Introduction
The degree to which technology has become a part of normal life and everyday commerce has prompted a change in the way management approaches how they manage the finances, the tasks and the systems within a business. IT is becoming an important factor in business.
As technology becomes more widely used within an organisation and takes a more prominent critical within the vital functions of that business, it is necessary to make sure that an appropriate amount of attention is given to this technology.
IT capabilities have come a long way over the past few years and are now seen as critical parts of any company. As such, they receive larger budgets but must also be able to manage a larger amount of responsibility. There is an eternal race between corporate demands and IT capabilities.
But after you have spent a substantial amount of your budget on developing an IT network and seen the needs of your company change, how do you ensure that the systems you are using can keep up with demand? Moreover, how can you achieve this without spending a large amount of money?
This is the function by IT management software and procedures.
Every company and every situation will have different specifications and will offer different issues. To meet these requirements there are a number of different solutions and approaches that can be implemented to help manage the IT infrastructure of your business.One of these approaches is discussed below.
Software Asset Management
SAM ( Software Asset Management) is built 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 essential part of the modern commercial environment, particularly for businesses 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 support staff installing software across a large company network, but can be a crucial tool to help improve performance at multiple levels of a business. The goals of SAM include monitoring costs of the IT infrastructure within a organisation, 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.
The practice of software asset management is often viewed as an unnecessary evil due to the intangible nature of what it is designed to deal with, and the commercial case for employing a SAM solution is not always obvious until a complete of the software infrastructure of a company has been carried out. Once existing problems have been identified however, the use of software asset management becomes self evident.
Monetary benefits remain the most motivating business factor when choosing to use software asset management software within a business. Every business needs to make money after all and expenditure is a very measurable figure. The financial benefits of SAM do certainly exist however.
An increasingly large percentage of a organisation’s IT bank roll is spent on software licensing so there is a real need to invest to correctly manage this spending. As businesses expand and diversify, their software requirements can change greatly and hardware and programs can quickly become out of date. There is no need to spend money to maintain the licenses on this outdated software, which is where software asset management really delivers an edge.
software asset management is not restricted to simply the technology of your business either. As a management process it will often involve many of the departments within a company, including Finance Human Resources, to ensure that it runs as cost-effectively as possible. It is a process that does not need to follow regular.
When choosing an accomplished provider of a software asset management solution for your network Centennial Discovery should be a solution that is considered amongst many.
Why follow a SAM Strategy?
Having seen the multiple benefits of employing a software asset management solution, how do you know that it would be right for your business? Every company is different and has its own separate set of problems and advantages, so any strategy you will undertake needs to be tailored to these specific characteristics. The benefits of software asset management do cover the basic aspects of IT management.
There are more than just monetary benefits that can be achieved through the control of licensing and maintenance agreements across an organisations IT system. Productivity can be vastly by ensuring that employees have the newest versions of software permitted under current licenses held, and communication within the company is helped when support staff know exactly what is in use on every workstation under their control. The benefits of software asset management are not confined to the technological hardware of your organisation.
Financial Savings
As discussed before, perhaps the most convincing reason to utilise SAM within your business is the potential financial savings that can be achieved. The profitability of your company is always going to be the bottom line so any strategy that can help to increase this profitability by descreasing costs is one that should be evaluated. Money can be saved in a number of ways.
The most direct way that SAM can help to lower costs is by targeting any software running on your corporate network that is no longer needed. The software might not be being used any longer, it may be very outdated to be of use or it may be duplicated on your system. SAM can be used to remove this unnecessary overhead.
By removing these items of software that are no longer a benefit to the running of your organisation you are streamlining a large portion of your IT network. Paying for unnecessary software licenses and support and maintenance contracts means that more money can be spent on the essential sections of your IT infrastructure.
Mitigate Risk Factors
A surprising percentage of software that is actively used in the corporate environment is either licensed incorrectly or not licensed at all. Having any amount of uncontrolled software on your IT network is not advised, because when left unchecked it can become incredibly unpredictable.
Rogue software applications can be introduced into an unmonitored IT environment in a number of ways. Software may have been bundled when your IT hardware was originally bought although the initial software licenses may have expired. Without the correct access policies in place, users may also be able to install their own software onto the network. Running a corporate IT system in this unmanaged way will almost certainly lead to trouble.
The risk of running unlicensed software on your network is clear. When something goes wrong with the hardware or software platform supporting your vital processes, how do you handle the situation? Running a complicated software system without the proper support can create a metaphorical minefield when it comes to disaster recovery and can seriously inhibit your responsiveness to unpredictable events. The cost of recovery will forever outweigh the cost of prevention when it comes to IT systems.
