Introduction
The extent to which technology has become a part of everyday life and day-to-day commerce has prompted 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 widely used within an organisation and takes a more prominent vital within the critical functions of that organisation, it is necessary to make sure that an appropriate level of attention is applied to this technology.
Technology have come a long way over the past few years and are now seen as critical parts of any organisation. As such, they receive grander budgets but must also be able to deal with a greater amount of work.
But once you have spent a substantial amount of money on developing your IT system and seen the requirements of your organisation change, how do you make sure that the technology you are using can keep up with demand?
This is the function by IT management software and procedures.
Every company and every environment will have different requirements and will create unique problems. To meet these needs there are a range of different solutions and approaches that can be implemented to help control the IT network of your company.
Software Asset Management
Software Asset Management (SAM) is built to do exactly what it says on the tin – monitoring and controlling the deployment and usage of software programs 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 business environment, particularly for businesses operating in the field of IT. 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 an aid for technicians deploying software across a large corporate network, but can be a crucial tool to help improve performance at many levels of a company. The aims of SAM include monitoring expenses of the IT infrastructure within a business, negating legal threats 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.
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 broad audit of the software infrastructure of a company has been done. Once existing problems have been identified however, the use of SAM becomes self evident.
Financial benefits are still the most motivating commercial factor when deciding to employ SAM technology within a company. Every corporation needs to make profit after all and profitability is a very measurable figure. The financial benefits of SAM do certainly exist however.
An increasingly large proportion 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 organisations expand and diversify, their software needs can change radically and equipment and software can quickly 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.
SAM is not limited to simply the technology of your company either. As a management operation it will often include many of the branches within a business, including Finance Human Resources, to ensure that it runs as cost-effectively as possible.
The forward thinking technology services company who supply Centennial Discovery noticed the need for good SAM services a very long time ago.
Why follow a SAM Strategy?
Having heard the multiple advantages of deploying a software asset management solution, how do you know that it would be appropriate for your organisation? Every company is different and has its own separate set of problems and benefits, so any plan you will undertake needs to be catered to these specific traits.
There are more than simply monetary advantages that can be made through the control of licensing and maintenance agreements across an organisations IT system. Productivity can be vastly by ensuring that employees have the latest versions of software available under current licenses held, and communication inside the business is helped 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 business.
Cost Savings
As discussed before, perhaps the most persuading reason to utilise software asset management within your company is the potential financial savings that can be made. The profitability of your company is always going to be the bottom line so any strategy that can help to increase this profitability by reducing expenses is one that should be evaluated. Money can be saved in a multitude of ways.
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 anymore, it may be too outdated to be of use or it may be duplicated on your system.
By clearing these items of software that are no longer a benefit to the operation of your company you are streamlining a large chunk of your IT network. Paying for unnecessary software licenses and support and maintenance agreements means that more finance can be spent on the essential sections of your IT infrastructure.
Mitigate Risk
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 unmonitored software on your IT network is ill advised, because when left unchecked it can become very unpredictable.
Rogue 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 purchased although the initial software licenses may have expired. Without the correct access policies in place, users may also be able to load their own software onto the network.
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 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 critically inhibit your responsiveness to unforeseen events.
Recent years have seen a vast growth in the numbers of dependable Centennial distributors around that are open for business.
Implementing Software Asset Management in your Organisation
As previously discussed, there are many potential benefits to utilising a good SAM strategy within your company, both monetary and otherwise. It is therefore important to consider which elements of SAM you should implement first since certain benefits will be realised more speedily than others.
This discovery process can be seen as three fundamental areas that have to be undertaken to truly build an accurate picture of the usage of IT assets within your company.
Inventory
Inventory is the most basic function of the discovery process. It is vital that an accurate audit of IT assets within your organisation is created to aid your IT managers to maintain baselines for your IT network. This inventory process must be performed before continuing with discovery.
Fortunately, this process can now be automated and even the largest of networks can be investigated and analysed in a relatively short period. Inventory must be able to identify your IT assets regardless of their physical location or computing characteristics.
Capture
The second step in the discovery cycle involves the capture of the license entitlements that concern the software programs discovered in the inventory. The capture process should collect entitlements for all of the software that is installed on your system, even when the software is not currently in use. Without this information the inventory would be almost useless.
The factor of human error can be avoided by using automatic tools that are specifically created to build a library of license entitlements. Packages that are currently employed are very efficient at capturing accurate information.
Identification & Validation
The next step is to match up your software inventory to the repository of licensing information that were built in the previous two stages. Errors may have been made anywhere from the original invoices for software to the most recent audits performed on your IT system. These errors can now be rectified.
One critical factor in the validation stage is the ability to link the license entitlements within your system to your organisation’s proof of entitlement. This will be essential if any disputes with software vendors arise as a consequence of the discovery cycle.
Once 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 a lot simpler to identify any trouble spots on your network, or areas of software usage that are no longer of any particular benefit to your operations. This detailed map can be used for future reference as well.
You can now commence a period of reconciliation on your system. You can compare the software packages that are actually used on your network against the licensing and support contracts that you are paying for and close any divides between the two. This is when the financial benefits of SAM start to take effect.
The software spread in your network 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 essential to automate the reconciliation stage, using one or more programs to apply smart rules to the process.
More about utilising software asset management within your company is available through Centennial vendors who can be found around the country.
Compliancy and Flexibility with Software Asset Management
Many of the fundamental principles of a modern software asset management strategy are based upon the concepts 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 operations.
This library is a dynamic publication and is often updated with new ideas and techniques that cater to the ever changing IT environment of modern business. A good software asset management strategy should be flexible enough to follow the guidelines set out in the ITIL whilst matching the changing requirements of the business within which it is actively utilised. This is an essential requirement of successful 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 set of suggestions that are built to ensure that SAM is utilised in such a way as to “satisfy corporate governance requirements”.
The ISO standard should really be followed 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 software asset management strategy, whatever plan you decide to implement must help your organisation rather than hinder it.
Designing a complete and comprehensive SAM strategy for your own business might actually never come to fruition. Your strategy must be flexible to change and mature as your business does, and it must allow for updates to your daily activities, no matter how trivial or underlying they might be.
Conclusion
It is clear to see that as the scope 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 department was a bonus that would occasionally forward the business. Computer networks are now critical to the modern company.
As with other parts of any organisation, a number of separate strategies should be considered and utilised in order to ensure the efficient running of day to day activities. SAM should not be the only tactic used to manage computing assets within your organisation, but rather one of a number of complimentary techniques used to manage the system as a whole.
So if you think that your business is currently suffering from a lack of planned 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 researching how SAM could be used within your company. There may be no time to spare.