Compliance Analysis - Effective License Position History

This report tracks historical software compliance status across products, countries, and environments to monitor trends in license usage and availability over time.

Report Usage

This report tracks compliance trends by illustrating changes in license allocations, usage, and overall compliance posture over time, supports audit readiness with a verifiable history of governance and accountability, identifies risk patterns by highlighting recurring shortfalls, overspend, or compliance fluctuations across products, vendors, or business units, evaluates the impact of optimization efforts like reallocations and renewals, and enables proactive forecasting of future license needs and budget requirements through analysis of historical compliance data.

Example
A software Asset management team uses this report to analyze historical compliance trends for Microsoft and Oracle products across production and non‑production environments in multiple countries. By reviewing changes in license usage, availability, shortfalls, and overspend over time, the team identifies recurring compliance risks within specific business units and evaluates the impact of optimization actions such as license reallocations and renewals. This historical view supports audit readiness, enables proactive forecasting of future license requirements, and helps align software budgets with actual usage patterns.

Steps

To view the Compliance Analysis - Effective License Position History, perform the following steps:

Navigate to Reports > Asset Management to open the dashboards page. Search for Compliance Analysis - Effective License Position History from the Dashboard list.
Figure: Dashboard
Select Compliance Analysis - Effective License Position History to open a structured, tabular view displaying all virtual and physical asset attributes.

Figure: Compliance Analysis - Effective License Position History report

The following table outlines key fields in the report along with concise descriptions of their purpose and usage.

Field	Description
Business Unit	The organizational division or department to which the data pertains.
Manufacturer	Vendor of the software (e.g., Microsoft, Adobe).
Product	Specific software being analyzed.
Version	Version of the product installed/used.
Country Of Use	Location where the software is deployed (helps in regional compliance tracking).
Environment	Indicates where the software is running (e.g., Production, Test, Dev).
Discovered Metric	The unit of measurement detected (e.g., Device, User, Core).
License Metric	The metric defined in the entitlement agreement.
Responsible	Person, team, or department accountable for license management.
Is Managed?	Flag to show whether this product is actively managed in the system (Yes/No).
Usage Quantity	Number of installs, devices, or users discovered.
License Quantity	Number of entitlements/licenses available.
Compliance	The gap or surplus between discovered usage and allocated licenses (negative = shortfall, positive = surplus).
Available	Number of unallocated licenses still remaining.
Estimated Shortfall Cost	Cost to purchase additional licenses if compliance gaps exist.
Estimated Overspend	Value of excess licenses purchased but not utilized.

Filters

Use filter icon to refine the report results based on selected criteria and display only relevant records

Figure: Filters

Enter the details as described in the following table and click Apply filters to view the report or Clear all to reset the filters.

Field	Description
Baseline	The Baseline filter allows you to pick a point in time (past date) to view compliance data as it existed then.
Business Unit	Filters the compliance data to show historical license usage and availability for a specific business unit.
Country Of Use	Displays compliance information based on the country where the software is deployed or used.
Environment	Filters data by environment type, such as production, test, or development.
Manufacturer	Filters compliance records by the software vendor or manufacturer.
Product	Allows selection of specific software products to analyze their historical compliance status.
Discovered Metric	Filters data based on the metric detected through discovery, such as users, cores, or devices.
Licensed Metric	Filters licenses according to the metric defined in the purchased entitlement.
Responsible	Displays records associated with the individual or team responsible for managing the licenses.
Is Managed	Identifies whether the software asset is actively managed within the asset management program.
Compliance	Filters records based on compliance status, such as compliant, under‑licensed, or over‑licensed.
Available	Shows the number of licenses available after usage is accounted for.
Estimated Shortfall Cost	Filters records by the estimated financial impact of license shortages.
Estimated Overspend	Displays potential cost impact where licenses exceed actual usage.
Usage Quantity	Filters records based on the quantity of licenses or resources currently in use.
License Quantity	Filters data by the total number of licenses owned or entitled.