Introduction
The degree to which computing has become a part of normal life and day-to-day commerce has forced a change in the way management approaches how they manage the money, the processes and the assets within a business.
As technology becomes more widely used within an organisation and takes a more prominent role within the vital functions of that company, it is necessary to make sure that an appropriate amount of attention is given to this computing. Technological systems that may have once been ignored are now important factors in the decision making process.
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 are allocated greater budgets but must also be able to handle a greater amount of work.
But once you have spent a substantial amount of money on developing an IT system and seen the circumstances of your organisation change, how do you ensure that the IT 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 undertaken by IT management software and procedures.
Every organisation and every situation will have different requirements and will create unique 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.
Software Asset Management
SAM ( Software Asset Management) is designed to do exactly what it says on the tin – monitoring and maintaining the deployment and usage of software suites within your organisation. It is a business process rather than a distinct area of expertise and is becoming a more essential part of the modern corporate environment, particularly for corporations operating in the field of Information Technology.
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 many levels of a organisation. The aims of SAM include controlling of the IT infrastructure within a business, 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 an organisation grows, so do the potential benefits of SAM.
The practice of SAM is often thought of as an unnecessary evil due to the abstract nature of what it is designed to deal with, and the financial case for employing a SAM solution is not always obvious until a full of the software infrastructure of a company has been carried out. Once existing problems have been highlighted however, the use of software asset management becomes self evident.
Monetary benefits remain the most motivating business factor when choosing to operate SAM software within a company. Every corporation needs to make profit after all and profitability is a very measurable figure.
An increasingly large proportion of a business’ IT bank roll is spent on software licensing so there is a vital need to invest to correctly manage this spending. As businesses expand and diversify, their software needs can change greatly and equipment and software can swiftly become outdated. There is no need to spend money to maintain the licenses on this outdated software, which is where SAM really delivers an advantage.
software asset management is not limited to simply the technology of your organisation either. As a management process it will often involve many of the branches within a organisation, including Finance Human Resources, to make sure that it runs as cost-effectively as possible.
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Why follow a SAM Strategy?
Having seen the multiple benefits of deploying a SAM solution, how do you know that it would be right for your business? Each business is different and has its own separate set of challenges and advantages, so any strategy you will undertake needs to be tailored to these specific characteristics.
There are more than simply monetary advantages that can be made through the management of licensing and maintenance agreements across a companies IT system. Productivity can be vastly by ensuring that staff have the latest versions of software available under current licenses held, and communication inside the corporation is aided when support staff know exactly what is deployed on every workstation under their control. The benefits of software asset management are not confined to the technological hardware of your business.
Cost Savings
As discussed before, perhaps the most persuading reason to implement SAM within your company is the potential cost savings that can be made. The profitability of your business is always going to be the bottom line so any system that can help to increase this profitability by lowering expenses is one that should be evaluated.
The most immediate way that software asset management can help to lower costs is by identifying any software running on your corporate IT system that is no longer necessary. The software might not be being used anymore, 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 help to the operation of your organisation you are streamlining a large portion of your IT network. Paying for unneeded software licenses and maintenance agreements means that more money can be spent on the essential sections of your IT infrastructure.
Mitigate Risk Factors
A surprising proportion of software that is currently used in the business environment is either licensed incorrectly or not licensed at all. Running any amount of uncontrolled software on your IT network is not advised, because when left unchecked it can become incredibly unpredictable. This is becoming an increasingly annoying factor for IT managers.
Unlicensed software programs 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 access policies in place, users may also be able to install their own software onto the network.
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? Running a complicated software system without the appropriate support can create a metaphorical minefield when it comes to disaster recovery and can seriously limit your responsiveness to unpredictable events. The cost of recovery will always outweigh the cost of prevention when it comes to IT systems.
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Implementing SAM in your Organisation
As previously discussed, there are many potential advantages to utilising a good SAM strategy within your company, both financial and otherwise. It is vitally important to consider which branches of SAM you should implement first since some benefits will be achieved more speedily than others. Some may take a period of years to be fully felt.
This discovery process can be seen as three basic stages that have to be performed to really develop an accurate picture of the usage of IT assets within your business. These are:
Inventory
Inventory is the most basic stage of the discovery cycle. It is crucial that an accurate audit of software assets within your business is created to aid your IT department to maintain baselines regarding your IT system. This inventory process must be performed before carrying on with discovery.
Fortunately, this process can now be made automatic and even the grandest of networks can be investigated and analysed in a reasonably short period of time. 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 process should collect entitlements for all of the software that exists on your system, even if the software is not currently in use.
The element of human error can be mitigated by using automated tools that are specifically created to build a library of license entitlements. Tools that are currently employed are incredibly efficient at gathering accurate data.
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 undertaken on your IT network.
One critical factor in the validation stage is the ability to link the license entitlements on your system to your organisation’s proof of entitlement. This will be essential if any arguments with software resellers 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 network is delivering software packages to its users. It will be a lot easier to identify any trouble areas on your system, or areas of software use that are no longer of any particular benefit to your activites. This detailed image can be used for future reference as well.
You can now begin a period of reconciliation upon your network. You should compare the software programs that are actually employed on your network against the licensing and support entitlements that you are paying for and bridge any gaps between the two.
The software distribution in your network may include many hundreds or even thousands of individual instances, and there are any number of rules that may be associated with the licensing contracts you have in place. It is therefore essential to automate the reconciliation period, utilising one or more tools to apply intelligent rules to the process.
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Compliancy and Flexibility with Software Asset Management
Many of the fundamental practices of a successful software asset management strategy are based upon the principles laid out in the Information Technology Infrastructure Library, or ITIL. This library defines a number of principles and best practices that should be followed for successful control of IT operations. The ITIL can be found online.
This library is a dynamic publication and is often updated with new concepts and techniques that cater to the constantly changing IT backdrop of modern business. A good software asset management strategy should be flexible enough to comply with the guidelines laid out in the ITIL whilst meeting the changing requirements of the business within which it is actively used. This is an essential requirement of effective software asset management
The International Standard Organisation (ISO) has published a standard that applies specifically to software asset management practices. This standard, ISO 19770-1, is an exceptionally comprehensive collection of guidelines that are designed to ensure that software asset management is used in such a way as to “satisfy corporate governance requirements”. Standards of this kind play an important role in realising standardisation across an industry.
The ISO standard should certainly be adhered to when planning a SAM strategy for your own organisation, although the level of detail included within can quickly become a daunting challenge. It is important to remember that no matter what recommendations you follow when designing a software asset management strategy, whatever you decide to employ needs to help your business rather than stifle it.
Designing a full and comprehensive SAM strategy for your own business might actually never come to fruition. Your strategy must be flexible enough to adapt and mature as your organisation does, and it must allow for updates to your daily activities, no matter how trivial or underlying they might be.
Conclusion
It is easy to see that as the extent and importance of IT systems within your company grow, so does the need for good and effective management of these systems. Gone are the times when an IT branch was a bonus that would occasionally progress the business. Computer networks are now vital to the modern company. Critical systems need to be controlled to an appropriate level.
As with other parts of any business, a number of different strategies should be evaluated and used in order to ensure the efficient running of daily tasks. software asset management should not be the only tool used to manage technological assets within your organisation, but rather one of a number of complimentary policies used to manage the system as a whole.
So if you feel that your organisation is really suffering from a lack of structured monitoring and management over its IT infrastructure, or that the potential advantages outlined in this article could manufacture a critical market advantage over your competitors, then it would be worth investigating how SAM could be used within your organisation. There might be no time to lose.