Today’s slim-line IT management teams need to be aware of the benefits that will accrue from adopting a strategy of pro-active software asset optimization. Further, the concepts outlined here are as valid for cloud services and mobile apps, as for conventional on-premise packages. Step 1: Asset Inventory Executing a full hardware and software inventory collection … Continue reading Software Asset Optimization: Fast Track to Benefits
Quantifying IT resource needs Many organizations deal with the challenge of software license provision by over-purchasing relative to need. Many organizations have poor visibility of how many licenses are needed for any given application, and in some cases simply purchase a copy for every user in Active Directory. In considering the amount of money that … Continue reading IT Asset Management – a matter of Governance?
The Software Asset Optimization Challenge Application software licensing and maintenance costs are a significant component of an IT budget, but few organizations take an adequately structured and informed approach to minimizing the expense. In our experience this is because the challenge spans multiple departments, each of which has its own priorities. For a procurement department … Continue reading Who takes ownership of Software Asset Optimization?
Software Distribution Software Distribution is one of those unglamorous but utterly essential items in the SysAdmin’s toolbox. It’s never talked about unless it screws up. We visited one of our larger UK customers recently, where Asset Manager Pro has been teamed up with the Software Distribution module. It was a little after half-way through November, … Continue reading Software distribution keeps the lights on
Software Asset Optimization: a matter of balance IT Provisioning is a bit like running a restaurant. IT users come and go, often unpredictably, with varying ICT needs. Employing the skills and tools necessary to respond to this a la carte demand for IT resource is expensive. If everyone was simply given the same set of … Continue reading IT Asset Optimization, too much like hard work?
2012 kicked off with an encouraging 1000PC expansion of our Software Asset Management technology in a European heavy engineering customer. Beyond the value of the deal, and really of greater significance, is an illustration of the evolutionary approach many organizations take to Software Asset Management. Elements of Software Asset Management A fully evolved SAM function … Continue reading Software Asset Management: evolution v revolution
IT asset management: too broad a term? With each new inquiry that comes to us via Google (usually…), our first challenge is always to get the inquirer to tell us what they are really looking for. Some are happy to open up and give us the background to their search, and explain their business needs … Continue reading Selecting ITAM / SAM tools: not a simple task
We are often struck by the gulf that exists in most organizations between reality and the idealized picture of totally integrated infrastructure management, in which Change Management, Service Management, Incident and Problem Management and IT Asset Management all tie neatly together. Underfunding, short horizons for planning, rapid organic growth forced by merger or acquisition, and … Continue reading Joined up infrastructure management
Can Software Asset Management really deliver dramatic RoI? My guess is that a headline such as that will raise a lot of eyebrows and sceptical muttering, but it’s recently been illustrated very clearly just how possible this is. Many organizations have IT asset operations teams that work miracles every day with tight staffing levels to … Continue reading When SAM offers RoI over 1,000% (yes, really)
With Microsoft Enterprise agreements easily costing hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars / pounds / euros, it continues to sadden me that organizations will sign up without having any significant level of information regarding the Microsoft products that they have installed and actually use. When a 90 day Microsoft product usage survey to establish … Continue reading Software Asset Management and Fiscal Responsibility