SAM is a Trivial Pursuit
The 6 Segments of Software Asset Management
Managing enterprise software estates with multiple vendors and their associated license metrics across different technology platforms and countries, IS complicated. Period. But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to do. You just need to appreciate WHY it’s complicated to understand what needs to be done to maintain control, realise financial benefit and reduce risk.
One way to describe software asset management (SAM) would be to picture the ‘Trivial Pursuits’ wheel and its 6 segments. Remember those? The entire wheel represents a specific vendor, and each segment is a different element to consider for that vendor. Simple. Let’s take a look at each one of those segments in a bit more detail:
People
Understanding the nuances of SAM and how to manage a software estate requires either internal or external resource with a unique set of skills following a specific methodology. Mostly these skills are acquired by individuals that have managed specific vendors over the course of their career and have gained a deep level of license expertise from years of ‘hands on’ experience and training.
Even if you already have internal resource, then in our experience, it can be extremely beneficial to engage with a license expert to support your in-house team. Their deep license expertise will prove immensely useful for those really tricky license queries or if your team is busy on other projects, and can also promote cross-learning from the expert to your team. Alternatively, you could choose to completely outsource the entire activity to a SAM partner.
Process
Your SAM process will be unique to the software vendors deployed and your business environment. Creating a successful SAM process requires a clear definition of your requirements and risks. Once you have clarity on these, you can start to design your SAM processes either with your in-house resource or with third-party experts (or a mix of both).
Tools
SAM Tools are often seen as the ‘silver bullet’ to effectively manage a SAM estate. This is unrealistic as no single tool can deliver an entire SAM service and certainly does not replace the deep product knowledge and license expertise of a license consultant.
Tools have their place in the entire SAM process and can support specific activities such as data collection or gathering product deployment, and therefore, managing your expectations as far as tools are concerned would be strongly advised.
Vendor/Product
Which products from which vendors forms your software estate? It’s very unlikely that you will only have one — it’s more common for large enterprises to have software estates with hundreds of products from multiple vendors, each with their own set of license policies and contracts.
Getting to grips with each of those products/vendors and associated policies and contracts over an entire software estate within your enterprise is exceptionally challenging. It’s this vendor/product ‘segment’ of SAM that can create the most confusion and therefore requires an iron clad process to manage.
Platform
What technology platform is your software estate running on? Again it’s likely to be more than one; public cloud, private cloud, hybrid, legacy, virtualisation. Also, how do you access the information you need across these different platforms to enable the gathering of deployment/usage data?
Data
And speaking of data … what data do you need to collect for each vendor and where do you get this from? This information will differ across each product, vendor and technology platform and the data requirement can also be altered by the vendor over time.
Together, the 6 segments of SAM illustrate just how complex this entire process can be. It’s also worth mentioning that if you are a national or global organisation, you also need to consider any geographical considerations or restrictions, just to make things even more complicated.
If this complexity sounds familiar to you and you would like to review your own processes, or need external expertise to manage your entire SAM process, engaging with a third-party SAM partner can deliver significant business benefit.
As experts in single and multivendor SAM processes and methodologies, we have created a short explanatory video that summarises the complexity of SAM, each of the component segments and the benefits enjoyed when SAM is successfully deployed.
For more information go to the Version 1 website or contact us.
About the Author:
Jason Pepper is Head of SAM Practice here at Version 1.
