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Introduction

The extent to which technology has become a part of everyday life and day-to-day commerce has seen a change in the way management approaches how they manage the finances, the tasks and the systems within an organisation. Computing becoming an important factor in business.

As technology becomes more widely used within a company and takes a more prominent critical within the vital functions of that company, it is important to make sure that an appropriate level of attention is given to this technology. Technological assets that may have previously been overlooked are now important factors in the decision making process.

Technology have come a long way over the past few years and are now seen as vital parts of any company. As such, they are allocated grander budgets but must also be able to manage a greater amount of work. There is an eternal race between corporate demands and IT capabilities.

But once you have spent a large amount of money on developing an IT network and seen the requirements of your company change, how do you ensure that the systems you are using can keep up with demand?

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

Every organisation 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 manage the IT infrastructure of your organisation.

Software Asset Management

SAM ( Software Asset Management) is designed to do exactly what it says on the tin – monitoring and managing 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 commercial environment, particularly for corporations operating in the field of Information Technology.

SAM is not simply a program for support staff deploying software across a large corporate network, but can be a critical tool to help improve performance at many levels of a company. The objectives of SAM include monitoring costs of the IT infrastructure within a organisation, 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 business grows, so do the potential benefits of SAM.

The practice of SAM is often thought of 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 undertaken.

Economic benefits remain the most motivating business factor when deciding to use SAM technology within a business. Every business needs to make profit after all and revenue is a very measurable figure. The financial benefits of SAM do certainly exist however.

An increasingly large amount of a organisation’s IT budget is spent on software licensing so there is a vital need to invest to correctly monitor this spending. As companies expand and spread, their software needs can change greatly and equipment and programs can quickly become out of date. There is no requirement 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 technology of your business either. As a management process it will often include many of the departments within a organisation, including Finance Human Resources, to make sure that it runs as cost-effectively as possible. It is a process that does not need to follow standard.

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Why follow a SAM Strategy?

Having heard the many advantages of deploying a software asset management solution, how do you know that it would be appropriate for your business? Every company is different and has its own separate set of problems and benefits, so any plan you will use needs to be catered to these specific characteristics.

There are more than simply cost benefits that can be achieved through the control of licensing and maintenance agreements across a businesses IT system. Productivity can be hugely improved by ensuring that employees have the latest versions of software available under current licenses held, and communication inside the company is aided when support staff know exactly what is installed on every computer under their control. The benefits of SAM are not confined to the technological hardware of your business.

Financial Savings

As discussed before, perhaps the most convincing reason to utilise 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 improve this profitability by reducing costs is one that should be evaluated.

The most direct way that software asset management can help to lower costs is by targeting any software running on your corporate IT system that is no longer necessary. 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 benefit to the running of your company you are streamlining a large portion of your IT network. Paying for unneeded software licenses and support and maintenance agreements means that more money can be spent on the essential parts of your IT infrastructure.

Mitigate Risk

A surprising proportion of software that is currently used in the business environment is either licensed incorrectly or not licensed at all. Having any amount of uncontrolled software on your IT network is not advised, because when left unchecked it can become very unpredictable.

Rogue software programs can be introduced into an uncontrolled IT system in a number of ways. Software may have been bundled when your IT hardware was first purchased although the original software licenses may have expired. Without the correct access policies in place, users may also be able to install their own software onto the system.

The danger of running unlicensed software on your system is clear. When something goes wrong with the hardware or software platform supporting your critical processes, how do you recover the situation? Operating a complex software system without the proper support can create a metaphorical minefield when it comes to disaster recovery and can seriously inhibit your responsiveness to unforeseen events.

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Implementing SAM in your Organisation

As previously discussed, there are numerous potential advantages to employing a good SAM strategy within your organisation, both monetary and otherwise. It is vitally important to determine which elements of SAM you should implement 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 viewed as three fundamental phases that have to be undertaken to truly build an informative picture of the deployment of software assets within your organisation.

Inventory

Inventory is the most basic function of the discovery process. It is important that an accurate audit of IT assets within your business is created to aid your IT department to maintain baselines for your IT network. This inventory process must be performed before carrying on with discovery.
Fortunately, this process can now be made automatic and even the largest of networks can be investigated and analysed in a reasonably short period of time. 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 assets identified in the inventory. The capture stage should gather entitlements regarding all of the software that exists on your system, even when the software is not currently used.

The factor of human error can be avoided by using automated tools that are specifically created to create a library of license entitlements. Packages that are currently available are very efficient at gathering accurate information.

Identification & Validation

The next process is to match up your software inventory to the repository of licensing data that were created in the previous two stages. Errors may have occurred anywhere from the original paperwork for software to the latest audits undertaken on your IT system.

One crucial 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 cycle.

Once these three steps have been undertaken you will have created an incredibly rich picture of how your IT network is serving software packages to its users. It will be much simpler to identify particular trouble areas on your network, or areas of software use that are no longer of any particular benefit to your operations.

You can now start a period of reconciliation upon your system. You can compare the software programs that are actually installed on your system against the licensing and support contracts that you are paying for and bridge any gaps 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 even thousands of individual instances, and there are any number of restrictions that may be involved with the licensing contracts you have in place. It is therefore a necessity to automate the reconciliation period, using one or more programs to apply intelligent rules to the process. These rules can be catered to the specific needs of your company

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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 concepts set 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 control of IT functions.

This library is a dynamic entity and is often updated with new ideas and policies that reflect the ever 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 needs of the business within which it is actively utilised.

The International Standard Organisation (ISO) has created a standard that applies directly to software asset management practices. This standard, ISO 19770-1, is an exceptionally comprehensive set of guidelines that are built to ensure that software asset management is utilised in such a way as to “satisfy corporate governance requirements”. Standards of this kind play an important role in achieving standardisation across an industry.

The ISO standard should certainly be followed when designing a SAM strategy for your own company, although the level of detail included within can quickly become a daunting prospect. It is vital to remember that no matter what guidelines you follow when planning a SAM strategy, whatever you decide to implement needs to aid your business rather than stifle it.

Creating a full and comprehensive SAM strategy for your own organisation 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 updates to your daily tasks, no matter how small or fundamental they might be.

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 effective monitoring of these systems. Gone are the times when an IT department was a luxury that would occasionally progress the business. IT networks are now vital to the modern organisation.

As with other parts of any organisation, a number of different plans should be considered and used in order to ensure the smooth running of day to day tasks. SAM should not be the only tactic used to manage computing assets within your company, but rather one of a multitude of complimentary policies used to control the system as a unit. SAM can go a long way toward aiding your company but should be helped by other techniques.

So if you think that your company is really suffering from a lack of structured monitoring and control over its IT infrastructure, or that the potential benefits described in this article could manufacture a crucial market advantage over your competitors, then it would be worth researching how software asset management could be employed within your business.