1E AppClarity for Adobe License Management

This review of AppClarity from 1E is part of our Adobe License Management feature.

1E Commercial Summary

1E AppClarity for Adobe License Management

AppClarity from 1E has some great technology to offer organizations looking to manage and reduce the cost of their Adobe estate.

AppClarity can import Adobe License entitlements and work with inventory sources to provide a clear view on Adobe compliance and efficiency. The inbuilt AppClarity software catalogue and analytics engines works to filter out irrelevant configuration noise, group Adobe installs into common families and identify those Adobe installs that require a license. Whilst we didn’t perform rigorous benchmarking of the Adobe recognition capabilities of 1E the technology certainly does a good job of pointing users to the most pertinent information and sorting the wheat from the chaff.

Set and Forget Software Efficiency

Reports can be run to calculate the savings from unused Adobe software. However, for me the real AppClarity raison d’être is going beyond reporting and actually taking action on unused Adobe software.

Administrators can specify policies to remove unused or rarely used software by an automated ‘re-claimer’ facility which offers a customer friendly pop-up interaction. Users can specify whether they wish to keep hold of software or give blessing for removal.

This is a great, proactive and automated efficiency driver.  The real savings are three fold:

1. Organizations will typically have a run-rate of new Adobe purchases to make – these can be reduced or eliminated by stockpiling unused copies.
2. Organizations can ensure they are making the most efficient use of Adobe well ahead of a contract negotiations or audits, rather than trying to catch up retrospectively. It places the organization in charge of their negotiation – not only providing good visibility of their compliance position but also the leanest possible use of the software. Assuming that is, that AppClarity has been given a few months to work its magic.
3. Efficiency is built in the front end – an organization could be quite immature when it comes to SAM processes and still benefit from efficiency savings.

Functional Redundancy – Acrobat and ‘Save as PDF’ in Office

There is a cool report within AppClarity to identify functional overlap between users with Adobe Standard and Professional and Microsoft ‘Save as PDF’ Office plugin functionality. Users can be weaned away from Adobe to use the PDF creation facility within Microsoft with some persuasion from Software Asset Managers.

The report automatically identifies the target devices and calculates potential savings. A quick campaign to educate users on how to use this Microsoft functionality and convince users to part with their Adobe installs could shift a few more copies of Acrobat off the network (Those without the Microsoft PDF functionality can be transitioned to cheaper or free alternatives)

Monitoring Creative Cloud

Adobe Creative Cloud editions are included (or will be included as they appear) along with existing legacy Adobe Creative Suite and individual product installations. So organizations will be able to discriminate which elements of their Adobe estate were installed as part of a Creative Cloud subscription.

We have looked at 1E AppClarity before as a plug-in for Microsoft SCCM. Version 4.0 of AppClarity extends beyond desktop software into the datacentre via agentless discovery. Their first target for datacentre efficiency is VMware.

1E have done a great job in taking an action-oriented approach to SAM since entering the market in 2011. Large enterprise SAM competitors tend to have more depth in managing entitlements and contracts. I look forward to seeing 1E depth build more capabilities in this area and what innovation they can bring to managing other datacentre vendors.

Screenshots

This review is part of our Adobe License Management feature.

Links & Further Resources

• AppClarity Product Page
• AppClarity Datasheet
• Software License Optimization
• Contact 1E

DISCLAIMER, SCOPE & LIMITATIONS

The information contained in this review is based on sources and information believed to be accurate as of the time it was created. Therefore, the completeness and current accuracy of the information provided cannot be guaranteed. Readers should therefore use the contents of this review as a general guideline and not as the ultimate source of truth.

Similarly, this review is not based on rigorous and exhaustive technical study. The ITAM Review recommends that readers complete a thorough live evaluation before investing in technology.

This is a paid review. That is, the vendors included in this review paid to participate in exchange for all results and analysis being published free of charge without registration. For further information please read the ‘Group Tests’ section on our Disclosure page.