Introduction

The extent to which technology has become a part of normal life and day-to-day commerce has seen a change in the way business approaches how they manage the money, the processes and the systems within an organisation.

As technology becomes more widely used within an organisation and takes a more prominent vital within the critical functions of that business, it is important to make sure that an appropriate amount of attention is given to this computing. Technological assets that may have once been overlooked are now key in the decision making process.

IT departments have come a long way over the past few years and are now seen as essential parts of any company. As such, they are allocated greater budgets but must also be able to manage a larger amount of responsibility.

But once you have spent a substantial amount of money on developing an IT infrastructure and seen the requirements of your company change, how do you ensure that the technology you are using can keep up with demand?

This is the role undertaken by IT management software and procedures.

Every company and every situation will have different requirements and will create different problems. To meet these requirements there are a range of different solutions and approaches that can be used to help control the IT assets of your business.

Software Asset Management

Software Asset Management (SAM) is designed to do exactly what it says on the tin - monitoring and managing the deployment and usage of software packages within your company. It is a business process rather than a distinct discipline and is becoming a more critical part of the modern business environment, particularly for corporations operating in the field of Information Technology. Despite the many benefits of SAM, there are still a great many companies that are not utilising it to its full potential.

SAM is not simply a program for technicians deploying software across a large corporate network, but can be a critical tool to help improve performance at all levels of a organisation. The objectives of SAM include managing of the IT infrastructure within a company, negating legal risks associated with incorrect software license usage and preserving high levels of productivity by making sure software is up to date and fit for its purpose. As IT usage in a business grows, so do the potential benefits of SAM.

The practice of software asset management is often seen as an unnecessary evil due to the abstract nature of what it is designed to deal with, and the business case for using a SAM solution is not always obvious until a complete of the software infrastructure of a company has been undertaken. Once existing problems have been identified however, the use of SAM becomes self evident.

Monetary benefits are still the most motivating business factor when choosing to employ software asset management technology within a company. Every business needs to make profit after all and revenue is a very measurable figure. The financial benefits of SAM do certainly exist however.

An increasingly large percentage of a company’s IT bank roll is spent on software licensing so there is a vital need to invest to correctly handle this spending. As companies grow and spread, their software requirements can change radically and hardware and programs can swiftly become out of date. There is no need to spend money to maintain the licenses on this outdated software, which is where SAM really delivers an advantage.

SAM is not limited to simply the technology of your organisation either. As a management cycle it will often include many of the branches within a business, including Finance Human Resources, to ensure that it runs as cost-effectively as possible.

IT service staff working for a company called softcat provide a range of IT management solutions including software asset management tools. To see their website click here.

Why follow a SAM Strategy?

Having seen the many benefits of employing a SAM solution, how do you know that it would be right for your company? Every business is different and has its own unique set of challenges and benefits, so any strategy you will use needs to be catered to these specific characteristics. The benefits of software asset management do cover the basic aspects of software management.

There are more than just cost benefits that can be achieved through the control of licensing and maintenance agreements across a companies IT network. Productivity can be greatly by ensuring that employees have the latest versions of software available under current licenses held, and communication inside the corporation is helped when support staff know exactly what is deployed on every workstation under their control. The benefits of SAM are not confined to the technological hardware of your business.

Cost Savings

As discussed previously, perhaps the most persuading reason to implement software asset management within your business is the potential cost savings that can be achieved. The profitability of your business is always going to be the bottom line so any plan that can help to increase this profitability by lowering expenses is one that should be considered. Money can be saved in a number of ways.

The most direct way that SAM can help to reduce costs is by identifying any software running on your corporate IT system that is no longer necessary. The software might not be being used any longer, it may be too outdated to be of use or it may be duplicated on your system. SAM can help to remove this unnecessary overhead.

By clearing these items of software that are no longer a help to the running of your business you are streamlining a large chunk of your IT system. Paying for unneeded software licenses and maintenance contracts means that more finance can be spent on the essential sections of your IT infrastructure.

Mitigate Risk

A surprising proportion of software that is actively used in the business environment is either licensed incorrectly or not licensed at all. Running any amount of uncontrolled software on your IT system is ill advised, because when left unchecked it can become incredibly unpredictable. This is becoming an increasingly annoying factor for IT managers.

Rogue software programs can be introduced into an uncontrolled IT environment in a number of ways. Software may have been included when your IT hardware was first bought although the original software licenses may have expired. Without the correct security policies in place, users may also be able to install their own software onto the system. Operating a corporate IT system in this unmanaged way will almost certainly lead to trouble.

