February 2011
Five simple steps to achieving your Effective License Position
As companies strive to achieve the best value from their IT investment and eliminate wasted spend, ignoring effective Software Asset Management (SAM), would be a mistake. By achieving an Effective License Position (ELP), the business benefits to be gained are significant. Not only can you reduce cost by identifying over-licensing and be informed on under-licensing, but it also strengthens your position with suppliers and helps to protect your business from major legal liabilities.
It may at first appear a daunting task, but there are five effective measures private and public sector organisations can take to help achieve their ELP.
1 - Collect critical information on deployed software
Traditionally called discovery or inventory, this task can be time consuming. Not only is it a difficult task when done manually, but the moment the task is complete, the information is immediately out of date. However, with the right software tools, it is possible to discover your assets, extract the inventory information on your software deployment and save this vital information to a SAM database. New solutions, such as AssetStudio™ from Certero have been created for this specific task. AssetStudio™ is a true integration of discovery, inventory, software delivery and licence management requirements, and it offers a unique automation process to provide a real-time ELP. Due to the unique automation capabilities, the ELP is maintained without unnecessary administration intervention, thus removing complex processes and associated risks, and ensuring SAM critical information is available in real time.
2 - Collate all software agreements and associated license entitlements
There are multiple types of agreements and license entitlements, which are often from a variety of different vendors and exist at different levels within the organisation. License entitlements are essential pieces of information and there are many entitlements to collate. All types of licenses need to be collated, but how do you know if you have them all? Aside from talking to procurement, looking in cupboards and filing cabinets and talking to vendors, it’s undoubtedly a difficult task, as is making sense of them, if you find them all.
This information forms an integral part of your SAM database, and from a volume licensing point of view, the information can be easily drawn up with a reconciliation tool. This allows you to create usable license information including key data such as upgrade/downgrade rights.
3 - Make sense of the information - analyse and optimise
A central task should be to allocate or assign licenses to deployed software. However, this isn’t always all that simple. Many licensing rules exist, staff do not always have the right level of technical expertise to correctly assign licenses and different departments deploying software or not deploying the software properly can cause great confusion.
4 - Automate for a real-time view
Automation is key in simplifying the task of calculating ELP. Manually updating or periodically refreshing data will not suffice, but with automation, new licenses put into the system will be detected immediately, and ELP updated in real time.
5 - Take your ELP to an OLP
Why stop at an Effective License Position, when you can reach an Optimum License Position? After identifying what you have, the next logical step is to identify what you are using. For example, an organisation may well have 2,000 Microsoft Project licences, but only be using 1,800 of them. With application monitoring tools such as Certero’s SoftwareMetering for Decision Makers™, your ELP can become an OLP by identifying unnecessary, unused or underused software. SoftwareMetering for Decision Makers™ provides a real time applications monitoring solution that generates up to date information on unused software, optimising your deployed software.
Cost reduction is the top reason for investing in software asset management and IT asset management activities, according to surveys conducted by the International Business Software Managers Association (IBSMA) from 2005 to 2009. Improved software license compliance was the second-most frequently marked goal, followed by regulatory compliance and standardizing IT portfolios.
Improving IT Services with Wiltshire PCT
With respect to the NHS, that the central Enterprise Wide Agreement with Microsoft has ceased, there is an additional challenge for NHS organisations in establishing its ELP locally. Traditionally, this has been a complex process requiring in depth licensing knowledge and associated skills.
One example of an organisation looking to optimise its IT services is Wiltshire Primary Care Trust. The Trust, responsible for assessing the health needs of local people, required a manageable solution for license and software asset management with the capability to reduce unnecessary software purchases and identify unused or underutilised software. By selecting Certero AssetStudio™ and SoftwareMetering for Decision Makers, the Trust now has a full hardware and software inventory, an integrated real-time view of software licenses and compliance, a clear view of all unused or underutilised software and is better placed to address the challenges that come with looking after a complex infrastructure such as that of an NHS Primary Care Trust.
Catherine Dampney, Head of IT said: “NHS Wiltshire continues to transform the way ICT is provisioned and the services it provides. The strategy is to improve service by adopting the best appropriate technology, processes and by having the best people. Certero’s products have definitely helped us in this endeavour.”
While the issue of SAM isn’t going to go away, using a modern solution like AssetStudio™ for this modern challenge, will save organisations money, time, and help avoid large fines, as well as enabling them to easily establish and prove their effective license position.
