Asset tracking companies like EasyVista, Centennial, GASP and WebCensus may soon find the going tough as Microsoft is making a grand entry with acquiring AssetMatrix - a software asset management firm.

AssetMatrix creates Audit-ready software inventory and fixed asset tracking reports for your organization.

Microsoft already has a popular Microsoft Software Inventory Analyzer tool to generate an inventory of core Microsoft products installed on your local computer, or throughout a network.

But the MSIA software will locate only Microsoft software while Asset Matrix will help admins track even non-Microsoft software installed on user computers and networks.

Asset Metrix offers software inventory, license management, license expiration tracking, license compliance, alerts and/or warnings and automatic updates to inventory database when new software is installed or removed for organizations with less than 50 to over 5000 employees/users.

AssetMetrix identifies the product IDs, application types, and number of users of every piece of software installed on every Windows and Linux-based PC and Windows CE device in your organization. The corporate-wide baseline inventory can be created by distributing AssetAgents to your end-users via Email, LAN-Login and/or Disk-based audits.

Source: ZDNet | CNet