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.

Invitations to the conference will be circulated via our e-bulletin service in January but in the meantime we are interested to know what topics you would like to see covered in the conference workshop sessions. To help us understand we’re inviting you to give us the answer to just 7 questions in our on-line survey. Your answers will enable us to design the content of the workshops to meet your needs and ensure that you gain maximum benefit and value from the conference.

Please click this link to access the survey www.surveymonkey.com/s/F5VWGH3. The survey will close on 24th December 2009, so please make sure we have your answers before then.

I was joined by FAST IiS member Chris Hibbert, SAM General Manager at VAR Bytes Technology Group and interviewed by CRN reporter Kayleigh Bateman. We discussed what effect piracy is having on the channel, the laws that protect copyright material and best practices for organisations to ensure they are never accused of copyright infringement.

18-minute video offers valuable advice on how to implement a proper software asset management strategy and how to avoid Trading Standards and vendor software audits.

To find out more and access the video link please visit:

www.channelweb.co.uk/crn/video/2247135/studio-crn-piracy-channel

Author: John Lovelock, Chief Executive, Federation Against Software Theft