14 DAY TRIAL // An integral part of the Software Assessment Management efforts from Microsoft, the Microsoft Software Inventory Analyzer 5.1 is available for download accompanied by a range of resources designed to streamline usage. MSIA is a tool designed to permit customers to scan either a local machine or computers connected to a network in order to identify and produce a report containing a list of core Microsoft software products installed. In addition to MSIA, the company is also offering for download documentation containing a User Guide and a FAQ. According to the Redmond giant, MSIA is capable of putting together software inventories only for networks with a maximum of 250 computers.
“MSIA reports the results of the scan in three possible formats, based on the user's selection: HTML, Excel, and Text. These reports contain details such as the names of all the installed Microsoft products, links to the list of computers scanned, links to the error log, and so on. In addition, the summary report enables users to enter corresponding license purchase information for all software detected in the scan,” Microsoft revealed.
In order to put together the software inventory of specific computers, MSIA will only scan the registry information of Windows operating systems. In this regard, the Redmond company indicated that there was no interference with the systems themselves or the programs running on the scanned machines. With this tool, all software featured under the Add or Remove Programs section of Control Panel will be reported, as long as the products belong to Microsoft.
“MSIA 5.1 is several times faster than its earlier versions. This high performance was achieved by removing the hard disk scanning method. The latest version is using only the registry scanning method to detect all products,” the company noted. “With MSIA 5.1, you do not have to visit Microsoft Anti-Piracy Web site to know about any updates on MSIA. The Auto Update feature in this version will prompt you to download any updates.”
Microsoft Software Inventory Analyzer 5.1 is available for download here.