SaaS Contracts - A function of Software Asset Management?

Earlier this month I spoke at the IAITAM conference in Nevada on the topic of Licensing Implications in the Cloud (Saas), it was a lively group and an interesting subject. However; the most interesting piece was the conversation it sparked about "Should Software Asset Management (SAM) be responsible for SaaS?".

For me the not so private laugh was the fact that several audience members asked the question right when we got to my slide asking the same question...always nice to have evidence that I do think like a SAM Manager! OK, thanks for sharing my pat on the back...

This is a topic we hear more frequently at our clients. Does subscription software such as SaaS belong under the SAM umbrella or does it belong elsewhere? Certainly businesses have used subscription software for a long time, and commonly it is not handled by IT but instead handled by the business unit that is using the service (think Payroll, HR services, etc).

I don't think there is a global answer for this, but I would urge companies to think about what's at stake if that subscription is suddenly no longer available. What happens if the provider goes out of business or the server hosting the service fails? These are examples of topics that belong in the contract signed for the service...but will a business unit necessarily think to negotiate these into the contract? How is the usage being tracked to ensure that the billing is accurate? Is the business unit going to track it or are they just going to pay the bills (start thinking telecom audit if you don't think subscription billings can be inaccurate)?

While subscription software services might not fall under the traditional SAM umbrella, it needs to fall under someone's umbrella and the SAM Manager is probably the best suited to take on the challenge.

Would love to hear other's thoughts on this...

Practical Advice to Reduce the Cost of Your Software Spend

It is not uncommon for software licensing and maintenance to be the 1st or 2nd largest budget line item for a company, so for all those companies getting ready to go into their budgeting cycle during this tough economy...reducing that number is going to be key to getting budgets approved and getting other key IT projects into the budget.

Here are some practical steps to reducing the cost of your software spend:

1. Get informed - What software contracts do you have, when do they renew, what soft costs are included in the price tag, who's using the software and why?
2. Clean house - Get rid of items not being used or consolidate where two products cover the same functionality (particularly key in IT management software). Focus on products you're still paying for, not those that aren't costing you any licensing fees currently.
3. Research - For your software contracts, when is the publisher's year end (and by default their quarter ends)? Same thing for your reseller. Can you modify any of your contracts to fit those time periods? What would you want in exchange for making these modifications? What new technology are you implementing this year? Does that tie into any of your publishers "hot new products"?
4. Examine all software maintenance contracts - Is maintenance mandatory or optional, what value have you received from maintenance to date, what is the roadmap for that product for the future and does it fit the timeline of your maintenance fees, are you fully leveraging what you've already spent?
5. Evaluate your software reseller - How many resellers are you using? (If multiple, consider consolidation - and ask for increased savings in return.) How are they performing? What value are they bringing to the table for you? How dialed in are they to the publishers, their product use rights, incentives, licensing programs, roadmaps?
6. Ask for help - Throw a challenge to your resellers and the publishers, have a clear picture of what you want as the outcome and ask for their help in reaching that outcome. Do this early in the game, it doesn't matter if your contract isn't up until next August - is there a significant financial benefit to renewing in December, May, June?
7. Negotiate, Negotiate, Negotiate - Everyone is hurting in this market which means deals will be made. Play fair, recognize that everyone needs to make a profit to survive but make sure that profit includes your company.

This takes some leg work, it takes some investment of time and it takes some creativity but the payoffs are there. Alternatively, ask for help.

What Your Software Inventory Tool Isn't Telling You!

Hopefully by now you've realized that in order to manage your software (or other IT assets) you need to have an inventory tool. As you will know from my other posts, you can't stop there...but it is a good place to start.

However; you need to understand your tool and how it reports data to you. Otherwise you might get an ugly surprise later on down the road when you find software installed on your systems that wasn't showing on your reports!

Inventory tools have a database of software titles associated with publisher and typically associated with a flag to indicate if it is licensable software (versus freeware, etc). The completeness of this database is the biggest value to you of the tool. With most tools if an executable is not in this database than it gets grouped into a "Misc" category and will fall into an exception report, a "catch all" report or might not be reported at all.

This could include new releases from publishers or simply publishers that your tool publisher doesn't categorize. These "unidentified" programs can cause you a lot of headaches - from a security, licensing and support angle.

Most inventory tools are updated on an ongoing basis as the publisher becomes aware of new software, but if you're not keeping current on your maintenance with that software you might not be getting this updated information.

Protect yourself - keep your maintenance current on any inventory tools you use, check the frequency of the tool publishers updates and include a check of "Misc" or "Catch All" software reports in your Software Asset Management process.

Additionally, if you are concerned about potential risk in this area you might want to consider having all of your software identified. Software ID Technologies has services that will identify all software in your environment. We've teamed with them on a number of engagements and they do a good job of taking the mystery out of those "unidentified" applications.