Software Asset Management (SAM) Blog

The Business Software Alliance (BSA) today announced settlements worth more than £50,000 (US $81,000) with three manufacturing companies in the UK.

The largest of the three settlements saw a manufacturer of office furniture pay up £20,000 to settle alleged use of unlicensed copies of software from Adobe, Autodesk and Microsoft on 50 computers. In addition to the legal settlement, the company has also spent around £8,000 on new licenses to address the previous shortfall.

Although the manufacturing industry might not be an obvious heavy user of IT and software, the need to plan projects, process orders and track deliveries is central to efficient operations for organizations in this sector. As such, manufacturing companies of all types and sizes need to take the management of their software licenses seriously.

The BSA operates a whistle-blowing hotline to report suspected misuse of software licenses.

According to new figures just released by Pierre Audoin Consultants (PAC) and TechMarketView, corporate software spend in the UK is down 3.9 percent in the UK. Not great news for software vendors.

But it’s also potentially small-fry against the value of software investments that are already being wasted each year.

According to research undertaken by FrontRange last year, the average organization in the UK actually over-spends on the software by as much as 20 percent annually. This is a symptom of poor control - with many organizations routinely purchasing shelfware or duplicate licenses, individuals failing to purchase through the most effective channels (e.g. buying one-off boxed products when volume licensing agreements are already in place), and even renewing maintenance on software that is no longer in use.

All of these instances of poor management (and there are many more besides), contribute to a general over-spend that no organization can afford. But by understanding what software is on the network, the organization’s current licensing position and exercising tighter controls on procurement and deployment - the good news is that a significant portion of the current IT spend can be reduced with no detrimental effect on IT operations.

So while the reported 3.9 percent drop in software spend isn’t great news for the industry, the fact is that end user organizations that invest in better software management practices can actually save far more. And that, in turn, means they can afford to acquire the software they really need.

This blog is primarily concerned with managing software, but it’s worth remembering that Software Asset Management (SAM) is inextricably linked with other areas of IT operations, not the least the help desk or service desk.

Why? Because as we all know, creating an accurate software inventory is a critical part of SAM. And while you’re creating the software audit, any Discovery tool worth its salt should also be delivering a complete configuration audit of all PCs, servers and workstations on the network.

For ‘pure’ SAM, this hardware information might seem like redundant information. But it can actually deliver significant savings to in your service management efforts. According to Gartner and other industry analysts, the average help desk call lasts around 14-17 minutes. Approximately 42 percent of this time is spent assessing the current location, configuration, user details and software audit of the PC in question.

By having the full PC audit information automatically available to your helpdesk user – either as a fully integrated solution (like Centennial Discovery within FrontRange HEAT or FrontRange ITSM, for example) or automatically queried from the asset repository, organizations can dramatically reduce the length of individual helpdesk calls, leading to significant ITSM improvements.

So don’t view SAM in isolation, always remember that the efforts that go into managing software more effectively can also provide significant benefits in other areas of IT operations.

FrontRange Solutions has announced a five-city Software Asset Management roadshow in New Zealand and Australia aimed at helping executives and senior managers understand the potential risks of poor software license control and how to drive cost savings with improved management practices.

This comes just as Gartner has announced a record high number of software license audits, with more than 50% of survey respondents announcing they had been audited at least once in the past 12 months (last year, the figure was around 35%).

The series of free half-day events, hosted in association with SAM specialists, iComply, will take place in:

Auckland - Monday 24th August
Brisbane - Tuesday 25th August
Sydney - Wednesday 26th August
Melbourne - Thursday 27th August
Perth - Friday 28th August

For more information, or to reserve your place, visit www.frontrange.com.au/DontGetCaughtShort