Month: January 2020

There might not be many kids who want to grow up to be experts in Software Asset Management and there’s a couple obvious reasons for that, namely because Software Asset Management (SAM) is so confusing. So today we are going to tackle some of the most frequently asked questions about Software Asset Management and concerns that we run into from our clients.

At Metrixdata360, we’ve had plenty of people come to us with the same questions for our software consultants over and over again, so we thought in this blog post, we’d share some of the most commonly asked questions, along with their answers.

How Much Money Can Software Asset Management Save Me? 

Software Asset Management can have a huge cost saving potential if the right effort is put in. According to CDW’s article 5 Ways Software Asset Management Reduces Costs Software Asset Management allows for your company to plan better, to optimize contract management, and to re-harvest software licenses to avoid penalties. SAM experts like MetrixData360 can shrink your compliance gap down to what you actually owe, and better data awareness will mean that large compliance gaps are less likely to happen in the future. Software Asset Management won’t provide you with over-night awareness and perfect coverage, but it can provide you those things in the long run. Software Asset Management is a journey, after all, and it will take time before you have a complete handle of your software profile and SAM experts like MetrixData360 can help you get there.

SAM will help you get better data awareness when it comes to your inventory, contracts, IT roadmap, etc. And so, it will also mean that when your contract is up for renewal, you’ll be meeting the software vendor on equal grounds. You won’t have to go into a negotiation feeling as if the vendor has better data on your organization than you do.

In the past the scales were tipped in the vendor’s favor; they had a better understanding of your data than you did and that gave them the upper hand in negotiations. If you don’t have full visibility into your data and you don’t know what your company needs, how will you know that you are overspending by 60% purchasing the bundles they want you to purchase? It is not uncommon for a vendor to offer a 20% discount but sell you 40% more than you need, negating the discount savings and costing you more than simply buying what is necessary at regular price.

So, while software asset management may seem to gather no immediate returns, it is a tremendous investment that can save you money in the long run. We estimate that on average most organizations are over-licensed by 60% but are under-licensed in other areas by 30% at the same time, with an accurate SAM program, that’s money that you can save.

We’re Too Busy for SAM!

One of the most frequent objections to a SAM program that we run into is “we’re too busy!” Unfortunately, software vendors don’t care how busy you are. In fact, if you’re too busy to maintain your SAM, you’re a prime audit target and vendors will see you as a potential cash cow. If you have a manual or multiple system, then you’ve surely faced the pain of having to try and understand what your requirements are. Trying to pull together an accurate inventory of a single software publisher in your environment, a seemingly simple task, can be so exhausting, frustrating, and ultimately fruitless if the data pulled from each source renders different results. But not making time for SAM leads to a messy environment with plenty of compliance gaps for auditors to exploit.

What people don’t understand about Software Asset Management is that by hiring a SAM expert all that pain is lessened and, if done right, over time it goes away completely. Your team may be asked to take 30 minutes to run a report and then the consultants will do the heavy data analysis. You only get involved again when the data doesn’t line up and needs to be refined. The rest of the process is handed off to us. To add some perspective, we have spent a year and a half working with one of our clients while their company faced a heavy software audit. During that year and a half, their team has put in less than forty hours of work pulling inventory data and answering questions while we took care of the rest.

Why is Software Licensing so Complicated?

Software licensing is quite difficult to understand. According to Seattle Pi’s article Why is Microsoft Licensing so Complicated? there are plenty of explanations that software vendors will give to account for that hyper complexity. For example: customer’s unique profiles and the ever-changing nature of technology could require constant and complicated updates to licensing.

Whatever the reason, if a vendor’s software is already highly integrated into your company, what are you going to do if the latest license changes add an extra 10% to your software spending? It’s not like you can just up and leave. It’s like having a restaurant where the guests are chained to their chairs. Licenses that are too complicated to understand and are subject to change, which only aggravates the imbalance in an already uneven relationship. Getting a handle on your software assets is where you can take back control.