The danger of running unlicensed software on your system is clear. When anything goes wrong with the hardware or software platform supporting your critical processes, how do you manage the situation? Operating a complex software system without the appropriate support can create a metaphorical minefield when it comes to disaster recovery and can critically inhibit your responsiveness to unpredictable events. The cost of recovery will always outweigh the cost of prevention when it comes to IT systems.

Of the many products and services available from any national company software asset management is only one solution that can be utilised.

Implementing Software Asset Management in your Organisation

As previously discussed, there are many potential advantages to employing a good SAM strategy within your company, both financial and otherwise. It is vitally important to consider which parts of SAM you should implement first since certain benefits will be realised more quickly than others.

This discovery process can be seen as three fundamental areas that have to be performed to really build an accurate picture of the usage of software assets within your company. These are:

Inventory

Inventory is the most basic stage of the discovery process. It is vital that an accurate audit of software assets within your business is created to help your IT managers to maintain baselines for your IT network. This inventory process must be performed before continuing with discovery.
Fortunately, this process can now be made automatic and even the grandest of infrastructures can be searched and analysed in a relatively short period of time. Inventory should be able to identify your IT assets regardless of their physical location or computing characteristics. Modern inventory processes are capable of this.

Capture

The second step in the discovery cycle is the capture of the license entitlements that manage the software programs discovered in the inventory. The capture process should collect entitlements regarding all of the software that is installed on your network, even if the software is not currently in use.

The element of human error can be avoided by using automatic tools that are specifically created to create a library of license entitlements. Tools that are currently available are incredibly efficient at capturing accurate information.

Identification & Validation

The third step is to match up your software inventory to the repository of licensing data that were built in the previous two stages. Errors may have been made anywhere from the original paperwork for software to the most recent audits performed on your IT system.

One critical factor in the validation step is the ability to link the license entitlements on your network to your organisation’s proof of entitlement. This will be essential if any disputes with software vendors arise as a consequence of the discovery cycle.

After these steps have been performed you will have built an incredibly rich picture of how your IT system is serving software programs to its users. It will be much easier to identify any trouble spots on your network, or sections of software use that are no longer of any particular benefit to your activites.

You can now start a period of reconciliation on your system. You can compare the software packages that are actually installed on your system against the licensing and support contracts that you are paying for and bridge any gaps between the two. This is when the financial benefits of SAM start to take effect.

The software distribution within your network may include many hundreds or perhaps thousands of individual installations, and there are any number of rules that may be involved with the licensing agreements you have in place. It is therefore essential to automate the reconciliation stage, using one or more programs to apply smart rules to the process.

Staff who have previous experience working alongside any Centennial specialist firm might be able to provide an early insight into how SAM can benefit your organisation.

Compliancy and Flexibility with Software Asset Management

Many of the fundamental principles of a modern software asset management strategy are based upon the concepts set out in the Information Technology Infrastructure Library, or ITIL. This library details a number of concepts and best practices that should be followed for successful management of IT operations. The ITIL can be found online.

This library is a dynamic publication and is often updated with new ideas and techniques that reflect the ever changing IT backdrop of modern business. A good SAM strategy should be flexible enough to follow the guidelines laid out in the ITIL whilst meeting the changing needs of the company within which it is actively used.

The International Standard Organisation (ISO) has published a standard that applies directly to software asset management practices. This standard, ISO 19770-1, is an exceptionally comprehensive set of suggestions that are designed to ensure that software asset management is utilised in such a way as to “satisfy corporate governance requirements”. Standards of this kind play an essential role in achieving standardisation across an industry.

The ISO standard should certainly be followed when planning a software asset management strategy for your own organisation, although the level of detail covered within can easily become a daunting challenge. It is important to remember that no matter what guidelines you follow when planning a software asset management strategy, whatever you decide to implement must aid your business rather than stifle it. Industry standards cannot simply be copied when it comes to applying them within your business.

Designing a complete and comprehensive SAM strategy for your own company might actually never come to fruition. Your plan must be flexible to adapt and grow as your organisation does, and it should allow for updates to your daily tasks, no matter how trivial or underlying they might be.

Conclusion

It is clear to see that as the extent and importance of computer systems within your organisation grow, so does the requirement for good and efficient management of these systems. Gone are the times when an IT department was a bonus that would sometimes forward the business. Computer networks are now critical to the modern business.

As with other branches of any company, a number of separate strategies should be considered and utilised in order to ensure the efficient running of daily tasks. SAM should not be the only tactic used to manage computing assets within your organisation, but rather one of a multitude of complimentary techniques used to control the system as a whole. SAM can go a long way toward aiding your business but should be helped by other techniques.

So if you think that your organisation is really suffering from a lack of planned monitoring and control over its IT infrastructure, or that the possible benefits described in this article could manufacture a critical market edge over your competitors, then it would be well worth researching how SAM could be employed within your company. There may be no time to spare.