Being the gatekeeper of software for all departments can be a challenge.
You have to balance competing needs while remaining compliant with licensing parameters from major software vendors, and hope to accomplish all this while staying in line with an ever-tightening budget.
LabStats software monitoring and reporting tools help university IT teams face the ongoing challenge of responding to faculty software requests when appetites are greater than the budget allows.
Challenge
When faculty request additional software, they usually request site-wide licenses to ensure that all students have access. While this is understandable, it can wreak havoc on an already tight budget, especially if the software is expensive or requires separate licenses for on and off-campus use. Even if you suspect overall usage does not justify a site-wide license, you may not have the data to confirm your hunch or support your recommendations.
Solution
LabStats enables you to monitor all the software that’s deployed throughout your university. Knowing how current software is being used can help you determine if and how additional software will be used, or where you can optimize to afford new programs.
LabStats Internal Software Reporting:
Application Summary – A list of application names with the number of times each application has been launched, number of stations it’s been launched on, number of unique users; total, average and focus times; and first and last launch times. Focus time is the amount of time the application is actively used, rather than just running in the background.
Application Launch History – The Application Launch History report has multiple reports in one: Total Usage, Launch Count, Average Session Length and Max Concurrent Usage (use the blue arrows to navigate). These reports can help you compare how similar applications are used to see if one application is gaining favor over another and can help you decide if your current license count is a good fit for actual utilization.
Application Usage History – A graph showing the utilization percentage of an application over time. This report can help you understand how an application is used over time.
Application Sessions – A non-aggregated list that shows each time an application is launched and how long it is used.
This software template for Power BI pulls LabStats software usage data into a powerful and customizable report so you can filter and analyze large amounts of data in minutes.
Software Usage Power BI Template – Comprehensive usage statistics for software, in a fully customizable template.
Software Template
When deployed campus-wide, LabStats also arms IT teams with usage data for all student and faculty software. This gives you an advantage when renegotiating contracts with vendors and optimizing licensing spend across multiple departments.
With actual software usage data and discoverability tools in hand, you can follow up with departmental staff to recommend the right number of software licenses, and back up your recommendation with shareable reports.