What Value Can SAM Bring our Company When Only We Know our Systems? 

Perhaps you have industry specific software that only a handful of companies worldwide use, and it is tailored to serve the niche your company thrives in. If that is the case, then how can a software consultant possibly help? To this problem, we usually have a single response: what is the licensing metric that your vendors are using? The exact nature of the contract or vendor does not really matter, all that matters is the licensing metric and the software contract language that we’re dealing with.

The metric is what we can accurately report on, regardless of who the contract was written for or by. At the end of the day, we know understand how software contracts work, we understand licenses and we know how to count; those three skills are the critical skills that are needed to cut your software costs and lower your compliance gap during an audit.

What Does a Software Consultant Do?

Software Asset Management is a journey. SAM tool vendors will often sell themselves as being the end of your software troubles and you instantly have control over your data as soon as the tool is finished installing so you can promptly forget about it. That’s hardly the case. Depending on how far your company wants to get into software asset management, your SAM journey can take anywhere from 2-48 months.

MetrixData360 helps you along in this journey by developing SAM programs that are broken down into three tiers:

• Tier 1- Trustworthy Data:

During this stage, we’re most invested in getting you to the point where you know what you have so that you can effectively manage it. This includes having reasonable assurance about your software inventory and license-compliance.

• Tier 2- Life Cycle Integration:

Here we strive to achieve a greater efficiency and cost-effectiveness in your IT Asset Lifecycle. Utilizing things like roadmaps and support cycles to determine not only what you have but what you need in the future.

• Tier 3- Optimization:

The last stage is where you achieve greater efficiency and cost-effectiveness through cost-cutting focus. Imagine knowing exactly what you have and what you need in the future and utilizing the power of that information to beat your software vendor on your next contract renewal?

Of course, this is not a rigid course outline. If we are working to achieve the first tier, we will also be gathering data that will help achieve both the second and third tiers during the process. We can also adjust our approach based on your time frame, your team’s internal goals, and where you are positioned in your SAM journey. A good example is you may have a big Microsoft Enterprise Agreement that is coming up for renewal and you want to just mature your Microsoft processes to Tier 3 in order to win that negotiation: we can do that while working to mature the rest of your software estate over-time.

For more information on a Software Asset Manager compared to doing it yourself, visit our article Hire a Software Asset Management Expert or Do it Yourself? The Pros and Cons of Each.

We’ve Been Trying to do This Job Ourselves for Years, What Makes MetrixData360 Different?

This is the question we hear most often. Companies come to us feeling as though managing their software is just impossible and they wonder how we can give them different results. We’ve been doing this for seven years with 20-30 engagements each year and our licensing experts collectively have eighty years of experience on our side. We maintain our ambitious standards by following five key principles:

1. Transparency:

Because we understand the sensitivity of this engagement and the data involved in it, we maintain a policy of pure transparency in our methodology and the technology we use.

2. Fact-based:

Our findings are completely fact-driven and if the data is insufficient to draw any conclusions, then all assumptions will be highlighted for you, along with the ramifications of using those assumptions.

3. Collaborative:

Despite having a mature engagement process, we always seek to work with your existing processes and data availability to ensure increased engagement efficiency. >

4. Solution-Driven:

It’s important for us to highlight the risks and challenges in your software Licensing solution and portfolio, but we know it is even more important for us to support you in creating potential solutions to your unique challenges.

5. Articulation:

We know software licensing is complex and we will ensure that our findings and recommendations are well explained so you can act accordingly.

Methodology: We draw from multiple sources of data to give you a handle of your licensing. For instance, if we are trying to determine the number of users or devices you have, we might pull data from your Active Directory, SCCM, and/or your IT security tools (all of which could easily give you different numbers). Based on this data, we can figure out a strategy that best suits your needs based on the overlap of information. Often, we find that elements of the process that were a huge roadblock for client companies are really no problem for our tools and processes to overcome.

