By: Randy Littleson, Flexera Software
The enterprise has awoken to realise that applications are one of the least well managed of all strategic corporate assets. Corporate procurement is bringing the lessons learned from strategic solutions such as Supply Chain and Spend Management to the world of software. Procurement is no longer just the final tactical step before a contract gets signed. Increasingly, procurement is actively driving more and more of the business dimension of the software asset lifecycle. Procurement focus is moving beyond a narrow focus on software price discounts to a broader strategy of optimising enterprise-wide usage.
The bedrock of effective strategic procurement is information. IT and Procurement executives at the leading enterprises are seeking a standard solution to acquire and deliver comprehensive, rich information needed to optimise software assets. Such solutions can save hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars in unneeded application usage costs, often freeing up those funds for other needed software solutions.
Many large organisations have existing IT Asset Management (ITAM) software solutions. The first inclination may be that such a solution can help strategically manage application usage and optimise software license spend. But these solutions deploy and inventory software assets, whereas today the business imperative is transforming from counting what you have to controlling, using and optimising the software licenses you have while ensuring that you only buy what you need.
As you look a bit deeper, you see that IT Asset Management solutions differ from Enterprise License Optimisation solutions in material ways:
IT Asset Management Enterprise License Optimisation
Answer the question: What is deployed? How are software licenses being used?
Business purpose: SOX, compliance, security Use what you have, buy what you need
(grant/revoke system access rights)
Techniques: Sniffing target .exe files technology Business context is core, technology is
approach to measurement with the enabler
mininal business or commercial
context
Choosing the right solution is dependent on understanding your true business purpose. Increasingly, we’re finding that the market is demanding capabilities to control the use of and maximise the value of software licenses. Whereas IT Asset Management (ITAM) solutions have proven adept at solving the problems they were designed for, they were not designed for this purpose and organisations should be seeking solutions designed to complement their ITAM solutions to meet these new challenges.