Effective software asset management: Driving value in turbulent times
According to a recent KPMG survey, organizations that proactively manage their software assets can reduce software asset management-related IT labor costs by as much as 50 percent. Unfortunately, 86 percent of the 1,000 companies surveyed do not have an effective software asset management strategy or have a complete picture about software deployments and entitlements.
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great article
Hi Ron,Very good article. It's nice to see someone who advocates that effective SAM depends first on implementing robust processes and second on the tools. It's also important that SAM be implemented with a focus on managing the entitlements - not exactly the software, which is the service afforded by the licenses. Thanks for pointing readers in the right direction.
Kacey Weinberg
Aspera GmbH
www.aspera.com
Extending SAM into automation
As well as managing the volume of installed applications and legal entitlements, one of the keys to realizing the stated 50 percent reduction in IT labor costs is automation.Once you know what assets are already on the network, automating the (complex but repetitive) tasks of software deployment, updating, configuration management etc. can create massive time and cost savings for already-stretched IT departments.
Combined with an effective discovery and license management strategy, this wider view of SAM is the key to taking the next step towards uncovering the really big savings.
Matt Fisher
FrontRange Solutions
SAM as a business practice (rather than service offering)
For my part, a key component of our recent endeavors with SAM is managing organization-wide entitlements + deployments to make sure that we take advantage of the assets that we own. We certainly learned through the SAM that each business unit treated the assets as their own and held them close to the vest, even when they had a surplus and other divisions were purchasing the exact same product they were not fully using.Organizations need to focus on extracting the maximum value of their IT assets. Over-deployment is an issue, of course, but so is over-procurement.