The Software Industry Research Board (SIRB)

The Software Industry Research Board’s members include organisations that are amongst the most influential in the IT industry today. They have come together to research common issues around Software Asset Management (SAM), Software Licence Management (SLM), compliance and emerging technologies.

Below are just a few of the drivers behind the SIRB:-

• The current messages around SAM, SLM and compliance, plus the range of vendor licensing programmes and governance that exists within the marketplace, can make it difficult for end users to determine which advice to follow.
• SAM, SLM and IT governance are taking up more and more of CIOs’ and IT departments’ time.
• Many organisations are missing out on the benefits of effective licence management because they perceive it to be difficult and expensive to achieve.

The SIRB run an annual research project which targets both private and public sector end user organisations.  The analysis of the resulting data is reviewed by the SIRB members to give them a deeper understanding and appreciation of the challenges the end user faces and intelligence about the influences that have created the customer’s current attitudes and interpretations. The members then work together with IDC to define the deliverables.  The 2008/2009 research project assessed end user organisations current understanding of licensing practices, their attitudes towards software acquisition, their perception of new technologies and where they would make changes to benefit from a more cost-effective and risk-free environment in the future.  The research delivered a series of 4 white papers:-

First White Paper      : Maturity of SAM Practice in the UK Market - Perception & Reality of Risk

Second White Paper : Don't be Misled - Managing Software Assets from an IT Management Perspective

Third White Paper     : Mitigating Risk and Reducing Cost - The Role of the Board in Software Asset Management

Fourth White Paper  : Avoiding the Danger of a Poorly Managed Software Estate : Spotting the Signs of Risk

To download copies of the white papers please click here.

The SIRB's 2009 UK Software Management and Licensing Conference took place on 12th May.  The conference opened with keynote speeches from industry experts and then split into two streams:- Commercial and Technical/Practitioner.  The content covered in each stream was based on the results of the research drawing out that in many organisations the perception of successful software asset management (SAM) is not necessarily reality.  Highlighting that the most common sited cause of ineffective SAM was a departmental silo mentality primarily between finance where the licenses are initially purchased and technical where the licenses are managed.

The 2009/2010 SIRB Research project completed at the end of September '09.  This year the research benchmarked the end user organisations surveyed against a set of gating criteria to measure the level of SAM maturity across the UK.  The main white paper will be delivered in early 2010.  Next year's UK Software Management and Licensing Conference which will reflect the results of the data is scheduled for Wednesday 21st April 2010 at the Madejski Stadium, Reading, Berkshire.

For more information about SIRB activities, benefits and membership, please contact Roz Parkinson, Business Development Manager at roz.parkinson@fastiis.org