Cloud Application Metering architecture

The architecture for Cloud Application Metering, and how it interacts with other Snow services, is illustrated below.

The table describes processes and tasks executed by the different parts of the architecture.

Component	Description
Data Intelligence Service (DIS)	Operated by Snow Software and ensures that SaaS application definitions and the ruleset used for recognition are made available.
Snow Update Service (SUS)	Provides the updated application definitions and ruleset generated by the DIS service to the Inventory Server and the License Manager servers in the customer’s implementation.
Snow Inventory Server	Processes and stores new and updated applications and rules provided by SUS Distributes new and updated rules to the agents Collects, processes, and stores the SaaS application usage data reported by the agents The SaaS application usage information is transferred to Snow License Manager during the Data Update Job
Snow Inventory Agents for Windows and macOS	Update the local SaaS application ruleset database by retrieving it from Snow Inventory Server Enable deployment of the Cloud Application Metering browser extensions, according to the agent configuration (exceptions to this deployment method exists for some browsers) Match the data produced by the browser extensions with its local ruleset database Consolidate the SaaS application usage data with the other inventory data and send the results to Snow Inventory Server
Cloud Application Metering browser extensions	Run in the context of the browser, records the web pages visited, and stores the data together with the user login name and the date stamp locally.

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