Auditing Enterprise Software Usage with Altair's HiQube

Analysis software developer Altair Engineering, best known for its HyperWorks simulation suite, is venturing into a new kind of analysis, known as business intelligence (BI). The first product rolling out of its Business Analytics division is HiQube, designed to give you more insights into your enterprise resources, projects, and operations.

The setup gives you access to a variety of reports, ranging from plant down times and peak server usages to sales revenue distribution by geographic breakdowns. The objective is to give you a visual presentation (bar graphics, pie charts, and plotted curves, for example) of your enterprise data so you can better understand trends and patterns. This insight is expected to give you a way to prevent waste and streamline operations.

The Software Asset Optimization function in HiQube, for instance, allows you to closely study license demands vs. denials, peak time usage vs. and weekend, average session length over time. The new understanding will give you the opportunity to adjust your software license pool, supplement where needed, reduce shelfware, and ultimately keep annual software renewal cost down.

In a similar fashion, you might use HiQube to examine sales figure breakdowns, compare actual revenue against forecasts, and see what contributed to the difference. You might also use the software to understand interruption in plant operations and spot trends (for example, a lack of user training that may be causing failures).

HiQube is augmented with cloud-hosted services and mobile apps from Altair Engineering. For more watch the video report on HiQube below, demonstrating the Software Asset Optimization screens.