Introduction
The degree to which technology has become a part of normal life and everyday business has forced a change in the way management approaches how they manage the money, the processes and the assets within an organisation. IT is fast becoming an increasing factor in business.
As computing becomes more widely used within a company and takes a more prominent vital within the critical functions of that business, it is important to make sure that an appropriate amount of attention is given to this technology.
IT departments have come a long way during the past few years and are now seen as vital parts of any business. As such, they receive grander budgets but must also be able to deal with a larger amount of responsibility.
But once you have spent a substantial amount of your budget on developing an IT network and seen the requirements of your organisation change, how do you ensure that the technology you are using can keep up with demand? Moreover, how can you achieve this without spending a prohibitive amount of money?
This is the role carried out by IT management software and procedures.
Every business and every environment will have different specifications and will create unique problems. To satisfy these requirements there are a range of different solutions and approaches that can be implemented to help control the IT infrastructure of your business.
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 business. It is a business process rather than a distinct skill and is becoming a more essential part of the modern corporate environment, particularly for corporations 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 rolling out software across a large company network, but can be a critical tool to help improve performance at all levels of a organisation. The objectives of SAM include monitoring costs of the IT infrastructure within a organisation, 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 commercial case for using a SAM solution is not always obvious until a broad inspection of the software infrastructure of a company has been carried out.
Financial benefits are still the most driving business factor when choosing to operate SAM technology within a company. Every corporation needs to make money after all and profitability is a very measurable metric.
An increasingly large amount of a business’ IT bank roll is spent on software licensing so there is a real need to invest to correctly manage this spending. As companies grow and spread, their software needs can change radically and equipment and programs can swiftly 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 restricted to simply the IT department of your business either. As a management process it will often include many of the branches within a business, including Finance Human Resources, to ensure that it runs as efficiently as possible.
IT service staff working for a company called Centennial supply a range of IT management solutions including software asset management tools.
Why follow a SAM Strategy?
Having heard the multiple benefits of utilising a SAM 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 advantages, so any strategy you will undertake needs to be tailored to these specific traits. The benefits of SAM do cover the fundamental aspects of software management.
There are more than just monetary advantages that can be gained through the control of licensing and maintenance agreements across a businesses IT network. Productivity can be hugely boosted by ensuring that users have the latest editions of software permitted under current licenses held, and communication inside the corporation 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 organisation.
Cost Savings
As discussed before, perhaps the most convincing reason to utilise software asset management within your business 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 improve this profitability by lowering expenses is one that should be considered. Money can be saved in a multitude of ways.
The most immediate way that software asset management can help to reduce costs is by identifying any applications running on your corporate network that is no longer needed. The software might not be being used any longer, 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 business you are streamlining a large chunk of your IT system. 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.
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 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 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 danger of running unlicensed software on your system is clear. When anything goes wrong with the hardware or software platform behind your vital processes, how do you handle the situation? Operating a complex software system without the correct support can create a metaphorical minefield when it comes to disaster recovery and can seriously limit your responsiveness to unforeseen events. The cost of recovery will forever outweigh the cost of mitigation when it comes to IT systems.
Many companies have reported increases in productivity after my company worked alongside their current IT support staff.
Implementing Software Asset Management in your Organisation
As previously discussed, there are many potential advantages to employing a good SAM strategy within your company, both financial and otherwise. It is vitally important to consider which elements of SAM you should deploy first since some benefits will be realised more quickly than others. Some may take a period of years to be fully felt.
This discovery process can be viewed as three basic stages that have to be performed to really build an accurate picture of the deployment of software assets within your company.
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 network. This inventory process must be performed before carrying on with discovery.
Fortunately, this process can now be automated and even the largest of networks can be searched and analysed in a relatively short period. Inventory should be able to identify your IT assets regardless of their physical location or technological characteristics. Modern inventory processes are capable of this.
Capture
The second step in the discovery cycle is the capture of the software license entitlements that cover the software programs identified in the inventory. The capture process should collect entitlements regarding all of the software that exists on your network, 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. Packages that are currently employed are very efficient at gathering accurate data.
Identification & Validation
The third step is to match up your software inventory to the repository of licensing information that were built in the last two stages. Errors may have occurred anywhere from the original paperwork for software to the latest audits performed on your IT network.
One critical factor in the validation step is the ability to combine the license entitlements on your network to your company’s proof of entitlement. This will be vital if any arguments with software resellers arise as a consequence of the discovery process. You want to be as informed as possible in these circumstances.
Once these three steps have been undertaken you will have built an incredibly rich image of how your IT network is serving software programs to its users. It will be a lot easier to identify particular trouble spots on your system, or sections of software use that are no longer of any particular benefit to your operations.
You can now commence a period of reconciliation upon your network. You should compare the software packages that are actually installed on your system against the licensing and support contracts that you are paying for and close any gaps between the two.
The software distribution within 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 essential to automate the reconciliation period, using one or more tools to apply smart rules to the process.
To see how SAM can directly help your organisation use an experienced Centennial consultant who can construct a software asset management strategy suited to your needs.
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 details a number of concepts and best practices that should be adopted for successful control of IT functions. The ITIL can be found online.
This library is a dynamic entity and is often updated with new concepts and policies that cater to the ever changing IT environment of modern business. A good SAM strategy should be flexible enough to follow the guidelines set out in the ITIL whilst meeting the changing needs of the company within which it is actively used.
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 guidelines that are built to ensure that software asset management is used in such a way as to “satisfy corporate governance requirements”.
The ISO standard should really be followed when planning a software asset management strategy for your own organisation, although the level of detail included within can easily become a daunting challenge. It is vital to remember that no matter what recommendations you follow when designing a SAM strategy, whatever plan you decide to implement needs to aid your business rather than hinder it.
Creating a full and comprehensive software asset management strategy for your own organisation might actually never come to fruition. Your strategy must be flexible enough to change and grow 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 extent and importance of IT systems within your company grow, so does the need for correct and efficient management of these systems. Gone are the times when an IT department was a bonus that would sometimes progress the business. Computer networks are now critical to the modern company. Critical systems need to be maintained to an appropriate level.
As with other parts of any organisation, a number of separate plans should be considered and utilised in order to ensure the smooth running of daily tasks. SAM should not be the only tactic used to manage technological resources within your organisation, but rather one of a number of complimentary policies used to manage the system as a whole. software asset management can go a long way toward helping your business but should be supported by other strategies.
So if you think that your company is really suffering from a lack of structured 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 investigating how SAM could be used within your organisation. There may be no time to lose.