June 2011
Driving down costs while driving up compliance
From a software licence perspective, what matters more when deploying a software asset management solution - ensuring compliance, or controlling licence costs? With software vendor audits on the rise and pressure to ensure licence compliance to avoid fines, it would be reasonable to assume the former is the key driver for deploying a SAM solution. Yet that assumption is contrary to findings published recently by Ernst & Young. It maintains that organisations are recognising the value that SAM solutions deliver with respect to controlling costs through the provision of information about licence usage. Using this information, public and private sector organisations can make better informed decisions about their licence status, where money is being wasted, and where money can be saved.
While few organisations would doubt the legal and financial value of a SAM solution, questions should be asked about their current solution’s effectiveness in virtualised environments. According to research firm Forrester, 69 per cent of companies questioned recently stated that virtualisation would be a major part of their IT strategy in the next 12 months. Even organisations that have deployed a SAM solution need to be made aware that the complexity of software licencing is compounded in virtualised and terminal service environments, increasing the probability that organisations will inadvertently violate their existing license agreements.
Like many companies today, Swinton Insurance has a complicated IT real estate, with 4,000 assets comprising PCs, laptops, servers and thin clients dispersed across its 600 UK branches and offices. Previously, the burdensome task of establishing its compliance position with such a diverse and complex Citrix estate, was labour intensive and time consuming.
To address this necessary challenge and find a more effective method for establishing its Effective Licence Position, Swinton identified that it required a SAM solution developed specifically for the task, while conducting out-of-hours installs and upgrades required by its PCs and laptops. To ensure that the operating system was standardised across the organisation, the SAM solution also needed to have the ability to identify which PCs were capable of running Windows 7, and which PCs needed upgrading. Finally - and an important consideration for enabling the company to save costs through effective licence management - the SAM solution needed the ability to monitor software usage, and publish application user reports, so that Swinton could make informed decisions relating to software use. This would enable it to determine the number of appropriate licences needed to ensure compliance, and that it wasn’t wasting money unnecessarily.
The SAM solution deployed by Swinton was developed to accommodate terminal services and Citrix environments. They provide Swinton with a structured and organised view of its IT estate, avoiding the ‘You can’t manage what you don’t know’ scenario, delivering substantial cost avoidance, and better control of its Citrix environment. But the key to realising the cost and compliance benefits enjoyed by Swinton, is to recognise that it adopted a SAM solution developed specifically for Terminal Services and Virtualised environments.
For organisations that want to achieve similar results, it is important that they make the distinction between solutions that are crude SAM solutions, and those that have been intelligently developed from the ground up to specifically tackle the complex task of establishing an ELP, and arriving at an OLP, even in complex Terminal Services and Virtualised environments. In light of that, when companies ask whether controlling costs or achieving licence compliance matters more, perhaps they also need to ask whether they really have the right SAM tools in place to effectively achieve both?