Our main concern is your timeframe. If your company is not in an audit, we’ll have a chance to chase down the data that you’re missing, but if you are in an audit and you’re pressed for time, we can accommodate, troubleshoot, and automate as much as possible to get accurate data quickly in order to ensure you pass the audit.

How Do I Start Getting My Software Assets Under Control?

Software Asset Management can be such an overwhelming task but if you want to get a handle on your software, start by looking at your contracts that are coming up for renewal – that’s always an opportunity if approached with the right data. Next look for the risks, see if there’s any outstanding issue that could crop up if you are audited later (e.g. if you know Oracle is poking around asking questions, go look at your Oracle environment before they do). These two places can act as starting points, and you can work out from there to address issues that might come up.

A lot of the time, we take inventory from an organization’s tools and put it into our internal SAM Tools. We are able to review our clients’ data and provide them with great starting points for implementing SAM and identifying immediate savings opportunities to provide some quick wins and ROI for a SAM program. Knowledge is your best defense against unfair contracts, costly audits, and inflated software expenses. Putting off knowing will only hurt your budget in the long run.

Having a strong understanding of software asset management shouldn’t be harder than finding the secrets of the universe. Clicking the button below will take you to a booking page, where you can get in contact with MetrixData 360 CEO Mike Austin, to launch your Software Asset Management process.

Schedule a SAM Meeting

Is it time for your organization to hire a Software Asset Management Expert? Software Asset Management (SAM) is the type of thing that is easy for IT organizations to forget. It’s like that mysterious plastic container at the back of the fridge that you haven’t opened in a while. Just like that unpleasant odor to let you know something in your fridge has gone bad, there are some ways you can tell when your software licenses and expenses may be on the cusp of causing you grief. Implementing a successful SAM program is difficult to do.  There are numerous skills required and multiple sources of data to go through and understand (software deployments, contracts, and hardware configurations). Feeling overwhelmed and frustrated in the wake of such a challenge is understandable but it can be avoidable with the right help at your disposal.

4 Reasons to Hire a Software Asset Management Expert

With nearly eighty years of combined consultation experience on our side, the Software Asset Managers at Metrixdata360 know exactly where a company needs help from the experts, and that’s what we’re here to share with you today. We’ll show you how you can tell what you can do yourself and when it’s time to bring in experts to assist.

1. Your Software Estate Is Growing Rapidly

Perhaps you once only had a few licenses to keep track of and the servers that your company needed could be counted on one hand. Now, to accommodate your company’s growth, you’ve had to buy another license, and another, and another, building a large and confusing IT architecture. Maybe your company has recently gone through a merger or acquisition and the transition has left you disorganized and unsure as to whose license belongs to who.

According to OMTCO’s article Six Questions that Managers Should Ask about Software Asset Management, if your software estate incorporates hundreds of servers with licenses from critical vendors like Oracle, IBM, or Microsoft, then it is time to consider having your software managed by a professional.

2. You’ve Purchased More Than One SAM Tool

Software Asset Management tools are a great way to keep your company organized. The problem with these tools is that it is hard to find one that can manage everything you need it to. While SAM tools offer many features, their primary function can be broken down into two parts: to conduct inventory and to manage your licenses.

The problem is that many SAM tools have difficulty accounting for the newest technological advances. Getting your SAM tool to read multiple different license metrics, for instance, can work as well as trying to shove a cassette tape into a CD player.

They can accidentally account for things twice, they can mark your test/ dev servers as full production, and they can fail to account for the information in your Active Directory, which is typically the first place the software auditors will look.

The way that companies accommodate for their SAM tools’ weaknesses is by either creating spreadsheets themselves (which renders the purchase of the SAM tool pointless, why get a product if you have to do its job for it?) or they get another SAM tool just to make up for the missing information.

If you find yourself having to compensate for your SAM tools, it might be time for a professional upgrade.

