Better software license management

A successful software license management solution is 80% about having the right business processes and 20% about using the right software tools. Simply buying and installing a software asset management (SAM) tool does not ensure that license management is brought under control. Simply hoping that the existing processes (whatever they are) are sufficient is hiding your head in the sand, and you probably wouldn't survive a vendor or BSAA audit.

Your organisation needs to properly manage its software license commitments in order to:

Manage the risk of non-compliance with your software licenses.
Reduce software license costs by identifying unused software.
Ensure that disaster recovery plans are made with accurate estimates of your real IT needs.
Provide insurance against the very real possibility of a software audit.

Business processes are key

McKinsey & Company have identified that IT investments without improved management practices do not yield the desired productivity gains (see sidebar). Without well documented, easy to follow procedures, we can guarantee that your organisation will not continue to maintain the discipline necessary to ensure software license compliance.

There are a number of standards that need to be considered in drafting your business processes, from the Australian "Corporate governance of information and communication technology" standard (AS 8015) to the new international standard for "Software Asset Management" (ISO 19770).

Procedures need to cover topics such as:

Responsibility for license management procedures.
Communication of license management procedures to all users.
Acquisition of software assets.
Physical license audits.
Scanning for installed software.
Controlling use of software assets.
Software asset retirement.
Software asset disposal.

Feel free to ask us to prepare a license report for your organisation analysing your IT/SAM business processes.

But so are the right tools

There are two main areas in which the right software tools can make a significant difference to the effectiveness of your IT/SAM strategy. Matching the right tools to your new business processes can make the management task much easier.

Automatically gathering information about your IT assets, especially how they are actually being used.
Reconciling that audit data with your software license inventory.

Cattle Dog uses IT/SAM tools created by Snow Software in Sweden. The Snow SAM solution provides a complete license management solution that combines automated audit and usage metering tools with a best-practice license management database. Snow Software was instrumental in drafting ISO 19770 and is incorporating lessons from that process in future versions of their Snow SAM tool.

Why automate audits and usage metering? Many businesses rely upon manual audits that soak up so much time and resources that they can only be done infrequently, perhaps annually at best. Software usage patterns are derived by asking a few key users what they use, and then extrapolating that result across the whole of a department or area. Neither of these approaches provides accurate data, and the low frequency means that the data is invariably heavily out of date in any case.

An automated audit and usage metering solution will enable fast and effective gathering of data, on a weekly, or even daily, basis. This provides much more accurate and timely reports, enabling the business to react to sudden changes in software usage and detect opportunities to save money in software licenses.

One large multinational implemented Snow SAM and found when measuring the usage of installed software at one site, that 75% of the installed Adobe Photoshop applications were used less than one hour over a period of six months. Half of the installations could be uninstalled and reused on other machines and file viewers or cheaper software could replace the other half. Savings on this alone were around AUD$97,000 in license costs, additional savings were made with reduced maintenance and support costs.

If you are just looking for the right IT/SAM tools, then check out our Snowy Software online store.

Other benefits: helpdesk response times

Gartner research shows that approximately 50% of a helpdesk agent's time on a support call is spent identifying details about the users' computer system.

Having daily software and hardware inventories can provide your helpdesk staff with the information they need at their fingertips. Giving them the ability to immediately run an inventory on any PC connected to the network is even better.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

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According to leading analysts, many CIOs believe that as much as 20% of all installed desktop software is unused, often becoming 'shelfware'.
Jason Sango, Forsythe

IT investments can play a critical role in raising business productivity. But a study of 100 manufacturing companies in France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States found that IT investments have little impact unless they are accompanied by first-rate management practices, which, by contrast, can boost productivity on their own.
The McKinsey Quarterly, June 2005