What is Software Asset Management?
Can you imagine taking inventory of all your software licenses? EOTSS built a team that assessed all of our internal software and found ways to save money by better managing these contracts.
Q: What is the Software Asset Management project?
A: The Software Asset Management project is an attempt to understand how EOTSS is utilizing our software, and how we can do so more efficiently. We are reviewing how we use products from our top ten software license vendors –IBM, Oracle, and others — in order to create a baseline for what software EOTSS can and should be using.
Q: What do we use software for? Why do we need to do this inventory?
A: We use software for nearly everything at EOTSS — email, timecards, mass.gov website, ServiceNow, etc. However, there are some instances in which we either buy more licenses than we need or in some cases use more licenses than what we were initially provisioned for from the vendor. In order to properly manage this software usage, we need to learn more about what we use and how we use it. We can then adjust our buy to better meet our demand.
Q: Who is conducting this inventory?
A: We have engaged a team from KPMG who has subject matter experts from each of the vendors currently under review. They are running scripts on our servers to understand where and when we’ve installed software product licenses. They then can compare that data to our license purchase history.
Q: What value does this project add?
A: The Software Asset Management project will allow us to determine our specific software needs in order to ensure we are operating as efficiently as possible.

