Software Asset Management – Luxury or Necessity?

I was speaking with a friend to day who asked me the question…is what you do a necessity or a luxury? I immediately responded that SAM is a necessity – but at the same time it made me really think about his question and about why he was asking it.

He’s a mortgage broker – and if you’ve watched the news at all, you know that there is a lot of pain going on in that industry. However; there is a lot of pain going on in a lot of industries right now, which is why he asked the question. If you think about it, while SAM is always important and there are always significant business reasons to do it – when things are tough financially and operationally it makes it even more important.

You can look at the figures all over and you will constantly see evidence that SAM saves companies around 30% on software costs in year one and about 10% on an annual basis. When you factor in the soft dollar savings on increased operational efficiency the savings go up dramatically. I know these numbers to be true based upon the results our clients have seen.

You could make the argument that while SAM is important, companies don’t need to hire consultants to do it for them so the hiring of a firm such as ours could be considered a luxury. True, companies can do it themselves…but unless you’re going to invest the time, money and energy to train someone within your organization to become a SAM expert – you will probably expend a fair amount of personnel time and then turn around and hire a professional when you don’t get the results you’re expecting.

Implementing a SAM program frequently involves a lot of esoteric knowledge – knowledge that is not necessary for ongoing maintenance but is necessary to provide the accurate evaluation of the current license and process status. Hire a professional to set up your program – let them put their expertise to work for you and train your staff on what it will take to maintain the program going forward.

So, unless you’re not going to buy software – SAM becomes even more important to you in lean times as it saves you considerable money, and hiring a professional to set up your program allows you to leverage their historical knowledge and expertise while at the same time ensuring that your staff only has to learn the pertinent information to maintain your program.

Has your company established a SAM program? Did you do it yourself or hire a professional? What was the outcome?

What's an acceptable "out of compliance" number?

I was privy to an interesting conversation a few weeks ago...the topic was "What level of non-compliance is acceptable?". Basically the basis for the discussion was that being illegal on some licenses was to be expected but at what level does it become an issue.

Before jumping into all sorts of morality issues, I'll stop myself and instead put this in the context of...assuming it will cost me money to prove every single license, is there a point at which I can say "under this amount is not worth the cost"?

Now, morally I don't feel there is a number greater than zero that can be acceptable. If you can't prove licensing for a single product, you owe it to yourself and the publisher who invested their time and resources into its creation to buy the product (and then keep better records).

Getting off my moral high horse I will point out that running even a single copy of software that you can't prove licensing for is a risk to you and your organization. As with any risk to your organization, your organizations risk assessment framework should address this topic for you. But remember - you can't manage what you don't know and you can't apply a risk assessment if you don't have the details!

What are your thoughts?

Is the business world ready for embedded controls in software?

I was at the SAM Summit last week (www.samsummit07.com - check it out for future years as I was very pleased with the dialog's started) and the topic of embedded controls came up (think Adobe's License Manager or Microsoft's Vista for example) in a small group session I was leading.

The question we were dealing with is "what did we think was the future or embedded controls and would the user community rebel". My group was a nice blend of 3 reps from end-user companies, 2 tool reps, 1 publisher rep and myself (a SAM services rep). Quite frankly, with this blend we didn't answer the question...but we had some great dialog.

From the industry side (tools & publisher) came the steadfast belief that these controls are here to stay and are necessary. From the end-user side came a lot of uncertainty and concern...but frankly none of them had even tested the controls yet to know if their concerns were founded.

Now, don't take me wrong...I am not envious of any company facing enterprise-wide rollout of software with embedded controls - I've lived in the IT world too long to think it's going to go smoothly. However; until we at least test it - it's pure speculation! I know some of my readers have to have tested (and some potentially deployed) software with embedded controls. What's your reaction? What has experience shown you?

Are embedded controls bad for the end-user community or can they do their job and simplify our SAM headaches? Who should have control over who the control reports to (publisher or internal SAM)? Give us your thoughts and experience.