Introduction
The degree to which computing has become a part of everyday life and day-to-day business has seen a change in the way management approaches how they manage the money, the tasks and the assets within a business. Technology fast becoming an increasing factor in business.
As technology becomes more widely used within a business and takes a more prominent critical within the critical functions of that business, it is necessary to make sure that an appropriate level of attention is given to this technology.
IT departments have come a long way over the past few years and are now seen as critical elements of any business. As such, they are allocated greater budgets but must also be able to deal with a greater amount of responsibility. There is an eternal race between corporate demands and computing capabilities.
But once you have spent a large amount of your budget on developing your IT system and seen the requirements of your business change, how do you ensure that the technology you are using can keep up with demand?
This is the function by IT management software and systems.
Every company and every situation will have different specifications and will create unique issues. To meet these needs 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
SAM ( Software Asset Management) is designed to do exactly what it says on the tin – monitoring and controlling the deployment and usage of software suites within your business. It is a business process rather than a distinct area of expertise and is becoming a more essential part of the modern commercial environment, particularly for companies 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 technicians deploying software across a large corporate network, but can be a critical tool to help improve performance at multiple levels of a organisation. The objectives of SAM include monitoring costs of the IT infrastructure within a company, negating legal threats associated with incorrect software license usage and maintaining high levels of productivity by making sure software is up to date and fit for its purpose.
The practice of SAM 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 using 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.
Financial benefits are still the most driving commercial factor when deciding to operate software asset management software within an organisation. Every company needs to make money after all and profitability is a very measurable figure. The financial benefits of software asset management do certainly exist however.
An increasingly large proportion of a company’s IT bank roll is spent on software licensing so there is a critical need to invest to correctly monitor this spending. As organisations grow and spread, their software needs can change greatly and equipment and software 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 advantage.
software asset management is not limited to simply the IT department of your company either. As a management operation it will often include many of the branches within a company, including Finance Human Resources, to ensure that it runs as cost-effectively as possible.
Ironically, IT service firms themselves, such as the service vendor Centennial demand equally as much IT management as their customers.
Why follow a SAM Strategy?
Having heard the multiple advantages of utilising a SAM solution, how do you know that it would be right for your business? Every business is different and has its own unique set of problems and benefits, so any plan you will use needs to be catered to these specific characteristics. The benefits of software asset management do cover the fundamental aspects of IT management.
There are more than just cost advantages that can be achieved through the control of licensing and maintenance agreements across a businesses IT network. Productivity can be greatly 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 SAM 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 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 strategy that can help to increase this profitability by descreasing costs is one that should be considered.
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 anymore, it may be too outdated to be of use or it may be duplicated on your system.
By removing these items of software that are no longer a help to the running of your organisation you are streamlining a large portion of your IT infrastructure. Paying for unneeded software licenses and support and maintenance contracts means that more finance can be spent on the critical sections of your IT system. Focusing your attention on these vital components will improve the overall performance of your IT department.
Mitigate Risk Factors
A surprising percentage 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 system is not advised, because when left unchecked it can become incredibly unpredictable. This is becoming an increasingly annoying factor for network managers.
Unlicensed software applications can be introduced into an uncontrolled IT system 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 danger of running unlicensed software on your system is clear. When anything goes wrong with the hardware or software platform behind your critical processes, how do you manage the situation? Running a complicated software system without the correct 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 forever outweigh the cost of prevention when it comes to data systems.
Many businesses have reported increases in productivity since Centennial consultants planned alongside their current IT support staff.
Implementing SAM in your Organisation
As previously mentioned, there are many potential advantages to utilising a good SAM strategy within your company, both monetary and otherwise. It is vitally important to consider which branches of software asset management you should implement first since some benefits will be realised more speedily than others.
The discovery process can be viewed as three fundamental areas that have to be performed to truly build an informative picture of the deployment of IT assets within your company.
Inventory
Inventory is the most fundamental stage of the discovery cycle. It is vital that an accurate inventory of IT assets within your organisation is created to aid your IT department to maintain baselines for your IT network. This inventory process must be performed before continuing with discovery.
Thankfully, this process can now be made automatic and even the grandest of infrastructures can be searched and analysed in a reasonably short period of time. Inventory should be able to identify your software assets regardless of their physical location or technological characteristics.
Capture
The next step in the discovery process involves the capture of the software license entitlements that manage the software programs 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 in use.
The risk of human error can be avoided by using automated tools that are specifically designed to build a library of license entitlements. Tools that are currently available are incredibly efficient at gathering accurate information.
Identification & Validation
The third 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 been made 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 combine the license entitlements on your system to your company’s proof of entitlement. This will be vital if any disputes with software resellers arise as a consequence of the discovery cycle.
After these three steps have been performed you will have built an incredibly detailed picture of how your IT network is serving software assets to its users. It will be much easier to identify any trouble areas on your system, or areas of software use that are no longer of any particular benefit to your operations. This detailed image can be used for future reference as well.
You can now start a period of reconciliation upon your system. You can compare the software packages that are actually used 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 distribution within your system may include many hundreds or even thousands of individual installations, and there are any number of restrictions that may be associated with the licensing agreements you have in place. It is therefore essential to automate the reconciliation stage, utilising one or more tools to apply intelligent rules to the process.
The computing industry is in vital need for many Centennial vendors who will provide the right IT management services.
Compliancy and Flexibility with Software Asset Management
Many of the fundamental principles of a modern SAM strategy are based upon the principles laid 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 functions. The ITIL can be found online.
This library is a dynamic publication and is often updated with new concepts and techniques that reflect the ever 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 needs of the business within which it is actively used. This is an essential requirement of successful software asset management
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 collection of suggestions 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 part in realising standardisation across an industry.
The ISO standard should really be adhered to when designing a SAM 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 implement must aid your business rather than stifle it.
Designing a full and comprehensive SAM strategy for your own business may actually never come to fruition. Your strategy must be flexible enough to adapt and grow as your business 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 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 good and effective monitoring of these systems. Gone are the times when an IT branch was a bonus that would sometimes forward the business. Computer networks are now critical to the modern business.
As with other branches of any business, a number of different strategies should be considered and utilised in order to ensure the smooth running of day to day activities. SAM should not be the only tool used to manage computing assets within your company, but rather one of a number of complimentary techniques used to control the system as a whole. software asset management can go a long way toward helping your business but should be helped by other strategies.
So if you feel that your company is currently suffering from a lack of planned monitoring and control over its IT network, or that the potential advantages outlined in this article could provide a crucial market advantage over your competitors, then it would be well worth researching how SAM could be used within your organisation. There might be no time to lose.