3. You’re Migrating to the Cloud

It seems like everyone is packing up and heading for the Cloud. Once you’re transitioned, you’ll have excellent flexibility, but the move can cause an equal amount of grief when it comes to your licenses and your software bills. Many companies assume that they can take their licenses to the Cloud with little issue, but that’s not always the case.

It’s important that you read your contracts carefully.

Some software publishers create programs that harbor sensitive information – such as clients’ credit card numbers or patient records – and so they will not let you move their software to the Cloud. It’s a huge liability for both you and them since the Cloud has been known to have major breaches in security. In 2018, for instance, some of the biggest breaches in the Cloud included the Aadhaar India National ID Database (1.1 billion Indian citizens had their information exposed), Facebook (50 million user accounts were compromised) and Marriott Starwood Hotels (the information of 500 million guests was compromised), according to Spinbackup’s article Top Cloud Data Breaches in 2018 Lessons Learned.   Even the vendors that do allow movement to the Cloud can charge you heavy fees for doing so.

In addition, unmonitored access to your new Cloud estate can leave your IT department to have the ability to spin up any Cloud instance they want, without proper regard to whether such an action is within compliance with your licenses or even before having a full understanding of what it will cost your company. It’s common with unmonitored access to the Cloud, that companies will spin up projects and then leave them on for months after the project’s completion, meaning they are still being paid and draining your IT Budget.

As we covered in the last section, because many SAM tools on the market were made long before the Cloud became popular, they struggle to monitor these types of scenarios, leaving companies with unknown expenses and compliance gaps. Having someone that can monitor your Cloud estate is essential to keeping the costs down to their lowest digit during this transition.   For more information about Cloud Migration, check out our article 5 Problems When Moving To the Cloud.

4. The Last SAM Review/ Software Audit Didn’t Go So Well

The sting of a poorly conducted software audit is a harsh one. Perhaps the auditors came in and took every grey area and every unknown factor and inflated your compliance gap until it was the size of your annual software budget. After all that wasted manpower and resources, if you were in a full legal audit, you might have been forced to foot the bill for the whole process and had to pay for the owed products at full price (your discounts aren’t available to you in a full audit).

You were caught off guard by the audit findings, you knew you couldn’t possibly owe that much but had no idea where to look to prove their Estimated License Position wrong. By the time you made it to the negotiation stage, you just wanted the process to be over, so you reluctantly agreed to their terms and now you never want to go through that again.

While a SAM professional can’t stop the software audits from coming back year after year, they can streamline the process, saving your own workforce resources. SAM professionals also can tell the difference between valuable data that is critical to the audit and wild goose chases the auditors will send your highest paid employees on. They know how to make it so that you are better prepared and more organized, which will leave your compliance gap cut down to the amount you actually owe.

Types of Software Asset Management Expert

Should you decide it is, indeed, time to hire a SAM expert, there are three options you have at your disposal.

In-House Software Asset Managers

Hiring someone who owns this project is a great way to ensure it is done with great care and passion. Software asset managers don’t just get your licenses in order for any upcoming audit, they can also help manage new software deployment and track their effectiveness in your company.

A good software asset manager is someone who has extensive knowledge of software, but who also demonstrates a strong understanding of finances, negotiations, legal matters, and business. A software asset manager is excellent for managing your company’s daily usage over a long period of time (either on-premise or in the Cloud).

Software Consultant Hybrid

As Rolling the SAM Dice: in-house vs. managed from the ITAM Review notes, a popular option that many businesses take advantage of is having a hybrid of the two options. They will often buy their own SAM tool but have an external team manage it, thus giving them control over their data and the methods used to monitor it, but they also can rest easy knowing that their assets are being well managed.

For More Information on Hiring a Software Asset Management Expert

Knowing when you need a Software Asset Management Expert could save you a lot of money – almost 30% of your current software expenses and that number only grows in the case of a software audit.

