March 20th, 2010 | 
Author: Introduction
The degree to which computing has become a part of normal life and everyday business has prompted a change in the way management approaches how they manage the money, the tasks and the assets within a business. IT is becoming an important factor in business.
As computing becomes more widespread within a business and takes a more prominent critical within the critical processes of that company, it is important to make sure that an appropriate level of attention is applied to this technology.
IT departments have come a long way over the past few years and are now seen as essential elements of any business. As such, they are allocated grander budgets but must also be able to manage a larger amount of responsibility.
But after you have spent a large amount of money on developing your IT system and seen the requirements of your company change, how do you ensure that the technology you are using can keep up with demand?
This is the role undertaken by IT management software and systems.
Every organisation and every situation will have different needs and will create different challenges. To satisfy these needs there are a range of different solutions and approaches that can be used to help manage the IT infrastructure of your business.One of these solutions is discussed below.
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 packages within your company. It is a business process rather than a distinct discipline and is becoming a more essential part of the modern corporate environment, particularly for companies operating in the field of IT.
SAM is not simply a program for support staff rolling out software across a large company network, but can be a crucial tool to help improve performance at many levels of a company. The objectives of SAM include monitoring expenses of the IT infrastructure within a organisation, 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. As IT usage in a company grows, so do the potential benefits of SAM.
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 business case for going with a SAM solution is not always obvious until a broad inspection 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.
Monetary benefits remain the most driving business factor when choosing to employ SAM technology within an organisation. Every company needs to make money after all and revenue is a very measurable metric. The financial benefits of SAM do certainly exist however.
An increasingly large amount of a business’ IT budget is spent on software licensing so there is a critical need to invest to correctly handle this spending. As companies expand and spread, their software requirements 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 SAM really delivers an edge.
software asset management is not restricted to simply the technology of your company either. As a management process it will often involve many of the branches within a organisation, including Finance Human Resources, to make sure that it runs as efficiently as possible. It is a process that does not need to follow regular.
Ironically, IT service firms themselves, such as the service reseller Centennial need equally as much IT management as their clients.
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 correct for your company? 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 made through the management of licensing and maintenance agreements across a companies IT system. Productivity can be greatly by ensuring that staff have the latest editions of software permitted under current licenses held, and communication inside the business is aided when support staff know exactly what is deployed on every workstation under their control.
Cost Savings
As discussed before, perhaps the most persuading reason to utilise software asset management within your company is the potential cost savings that can be made. The profitability of your business 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 considered.
The most immediate way that software asset management can help to lower costs is by targeting any software running on your corporate network that is no longer necessary. The software might not be being used anymore, it may be very outdated to be of use or it may be duplicated on your system. SAM can be used to remove this unnecessary overhead.
By clearing these items of software that are no longer a help to the running of your company you are streamlining a large portion of your IT network. Paying for unneeded software licenses and maintenance agreements means that more money can be spent on the vital sections of your IT infrastructure.
Mitigate Risk Factors
A surprising amount of software that is actively used in the business 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. This is becoming an increasingly frustrating factor for IT managers.
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 originally purchased although the original software licenses may have expired. Without the correct security policies in place, users may also be able to load their own software onto the network.
The danger of running unlicensed software on your network is clear. When something goes wrong with the hardware or software platform behind 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 limit your responsiveness to unforeseen events. The cost of recovery will forever outweigh the cost of mitigation when it comes to IT systems.
Even in a stagnating and unknown economy Centennial distributors still find that SAM is a technology in demand from companies.
Implementing SAM in your Organisation
As previously discussed, there are numerous potential benefits to employing a good SAM strategy within your company, both financial and otherwise. It is therefore important to determine which elements of software asset management you should deploy first since certain 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 primary stages that have to be performed to truly develop an informative picture of the usage of IT assets within your organisation. These are:
Inventory
Inventory is the most fundamental stage of the discovery process. It is crucial that an accurate inventory of IT assets within your business is created to aid your IT managers to maintain baselines for your IT system. This inventory process must be performed before carrying on with discovery.
Thankfully, this process can now be made automatic and even the largest of infrastructures can be searched and analysed in a relatively short period. Inventory should be able to identify your IT assets regardless of their geographical location or technological characteristics. Modern inventory processes are capable of this.
Capture
The second step in the discovery process involves the capture of the license entitlements that cover the software assets identified in the inventory. The capture stage should gather entitlements for all of the software that is installed on your network, even if the software is not currently used.
The risk of human error can be mitigated by using automatic tools that are specifically created to build a library of license entitlements. Packages that are currently available are very efficient at gathering accurate data. These tools will also maintain databases containing up to date information from IT vendors.
Identification & Validation
The next process is to match up your software inventory to the repository of licensing information that were created in the last two stages. Errors may have been made anywhere from the original invoices for software to the latest audits undertaken on your IT network. These errors can now be rectified.
One crucial factor in the validation stage is the ability to associate the license entitlements on your network to your organisation’s proof of entitlement. This will be vital if any disputes with software resellers arise as a consequence of the discovery cycle.
Once these steps have been undertaken you will have created an incredibly detailed image of how your IT system is serving software assets to its users. It will be a lot simpler to identify any trouble areas on your network, or sections of software use that are no longer of any particular benefit to your operations.
You can now begin a period of reconciliation on your network. You can compare the software packages that are actually installed on your system against the licensing and support entitlements that you are paying for and close any gaps between the two. This is when the financial benefits of software asset management start to take effect.
The software spread in your network may include many hundreds or even thousands of individual installations, and there are any number of restrictions that may be involved with the licensing agreements you have in place. It is therefore a necessity to automate the reconciliation process, using one or more programs to apply smart rules to the process. These rules can be catered to the specific needs of your business
The IT industry is in dire need for more Centennial vendors who will provide the right IT management services.
Compliancy and Flexibility with SAM
Many of the basic principles of a successful SAM strategy are based upon the concepts set out in the Information Technology Infrastructure Library, or ITIL. This library details a number of ideas and best practices that should be adopted for successful control of IT functions.
This library is a dynamic entity and is often updated with new ideas and techniques that reflect the ever changing IT environment of modern business. A good SAM strategy should be flexible enough to follow the guidelines laid out in the ITIL whilst meeting the changing needs of the company 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 specifically to software asset management practices. This standard, ISO 19770-1, is an exceptionally comprehensive set of suggestions 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 essential part in achieving standardisation across an industry.
The ISO standard should certainly be adhered to when planning a software asset management strategy for your own business, although the level of detail included 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 help your business rather than hinder it.
Designing a complete and comprehensive software asset management strategy for your own business might actually never come to fruition. Your strategy must be flexible enough to change and grow as your organisation does, and it should allow for modifications to your daily activities, no matter how small or underlying they might be. This really is the key to a worthwhile software asset management strategy.
Conclusion
It is easy to see that as the scope and importance of IT systems within your company grow, so does the need for correct and effective management of these systems. Gone are the days when an IT department was a bonus that would occasionally forward the business. Computer systems are now critical to the modern company.
As with other parts of any company, a number of different strategies should be considered and used in order to ensure the efficient running of day to day activities. software asset management should not be the only tool used to manage computing resources within your company, but rather one of a number of complimentary techniques used to control the system as a unit.
So if you feel that your business is really suffering from a lack of structured monitoring and control over its IT infrastructure, or that the possible benefits described in this article could provide a critical market edge over your competitors, then it would be worth investigating how SAM could be employed within your business. There might be no time to lose.
Posted in social