Peter’s Musings

Introduction

The extent to which technology has become a part of everyday life and everyday commerce has forced a change in the way management approaches how they manage the finances, the processes and the systems within a business. IT is becoming an increasing factor in business.

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

IT departments have come a long way over the past few years and are now seen as critical parts of any organisation. As such, they are allocated grander budgets but must also be able to manage a greater amount of work.

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

This is the function by IT management software and procedures.

Every organisation and every situation will have different requirements and will create different problems. To satisfy these needs there are a range of different technologies and approaches that can be implemented to help control the IT assets of your company.One of these solutions is discussed below.

Software Asset Management

SAM ( Software Asset Management) is built to do exactly what it says on the tin - monitoring and managing the deployment and usage of software packages within your organisation. It is a business process rather than a distinct skill 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 support staff deploying software across a large company network, but can be a crucial tool to help improve performance at all levels of a organisation. The goals of SAM include monitoring expenses of the IT infrastructure within a business, negating legal risks 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. As IT usage in a business grows, so do the potential benefits of SAM.

The practice of software asset management is often seen as an unnecessary evil due to the intangible nature of what it is designed to deal with, and the business case for using a SAM solution is not always obvious until a broad audit of the software infrastructure of a company has been carried out.

Monetary benefits are still the most motivating business factor when choosing to employ software asset management software within a business. Every business needs to make money after all and revenue is a very measurable metric.

An increasingly large percentage of a organisation’s IT bank roll is spent on software licensing so there is a critical need to invest to correctly monitor this spending. As businesses grow and diversify, their software needs can change radically and hardware and software can swiftly 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 advantage.

SAM is not limited to simply the technology of your company either. As a management process it will often include many of the branches within a company, including Finance Human Resources, to make sure that it runs as efficiently as possible. It is a process that does not need to follow standard.

IT managers and staff with decision making authority should consider Centennial Discovery during meetings regarding the implementation of IT resource management.

Why follow a SAM Strategy?

Having seen the multiple benefits of deploying a SAM solution, how do you know that it would be right for your company? Every company is different and has its own separate set of problems and advantages, so any plan you will undertake needs to be catered to these specific traits. The benefits of SAM do cover the fundamental aspects of software management.

There are more than simply monetary benefits that can be made through the control of licensing and maintenance agreements across a businesses IT system. Productivity can be hugely boosted by ensuring that employees have the latest versions of software permitted under current licenses held, and communication inside the company is aided when support staff know exactly what is deployed on every computer under their control.

Financial Savings

As discussed previously, perhaps the most persuading 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 reducing expenses is one that should be evaluated.

The most direct way that software asset management can help to reduce costs is by identifying any applications running on your corporate IT system 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 clearing these items of software that are no longer a benefit to the operation of your business you are streamlining a large portion of your IT system. Paying for unneeded software licenses and maintenance contracts means that more money can be spent on the critical sections of your IT system.

Mitigate Risk

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 system is ill advised, because when left unchecked it can become very unpredictable. This is becoming an increasingly frustrating factor for network managers.

Unlicensed software programs can be introduced into an unmonitored 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 access policies in place, users may also be able to load their own software onto the network. Operating a corporate IT system in this wild way will almost certainly lead to trouble.

The danger of running unlicensed software on your network is clear. When anything goes wrong with the hardware or software platform supporting your critical processes, how do you handle the situation? Running a complicated software system without the appropriate support can create a metaphorical minefield when it comes to disaster recovery and can critically inhibit your responsiveness to unpredictable events.

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Implementing SAM 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 determine which branches of SAM you should deploy first since certain benefits will be realised more speedily than others.

The discovery process can be seen as three primary areas that have to be performed to truly build an informative picture of the usage of IT assets within your company. 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 organisation is created to aid your IT managers to maintain baselines regarding your IT network. This inventory process must be performed before continuing with discovery.
Fortunately, this process can now be made automatic and even the largest of networks can be searched and analysed in a reasonably short period. Inventory must be able to identify your software assets regardless of their physical location or computing characteristics.

Capture

The next step in the discovery cycle is the capture of the license entitlements that concern the software programs identified in the inventory. The capture process should gather entitlements for all of the software that exists on your system, even when the software is not currently used. Without this information the inventory may be nearly useless.

The risk of human error can be avoided by using automatic tools that are specifically created to build a library of license entitlements. Tools that are currently available are incredibly efficient at capturing accurate data. These tools will also maintain databases containing up to date information from IT vendors.

Identification & Validation

The third process is to match up your software audit to the repository of licensing data that were built in the previous two stages. Errors may have occurred anywhere from the original invoices for software to the most recent 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 within your system to your company’s proof of entitlement. This will be vital if any arguments with software vendors arise as a consequence of the discovery cycle. You want to be as informed as possible in these circumstances.

After these three steps have been undertaken you will have built an incredibly detailed image of how your IT system is serving software assets to its users. It will be a lot easier to identify any trouble spots on your network, or areas of software use that are no longer of any practical benefit to your operations.

You can now commence a period of reconciliation on your network. You can compare the software packages that are actually used 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 within your network may include many hundreds or perhaps thousands of individual instances, and there are any number of rules 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 programs to apply intelligent rules to the process. These rules can be catered to the specific needs of your organisation.

The computing industry is in dire need for many IT security vendors that can supply the right IT management products.

Compliancy and Flexibility with SAM

Many of the fundamental practices of a successful software asset management strategy are based upon the principles set out in the Information Technology Infrastructure Library, or ITIL. This library defines a number of ideas and best practices that should be followed for successful management of IT functions.

This library is a dynamic entity and is often updated with new ideas and techniques that cater to the ever changing IT backdrop 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 company 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 incredibly 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 essential part in realising standardisation across an industry.

The ISO standard should really be followed when planning a SAM strategy for your own organisation, although the level of detail included within can quickly become a daunting challenge. It is important to remember that no matter what guidelines you follow when planning a SAM strategy, whatever you decide to implement must aid your business rather than stifle it. Industry standards cannot simply be copied when it comes to applying them within your organisation.

Designing a full and comprehensive SAM strategy for your own organisation might actually never come to fruition. Your strategy must be flexible to adapt and grow as your organisation does, and it should allow for updates to your daily tasks, no matter how small or fundamental they might be. This really is the key to a worthwhile SAM plan.

Conclusion

It is clear to see that as the extent 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 branch was a bonus that would occasionally forward the business. Computer networks are now critical to the modern business. Crucial systems need to be monitored to an appropriate standard.

As with other parts of any business, a number of different strategies should be considered and used in order to ensure the efficient running of day to day tasks. software asset management should not be the only tool used to manage computing assets within your company, but rather one of a multitude of complimentary techniques used to control the system as a unit. SAM can go a long way toward aiding your business but should be supported by other techniques.

So if you feel that your organisation 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 manufacture a critical market edge over your competitors, then it would be well worth investigating how software asset management could be employed within your business.