At Metrixdata360, we’re interested in finding you the best solution for your software asset management needs so you will be able to know exactly where your money is going and you’ll be ready with solid data at your disposal when the auditors come knocking. If you’d like to learn more about how Mextrixdata 360 can help, reach out to us with your questions or take a look at our SAM Compass service. We strive to respond by the end of the following business day to all inquiries.

According to Wikipedia: “Software asset management (SAM) is a business practice that involves managing and optimizing the purchase, deployment, maintenance, utilization, and disposal of software applications within an organization.” But what does that really mean or look like in a practical sense? Software Asset Management is a vital process in any organization. Understanding how much software you own, which vendors you buy from, terms and conditions of the contracts you’ve signed with these vendors, program limitations, license entitlements and use rights, user needs vs. license installment, and accuracy of inventory are all essential functions of SAM.

For many organizations, SAM is a complex, unwieldy challenge, especially if the organization spans more than one location. Executing an effective SAM program is very difficult for most companies. A good Software Asset Management strategy is key to maintaining compliance and avoiding hefty true-up fees and other noncompliance costs. Companies who are found to be non-compliant with their licensing agreements can face massive fines, sometimes into the millions of dollars, or be subject to legal action.

What Are Software Licenses?

Software licenses are the agreements that allow a company or individual to use proprietary software owned by a vendor. Software License agreements dictate how and where businesses can deploy software, ranging from the operating systems on each computer throughout the organization, to the workplace software used on each machine/device, but may also include database servers and other back-end infrastructure. The licenses also address what sorts of tasks can be performed with the software, how the software is configured, and which features the organization is approved to use.

Staying in Compliance

Companies need to ensure that they purchase an appropriate number of licenses for either the number of devices the software will be installed and used on or; for the number of people who will be using the software. Historically, we’ve seen two main ways that many companies rely on to try to mitigate their risk around compliance with their licensing:(1) choosing to over-license (aka: “better safe than sorry”) practice or; (2) budgeting year-long for eventual true-ups. Being out of compliance can result in the publisher of the software performing a Software Audit, which can result in massive fees for companies found to be missing licenses, plus the added disruption of having your software environment audited.

Over-Licensing

Over-licensing occurs when an organization purchases more licenses than they need for their environment. While this ensures that the organization will be compliant, the overspending of purchasing more licenses than required is a costly practice, especially when you consider that the licenses won’t be used. A solid SAM strategy will help to ensure that your company does not overpay in the long run by maintaining only the number of licenses necessary.

True-Ups

If a software publisher finds that you are out of compliance, a true-up will be necessary to settle the difference. Depending on the scale of non-compliance, true-ups can cost companies hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars. Accurate inventory count, proper maintenance, and regular assessment of software asset requirements and use ensures that true-up costs don’t creep up on you too significantly and can help keep auditors at bay.

Contract Re-negotiation

Part of having a strong Software Asset Management strategy is understanding how to re-negotiate license contracts. At the end of your software license contract term, you will be given the opportunity to re-negotiate with the vendor. When an organization enters into these negotiations with a current view of their software needs and use and a projected view of their future requirements, that information can be leveraged for better pricing and can help avoid unnecessary over-purchasing of new or unneeded licenses.

Maintaining Compliance

Staying in compliance may seem like a daunting task, but a strong Software Asset Management strategy can make compliance a much more manageable process. It may seem like the most prudent way to avoid true-up costs or an audit by a vendor would be to purchase more licenses than you need, but this comes with its own costs, especially over the long-term. Unless the organization is in a growth cycle where more employees will be brought on to consume those licenses before the next purchasing cycle, the money spent on over-purchasing licenses is wasted.

A good practice to assist in maintaining compliance should include performing a Self-Assessment at least once a year. An organization is in its best position to make software license decisions when they have a full picture of their software environment.

For more information about Software Asset Management as a whole, or any inquiries about Self-Assessments, we invite you to contact us with your questions.