Enhanced and Removed Features › Enhanced Features › CA Software Asset Manager

CA Software Asset Manager

CA APM coordinates with CA Software Asset Manager (CA SAM) to allow you to perform software asset management functions. CA SAM is the next evolution of software asset and compliance management, superseding CA Software Compliance Manager (CA SCM). For more information about the plans for CA Software Compliance Manager, see the CA Software Compliance Manager page on CA Support Online.

Important! We do not recommend that you manage software assets in CA APM. To take advantage of the enhancements that this release provides, we recommend that you use CA SAM to manage your software assets and licenses.

CA SAM provides the following advantages:

• Supports the process of determining your software license compliance position by comparing the number of available licenses with the number of used licenses.
• Integrates a software license import function into the CA SAM user interface.
• Facilitates the creation and maintenance of a software license catalog with detailed commercial information about the licenses.
• Assigns installation and usage data to defined products in the software license catalog.
• Performs software product recognition.
• Permits financial analysis of product prices, license costs, and contract payments (this function is available through an additional module).

If you implement both CA APM and CA SAM, you can coordinate the management of both hardware and software assets in your organization. CA APM maintains hardware asset data and CA SAM maintains software asset and license data. Common data that both CA APM and CA SAM require is shared.

For more information about how to implement CA APM with CA SAM, see the Implementation Guide.