What MDM does and when to use it

Microsoft Deployment Manager (MDM) reads inventory and Microsoft 365 assignment data and works out the Microsoft license requirement: what is installed, which edition and metric apply, and an estimated cost.

Use it when a discovery export is not yet a position you can defend:

• What Microsoft software is deployed, and what would it cost to license?
• Which Microsoft 365 seats are inactive, shared, or heavier than the way they are used?
• How many cores do SQL Server and Windows Server actually need, once virtual machines and clusters are counted?

Open it from Apps, then Microsoft Deployment Manager. The report cards are Microsoft Deployment Overview, M365 License Optimization, Microsoft Office 365 Details, Microsoft SQL Server Details and Microsoft Windows Server Details.

Windows Server and SQL Server need host and cluster relationships. Those come from Infrastructure Mapper. Without them, a virtual machine can be counted as if it were a physical host.

Connect an API integration first. Microsoft Graph is the one for Microsoft 365, Intune and Entra ID. The other connectors this app reads are on Sources MDM accepts. Deploy the Collector as well, for usage data and for hosts no integration covers. A file or the MDM template covers a tool with no API. Another API can be added. That usually takes a couple of weeks.

The usual upload failure is a file name or a file type the source does not expect. SCCM Queries and Lansweeper exports need the three files that source expects, and those files have to keep the names in the guide. Once a file is in, processing runs at about 50 devices a second. That is much faster than doing the same count by hand, and it is not instant when the estate is tens or hundreds of thousands of devices. Some reports finish before others.

Questions about the app can go to support@licenseware.io.

The owned side of the same estate is in License and Contracts Manager. The savings write-up is M365 License Optimization Insights.