Patent ID: 7139737

Claim:
An apparatus for managing software licenses of different software products, the apparatus comprising: a managing unit managing a number of software licenses, for the different software products, owned by an organization; a collecting unit collecting inventory information from each of a plurality of computers within the organization, inventory information of a computer comprising an inventory regarding software actually installed nonvolatiley in the corresponding computer, where the inventory information of each computer is generated by scanning the computer to search for predefined indicia of nonvolatile installation of respective of the different software products without regard for whether or not the installed software is currently executing on the computer; a calculating unit calculating a difference between the number of software licenses owned by the organization and a number of software licenses actually installed, which is calculated on the basis of the collected inventory information, and outputting information representing an excess or insufficiency in the number of software licenses or information regarding purchase of additional software licenses; and a generating unit generating a software dictionary which includes the predefined indicia of nonvolatile installation of respective of the different software products, and which identifies software products; wherein the inventory information is generated by using the generated software dictionary which is distributed to each of the plurality of computers in the organization from which the inventory information is collected; in a case that the sum of the software-license usage numbers of all sections of the organization exceeds the software-license holding number, in response to such a determination automatically generating a purchase transaction for purchasing software licenses based on a difference between the sum and the software-license holding number; adding a number of purchased software licenses to the software-license holding number; and distributing a purchase expense to a section whose software-license usage number is greater than the corresponding software-license right number, and updating the software-license right number of the section.