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Introduction

The extent to which technology has become a part of normal life and everyday commerce has seen a change in the way business approaches how they manage the money, the tasks and the systems within an organisation. Technology fast becoming an important factor in business.

As technology becomes more widespread within an organisation and takes a more prominent role within the critical processes of that organisation, it is important to make sure that an appropriate amount of attention is applied to this computing.

Technology have come a long way during the past few years and are now seen as vital parts of any business. As such, they receive larger budgets but must also be able to handle a greater amount of responsibility.

But after you have spent a large amount of money on developing your IT system and seen the circumstances of your organisation change, how do you ensure that the technology you are using can keep up with demand? Moreover, how can you achieve this without spending a large amount of money?

This is the role carried out by IT management software and systems.

Every company and every environment will have different needs and will offer different issues. To meet these requirements there are a range of different solutions and approaches that can be implemented to help manage the IT network of your organisation.One of these approaches is discussed below.

Software Asset Management

SAM ( Software Asset Management) is designed to do exactly what it says on the tin - monitoring and controlling the deployment and usage of software packages within your organisation. 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 tool for support staff deploying software across a large corporate network, but can be a crucial tool to help improve performance at multiple levels of a business. The objectives of SAM include managing of the IT infrastructure within a company, negating legal risks associated with incorrect software license usage and sustaining high levels of productivity by making sure software is up to date and fit for its purpose. As IT usage in a company grows, so do the potential benefits of SAM.

The practice of software asset management is often thought of as an unnecessary evil due to the intangible nature of what it is designed to deal with, and the financial case for going with a SAM solution is not always obvious until a broad inspection of the software infrastructure of a company has been carried out.

Economic benefits are still the most driving commercial factor when choosing to use SAM technology within a company. Every business needs to make profit after all and revenue is a very measurable metric.

An increasingly large amount of a company’s IT budget is spent on software licensing so there is a vital need to invest to correctly manage this spending. As companies grow and spread, their software requirements can change radically and hardware and programs can quickly become outdated. There is no requirement 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 company either. As a management cycle it will often include many of the departments within a organisation, including Finance Human Resources, to make sure that it runs as efficiently as possible.

Ironically, IT service firms themselves, such as the service vendor softcat need equally as much IT management as their customers. To see their website click here.

Why follow a SAM Strategy?

Having heard the various advantages of employing a SAM solution, how do you know that it would be correct for your company? Every business is different and has its own separate set of problems and advantages, so any plan you will undertake needs to be catered to these specific characteristics.

There are more than simply cost benefits that can be made through the control of licensing and maintenance agreements across a companies IT system. Productivity can be hugely improved by ensuring that users have the latest editions of software available under current licenses held, and communication within the business is aided when support staff know exactly what is installed on every computer under their control. The benefits of software asset management are not confined to the technological hardware of your organisation.

Cost Savings

As discussed before, perhaps the most persuading reason to implement software asset management within your company is the potential cost savings that can be achieved. The profitability of your business is always going to be the bottom line so any strategy that can help to increase this profitability by lowering costs is one that should be considered.

The most direct way that SAM can help to lower costs is by identifying 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. software asset management can be used to remove this unnecessary overhead.

By clearing these items of software that are no longer a benefit to the running of your organisation you are streamlining a large chunk of your IT infrastructure. Paying for unnecessary software licenses and support and maintenance contracts means that more money can be spent on the essential sections of your IT system. Focusing your attention on these critical components will improve the overall performance of your IT department.

Mitigate Risk Factors

A surprising amount of software that is actively used in the corporate environment is either licensed incorrectly or not licensed at all. Running any amount of uncontrolled software on your IT system is not advised, because when left unchecked it can become very unpredictable.

Unlicensed software applications can be introduced into an uncontrolled 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 security policies in place, users may also be able to load their own software onto the system. Operating 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 anything goes wrong with the hardware or software platform behind your critical processes, how do you handle the situation? Operating 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 data systems.

Even during a stagnating and unpredictable market softcat still find that SAM is a technology in demand from other companies. To see their website click here.

