient.

• Usage Over Time - helps you quickly determine what licenses to renew and which to drop.
• Peak Utilization - reveals the peak usage over time to optimize your license purchases to manage peak demand and avoid the productivity issues associated with license denials.
• Effective Peak Usage - the quantity of licenses required to ensure users do not encounter denials an "acceptable denial percentage" of time for a given period.
• Usage Efficiency - enables you to understand what percentage of each license is being used, helping you evaluate new purchase and renewal decisions
• Usage Summary - enables you to allocate software costs by user, group and/or project.
• Accurate Usage - help you determine the number of licenses needed per project or development team.
• Usage over Time by User - enables you to identify which users need individual licenses and which users should use shared or network licenses.
• Customized reporting - allows you to customize reports to fit your organization's specific needs

Does Tracker require any special information or permissions from my Acresso FLEXnet™ Publisher software vendor?
In the case of Acresso FLEXnet™ Publisher licensed applications, Tracker uses log data generated by applications. Tracker requires the organization to use Acresso SAMreport™ to provide license usage data reduction. The data is then fed into LinkRight Tracker where data is correlated and analytics are generated. The use of Tracker to monitor and report your organization's usage does not violate the standard licensing agreements in most software products. Data stored in the LinkRight Tracker is not shared or reported in any fashion outside the customers enterprise.

Can Tracker utilize data I might have stored in other systems or archived data files?
Yes, Tracker can use data that is stored outside its database. LinkRight will use industry standard tools to acquire the data into the Analysis DB. In simple cases LinkRight will include the data acquisition as part of the license fee. In more complicated cases it is handled as a consulting engagement.

Is it possible to track unlicensed products using Tracker?
Yes, LinkRight Tracker provides a variety of facilities that allow an organization to track the use of their applications. The first is the ability to put a wrapper around an existing executable. The wrapper gathers application start/finish information and reports it to the LinkRight Data Collector. Wrapping is supported for Microsoft, Unix/Solaris and Linux environments. A second way to track is to place an agent on the client system. The LinkRight agent periodically monitors the task list of the system and reports the tasks to the Data Collector. This option does not require wrapping but is less accurate than the wrapping option. The third method is to invoke an application start control that captures the users request to initiate the application. The LinkRight DeskTop module provides a toolbar based view of applications which gathers information when applications start and stop.

Can Tracker perform analysis on any type of product?
Tracker is capable of tracking any product that generates license usage information. The types of analysis available may vary depending upon the data provided to the system.

Is a real time display of tracked products offered?
No, Tracker provides analysis based upon data imported into the system. Tracker provides historical trends based upon a variety of analytical conditions.

Is information in the Tracker database shared with LinkRight or any other organization?
No, data that is acquired and processed by Tracker is stored in a general purpose database. The data belongs to the organization that licenses the Tracker product. The data analysis component of tracker is separate from the data collection facilities. Raw data and process data is the property of the business.

What infrastructure systems are required to use LinkRight Tracker?
LinkRight Tracker requires the user to dedicate a server system capable of storing data for data collection and processing. The Tracker analysis component can be run from the data collector or a second system dedicated to performing analysis. In larger organizations it is recommended that the data collector and analysis system be hosted on separate systems. The Tracker collector utilizes any commercially available database. The analysis engine is Java based and can reside on any open platform that has Java support. LinkRight can provide a turn-key environment for those that don't want to configure the Tracker environment.

Is the data in the database encrypted?
No, data in the Tracker database is not encrypted. It can be encrypted if so desired. LinkRight believes the data should be easily available to the customer should other uses of the data arise. The data belongs to the customer. It is paramount to LinkRight that the customer has control of their assets.

Will I have to increase my staff to support Tracker?
If you already have license management personnel in place, the Tracker will make them more efficient. It is our belief that personnel will remain constant in larger organizations but the level of information and precision will increase ten fold. In a mid to large organization the use of Tracker may justify a person to manage licenses. The efficient use of licenses generates more efficiency in an organization. The cost of the product and person is easily recovered on the saving/potential savings possible with the tool. The very nature of a Tracker tool helps business avoid making costly mistakes which may justify an individual to manage the process for the business.

Do I have to buy Tracker or are there models for users with no support staff or infrastructure to support a product of this type?
You can receive the benefits of Tracker in many different ways. You can purchase a license to use the tracker tool. Licenses are sold on an annual basis. If you feel you want the benefits of Tracker but you don't have personnel that understand your software landscape you can contract with LinkRight to assist you. LinkRight has a variety of plans varying from monthly, quarterly, bi-annual and annual audits that assist management in understanding their needs.

Is LinkRight Tracker easy to Install and Use?
Yes,Tracker is engineered to be a simple to install requiring minimal support intervention. Tracker requires a Java JVM v1.4 or above, and a JDBC driver for the appropriate database. Tracker is certified for MS SQL, Oracle and My SQL.

Users interface via a web browser presentation, making access to the system from various locations easy. LinkRight has spent much time in designing a system that is intuitive to the Tracking perspective. A menu-ing system and selective links to pertinent data give the end user a fast and efficient way to understand the licensing landscape.

How much does it cost?
Tracker is priced in various ways to accommodate the various ways a company may wish to utilize Tracking. The simplest way to use Tracker is to acquire an annual usage license. In this scenario, the business is allowed to utilize the Tracker product as much as needed, unlimited tracking of products, use of the wrapper and the basic analytics and reporting capabilities. Additional packages can be added to the annual license. LinkRight has a pricing model based upon the general size of the organization and industry the business participates within. The other way to use Tracker is on counted execution basis. The analysis engine is licensed to run and generate specific analysis for a fixed number of times. These are processed based on number of products and number of times desired. The last way is to allow LinkRight to perform license management analysis on an auditing basis. This can be performed at fixed times during a calendar year. When the analysis is complete a summary is presented to management. Tracker Pricing

What is different from competitive offerings?
Competitive offerings to LinkRight Tracker do not have an Intelligent Analytics Engine that helps a business understand its use of resources. Many offering simply provide data, simple graphing or answer questions in only the most rudimentary form. This means the business must build business models and infrastructure before they can answer questions about the business. Many businesses simply cannot afford to build the solutions needed to answer the questions. Tracker provides an organization with fast analysis that allows the organization to make timely business decisions, not ponder the question and then build the system to answer the question.

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