If your company undertakes an IT system overhaul, a qualified Centennial distributor should be top of your first ports of call.
Implementing Software Asset Management in your Organisation
As previously mentioned, there are numerous potential benefits to using a good software asset management strategy within your company, both monetary and otherwise. It is therefore important to determine which parts of software asset management you should implement first since certain benefits will be achieved more speedily than others. Some may take a period of years to be fully felt.
The discovery process can be seen as three basic phases that have to be performed to truly build an accurate picture of the usage of software assets within your business.
Inventory
Inventory is the most basic function of the discovery process. It is vital that an accurate audit of IT assets within your business is created to aid your IT department to maintain baselines for your IT system. This inventory process must be performed before continuing with discovery.
Thankfully, this process can now be automated and even the largest of infrastructures can be searched and analysed in a relatively short period. Inventory must be able to identify your IT assets regardless of their geographical location or computing characteristics.
Capture
The second step in the discovery cycle is the capture of the license entitlements that manage the software assets identified in the inventory. The capture stage should collect entitlements for all of the software that exists on your system, even when the software is not currently in use. Without this step the inventory would be almost useless.
The factor of human error can be mitigated by using automatic tools that are specifically designed to build a library of license entitlements. Packages that are currently employed are very efficient at capturing accurate information. These tools will also maintain databases containing up to date information from software vendors.
Identification & Validation
The third process is to match up your software audit to the repository of licensing information that were created in the last two stages. Errors may have occurred anywhere from the original invoices for software to the latest audits performed on your IT network. These errors can now be rectified.
One crucial factor in the validation step is the ability to associate the license entitlements within your network to your company’s proof of entitlement. This will be vital if any disputes with software resellers arise as a consequence of the discovery process. You want to be as informed as possible in these circumstances.
After these steps have been undertaken you will have built an incredibly rich picture of how your IT system is serving software assets to its users. It will be a lot easier to identify particular trouble spots on your system, or areas of software usage that are no longer of any particular benefit to your operations.
You can now start a period of reconciliation upon your network. You can compare the software packages that are actually employed on your network against the licensing and support entitlements that you are paying for and close any divides between the two. This is when the financial benefits of software asset management start to take effect.
The software spread within your system may include many hundreds or perhaps thousands of individual installations, and there are any number of restrictions that may be associated with the licensing contracts you have in place. It is therefore a necessity to automate the reconciliation period, utilising one or more tools to apply intelligent rules to the process. These rules can be catered to the specific needs of your organisation.
To see how software asset management can directly aid your organisation use an available Centennial consultant that can plan a software asset management strategy suited to your needs.
Compliancy and Flexibility with SAM
Many of the basic practices of a successful software asset management strategy are based upon the principles set out in the Information Technology Infrastructure Library, or ITIL. This library defines a number of concepts and best practices that should be followed for successful management of IT functions. The ITIL can be found online.
This library is a changing entity and is often updated with new concepts and techniques that reflect the constantly changing IT environment of modern business. A good SAM strategy should be flexible enough to comply with the guidelines laid out in the ITIL whilst matching the changing requirements of the company within which it is actively utilised. This is an essential requirement of successful software asset management
The International Standard Organisation (ISO) has created a standard that applies specifically to software asset management practices. This standard, ISO 19770-1, is an incredibly 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 part in achieving standardisation across an industry.
The ISO standard should really be followed when planning a software asset management strategy for your own business, although the level of detail included within can easily become a daunting challenge. It is important to remember that no matter what guidelines you follow when designing a software asset management strategy, whatever you decide to employ must aid your organisation rather than stifle it. Industry standards cannot simply be copied when it comes to applying them to your company.
Creating a complete and comprehensive software asset management strategy for your own organisation may actually never come to fruition. Your plan must be flexible to change and mature as your organisation does, and it must allow for modifications to your daily activities, no matter how trivial or fundamental they might be.
Conclusion
It is clear to see that as the scope and importance of IT systems within your organisation grow, so does the requirement for correct and effective management of these systems. Gone are the days when an IT department was a luxury that would occasionally forward the business. Computer systems are now vital to the modern organisation. Critical systems need to be maintained to an appropriate level.
As with other branches of any company, a number of separate plans should be evaluated and utilised in order to ensure the efficient running of day to day tasks. software asset management should not be the only tactic used to manage computing resources within your company, but rather one of a multitude of complimentary techniques used to manage the system as a whole. SAM can go a long way toward helping your business but should be helped by other strategies.
So if you think that your business is really suffering from a lack of planned monitoring and control over its IT infrastructure, or that the potential benefits outlined in this article could manufacture a critical market edge over your competitors, then it would be well worth investigating how SAM could be used within your organisation.
