Introduction
The extent to which technology has become a part of everyday life and everyday business has seen a change in the way business approaches how they manage the money, the tasks and the systems within a business. Technology fast becoming an important factor in business.
As computing becomes more widely used within an organisation and takes a more prominent role within the critical functions of that company, it is important to make sure that an appropriate amount of attention is given to this technology. Technological assets that may have previously been ignored are now key in the decision making process.
IT departments have come a long way during the past few years and are now seen as vital parts of any company. As such, they are allocated greater budgets but must also be able to handle a larger amount of work.
But once you have spent a large amount of your budget on developing an IT infrastructure and seen the circumstances of your business change, how do you ensure that the systems you are using can keep up with demand?
This is the function by IT management software and procedures.
Every business and every situation will have different specifications and will present different problems. To meet these requirements there are a number of different technologies and approaches that can be used to help control the IT infrastructure of your business.One of these options is discussed below.
Software Asset Management
Software Asset Management (SAM) is designed to do exactly what it says on the tin – monitoring and maintaining the deployment and usage of software programs 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 IT.
SAM is not simply an aid for support staff rolling out software across a large company network, but can be a critical tool to help improve performance at many levels of a business. The goals of SAM include monitoring costs of the IT infrastructure within a business, negating legal threats 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 company grows, so do the potential benefits of SAM.
The practice of software asset management is often viewed as an unnecessary evil due to the abstract nature of what it is designed to deal with, and the financial case for using a SAM solution is not always obvious until a broad audit of the software infrastructure of a company has been carried out.
Monetary benefits remain the most driving commercial factor when choosing to operate software asset management technology within an organisation. Every company needs to make profit after all and profitability is a very measurable metric. The financial benefits of SAM do certainly exist however.
An increasingly large proportion of a business’ IT budget is spent on software licensing so there is a real need to invest to correctly manage this spending. As organisations expand and diversify, their software requirements can change greatly and hardware and software 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 edge.
software asset management is not limited to simply the technology of your organisation either. As a management process it will often include many of the departments within a business, including Finance Human Resources, to ensure that it runs as cost-effectively as possible. It is a process that does not need to follow established bureaucratic models.
Anybody who was going to question Softcat exactly what product stands out would get the simple answer software asset management SAM.
Why follow a SAM Strategy?
Having seen the many benefits of deploying a software asset management solution, how do you know that it would be right for your company? Each business is different and has its own separate set of challenges and benefits, so any plan you will use needs to be tailored to these specific traits. The benefits of SAM do cover the basic aspects of software management.
There are more than just financial benefits that can be gained through the management of licensing and maintenance agreements across an organisations IT system. Productivity can be greatly by ensuring that employees have the newest editions of software permitted under current licenses held, and communication within the business is aided when support staff know exactly what is deployed on every computer under their control.
Cost Savings
As discussed before, perhaps the most convincing reason to utilise SAM within your company is the potential financial savings that can be achieved. The profitability of your company is always going to be the bottom line so any system that can help to improve this profitability by descreasing costs is one that should be considered. Money can be saved in a multitude of ways.
The most direct way that software asset management can help to lower costs is by identifying any applications running on your corporate IT system that is no longer necessary. 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 help 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 infrastructure. Paying for unnecessary software licenses and support and maintenance agreements means that more money can be spent on the essential parts of your IT infrastructure. Focusing your finances on these critical components will improve the overall performance of your IT department.
Mitigate Risk Factors
A surprising proportion of software that is currently used in the corporate environment is either licensed incorrectly or not licensed at all. Running any amount of unmonitored software on your IT network is ill 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 included when your IT hardware was first purchased although the initial software licenses may have expired. Without the correct control policies in place, users may also be able to install their own software onto the system. Operating a corporate IT system in this wild 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 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 seriously inhibit your responsiveness to unforeseen events. The cost of recovery will forever outweigh the cost of mitigation when it comes to IT systems.
To plan and carry out a successful SAM campaign, keeping CITHS buying framework distributors top of your list of priorities will be a key factor.
Implementing SAM in your Organisation
As previously discussed, there are many potential advantages to utilising a good software asset management strategy within your organisation, both monetary and otherwise. It is therefore important to consider which parts of software asset management you should deploy first since certain 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 basic phases that have to be performed to truly develop an informative picture of the deployment of software assets within your organisation.
Inventory
Inventory is the most fundamental stage of the discovery process. It is vital that an accurate inventory of software assets within your organisation is created to help your IT department to maintain baselines regarding your IT system.
Fortunately, this process can now be automated 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 software assets regardless of their geographical location or technological characteristics.
Capture
The second step in the discovery cycle involves the capture of the license entitlements that cover the software programs identified in the inventory. The capture process should collect entitlements for all of the software that is installed 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 designed to create a library of license entitlements. Tools that are currently available are very efficient at capturing accurate data. 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 data that were created in the last two stages. Errors may have been made anywhere from the original invoices for software to the latest audits performed on your IT system. These errors can now be rectified.
One crucial factor in the validation step is the ability to combine the license entitlements within your network to your organisation’s proof of entitlement. This will be essential if any arguments with software vendors arise as a consequence of the discovery cycle. You want to be as informed as possible in these circumstances.
After these steps have been undertaken you will have built an incredibly detailed picture of how your IT system is serving software packages to its users. It will be much simpler to identify particular trouble spots on your system, or areas of software usage that are no longer of any practical benefit to your operations.
You can now start a period of reconciliation on your system. You can compare the software packages that are actually installed 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 system may include many hundreds or perhaps thousands of individual installations, and there are any number of rules that may be involved with the licensing contracts you have in place. It is therefore a necessity to automate the reconciliation stage, using one or more programs to apply intelligent rules to the process.
To find out more about the software asset management process you could use microsoft licensing resources through the web.
Compliancy and Flexibility with SAM
Many of the basic principles of a modern 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 ideas and best practices that should be followed for successful control of IT functions.
This library is a changing entity and is often updated with new ideas and policies that reflect the constantly changing IT environment of modern business. A good SAM strategy should be flexible enough to comply with the guidelines set 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 SAM
The International Standard Organisation (ISO) has created a standard that applies directly to SAM practices. This standard, ISO 19770-1, is an incredibly comprehensive collection of suggestions that are designed to ensure that SAM 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 really be adhered to when planning a SAM strategy for your own company, 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 creating a SAM strategy, whatever you decide to implement must aid your organisation rather than hinder it.
Designing a complete and comprehensive software asset management strategy for your own organisation might actually never come to fruition. Your plan must be flexible enough to change and grow as your business does, and it must allow for modifications to your daily tasks, no matter how trivial or underlying they might be. This really is the key to a worthwhile SAM plan.
Conclusion
It is easy to see that as the scope and importance of IT systems within your organisation grow, so does the need for correct and effective management of these systems. Gone are the days when an IT branch was a bonus that would occasionally progress the business. IT systems are now critical to the modern company. Critical systems need to be monitored to an appropriate level.
As with other branches of any company, a number of different 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 resources within your company, but rather one of a number 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 strategies.
So if you think that your business is really suffering from a lack of structured monitoring and management over its IT network, or that the potential advantages outlined in this article could provide a crucial market edge over your competitors, then it would be worth investigating how software asset management could be used within your company. There may be no time to lose.
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