Implementing Software Asset Management in your Organisation

As previously mentioned, there are numerous potential benefits to employing a good SAM strategy within your business, both financial and otherwise. It is vitally important to determine which parts of software asset management you should implement first since some benefits will be realised more speedily than others. Some may take a period of years to be fully felt.

The discovery process can be seen as three primary stages that have to be undertaken to truly develop an informative picture of the usage of IT assets within your company.

Inventory

Inventory is the most basic stage of the discovery process. It is crucial that an accurate audit of IT assets within your business is created to help your IT department to maintain baselines regarding your IT network. This inventory process must be performed before continuing with discovery.
Fortunately, this process can now be made automatic and even the largest of infrastructures can be searched and analysed in a reasonably short period. Inventory must be able to identify your software assets regardless of their geographical location or computing characteristics.

Capture

The next step in the discovery cycle involves the capture of the license entitlements that manage the software assets discovered in the inventory. The capture stage should gather entitlements regarding all of the software that is installed on your system, even when the software is not currently used. Without this information the inventory may be almost useless.

The factor of human error can be mitigated by using automatic tools that are specifically created to create a library of license entitlements. Tools that are currently available are very efficient at capturing accurate data.

Identification & Validation

The next step is to match up the software audit to the repository of licensing data that were built in the last two stages. Errors may have occurred anywhere from the original paperwork for software to the most recent audits undertaken on your IT network.

One crucial factor in the validation step is the ability to combine the license entitlements within your system to your company’s proof of entitlement. This will be vital if any arguments with software vendors arise as a consequence of the discovery process.

After these steps have been undertaken you will have built an incredibly rich image of how your IT system is serving software programs to its users. It will be a lot simpler to identify any trouble spots on your system, or areas of software usage that are no longer of any particular benefit to your operations.

You can now begin a period of reconciliation upon your network. You can compare the software programs that are actually used on your network against the licensing and support contracts that you are paying for and bridge any gaps between the two.

The software distribution within your system may include many hundreds or even thousands of individual instances, and there are any number of rules that may be involved with the licensing agreements you have in place. It is therefore a necessity to automate the reconciliation period, using one or more tools to apply smart rules to the process.

The use SAM within your organisation is a very specific process which should be planned by a capable company as they should have more information.

Compliancy and Flexibility with Software Asset Management

Many of the basic principles of a successful SAM strategy are based upon the concepts laid out in the Information Technology Infrastructure Library, or ITIL. This library defines a number of ideas and best practices that should be adopted for successful management of IT functions.

This library is a dynamic publication and is often updated with new ideas and policies that cater to the constantly changing IT backdrop of modern business. A good SAM strategy should be flexible enough to comply with the guidelines laid out in the ITIL whilst meeting the changing needs of the business within which it is actively utilised.

The International Standard Organisation (ISO) has published a standard that applies specifically to SAM practices. This standard, ISO 19770-1, is an incredibly comprehensive collection of suggestions that are designed to ensure that SAM is used in such a way as to “satisfy corporate governance requirements”. Standards of this kind play an important part in realising standardisation across an industry.

The ISO standard should really be adhered to when designing a software asset management strategy for your own company, although the level of detail included within can easily become a daunting prospect. It is important to remember that no matter what recommendations you follow when designing a SAM strategy, whatever you decide to employ must help your business rather than hinder it.

Creating a full and comprehensive software asset management strategy for your own business may actually never come to fruition. Your plan must be flexible enough to adapt and mature as your organisation does, and it must allow for modifications to your daily activities, no matter how small or underlying they might be. This really is the key to a successful software asset management strategy.

Conclusion

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

As with other branches of any organisation, a number of different plans should be evaluated and used in order to ensure the smooth running of daily activities. software asset management should not be the only tool used to manage computing assets within your company, but rather one of a multitude of complimentary techniques used to control the system as a unit.

So if you think that your company is currently suffering from a lack of planned monitoring and management over its IT network, or that the possible advantages described in this article could provide a critical market edge over your competitors, then it would be worth researching how software asset management could be used within your business.

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