Software Asset Management (SAM) Blog

In the last few days, both Acer (Packard Bell) & Fujitsu have issued voluntary recalls for thousands of batteries which present a potential fire hazard.

What’s that got to do with SAM? Well, on the surface, not a lot.

But. As anyone involved in a SAM project knows, the result of the SAM program is only as good as the inventory information that goes in. And good inventory tools don’t just audit software, they can provide a lot of hardware information too.

In the case of the battery recalls, many organizations will face a lot of manual labor to identify what machines on their network are affected. However, by identifying the manufacturer, model and BIOS date of machines, finding those affected by the battery recall becomes child’s play - significantly reducing the time and effort, and avoiding a potentially dangerous mishap.

Just another example of how an organizations’ investment in SAM can pay dividends across all areas of IT operations.

KPMG has released a report - “Software Asset Management - Mitigating Risk and Realizing Opportunities” - in which it claims that the rising cost of software licenseing and maintenance is driving more and more organizations to become aware of the importance of Software Asset Management (SAM).

The report acknowledges that SAM has suffered from a ‘nice to have’ rather than ‘must have’ perception historically, but that this is now changing as organizations appreciate both the risks of unmanaged software and the potential benefits of reduced software expenditure and better availability of software assets.

The report even goes as far as to state: “It will not be long, in fact, before companies with limited SAM capabilities will become the exception.”

In my last blog post, I looked at why board level approval is essential for a successful Software Asset Management (SAM) program. Unfortunately, SAM is not automatically on the board agenda for most organizations today, which explains why so few enterprises have yet integrated SAM into their Business As Usual activities.

The challenge for the SAM program manager is to how to communicate to the board why SAM needs to be on the agenda.

There are two key messages that will get the board’s attention and two that won’t!

The threat of director’s fines and prison is a common reason for implementing SAM but is somewhat hollow as, in practice, it’s often far too hard to prove in court. Using cost savings to justify SAM is also problematical as it can be hard to predict exactly where the cost savings will coem from until you have the SAM program well underway.

The two messages that will get the boards attention are Corporate Governance and Risk Management. With increasing emphasis on good Corporate Governance, Software Asset Management can be shown to have a small but important role to play in meeting compliance requirements. Many financial directors don’t really understand the risk to the business that un-managed software poses, either from a large unbudgeted cost or disruption to business operations due to license compliance activities from the software vendors.

In the current economic climate, all major software vendors are increasing their license compliance activities as a means of maximizing revenues, so now is a good time to take the SAM message to the board!

As well as the message that SAM is essential to do and do well, the board will want to see a business plan that shows the costs to identify and manage the risk and an estimated return on the investment from improved efficiency and license optimization.

This business plan is very difficult to create from scratch, especially if you’re embarking on a SAM program for the first time.  Luckily, there are a few resources that can help. FrontRange SAM Essentials provides a wealth of help and documented best practice guidance in putting together a business case and can be used to communicate the benefits of SAM to senior management.

According to the BSI/ISO 19770-1 SAM Standard, for SAM to be effective, the board has to sign up and acknowledge its responsibility for corporate governance relating to software licenses and software assets. The board also needs to periodically review and approve the risk assessment relating to software assets with reference to regulatory and licensing non compliance, excessive spending and organisational processes and procedures.

Selling SAM to the board can be tough, especially when you can’t accurately gauge exactly where the savings are going to come from.  However, with tools like FrontRange SAM Essentials, this task can be significantly eased with the aid of documented best practices and clear project management goals.

A recent discussion with an IT manager once again confirmed my belief that getting top level management buy-in is the most important factor in implementing a successful SAM program.  The company had just invested in a new Software Auditing and License Management toolset, but priority changes meant that the part-time resources originally focused on SAM were reallocated and approval couldn’t be obtained for additional resources to maintain the SAM activities.  In my experience this is a recurring theme: IT management get budget approval for the SAM toolsets but do not get adequate budget for the resources to implement and operate the SAM tools and new SAM processes.

As well as getting the right resources, the other major challenge facing SAM practitioners is how to change bad practices and the perceived un-importance of software management.  Implementing SAM best practice will inevitably impact on many areas of IT, such as help desk, procurement, deployment, change management and also the business managers and users.  It will require them to follow new policies and procedures and different work methods. There will be resistance to new working practices and to effect change in the organisation culture will require senior management support to overcome vested interests in keeping things as they are.

So what level of senior management support is needed to turn SAM into a “Business As Usual” activity?

ITIL best practice states that “Board-level sponsorship and commitment is essential to ensure successful SAM”.  Note the word “essential” in the advice, it’s not desirable or useful but “essential” to have sponsorship from a director who sits on the board.  Is this really true?  Based on my experience of working with many organizations of different sizes and complexity, I can unequivocally say that it is. In those with board level sponsorship, SAM is implemented more quickly and efficiently and shows better returns on the investment.  Regardless of organisation size, where there is no board level sponsorship the SAM manager always struggles to get resources, other projects take priority and the SAM program stutters in Stop/Start mode until eventually the SAM manager and the tool set are blamed for poor performance!

So do you have board level support for SAM in your organisation? If not you really do need to get it to ensure your SAM program is successful.

We will look at how you can get the management support you need in part two.  Stay Tuned!