Category: SAM Series

“Where do we store our data?”

It’s a question that comes up constantly in the tech world and serves as a fundamental pillar of the software infrastructure of organizations everywhere. The way that data is stored, the speed with which it can be accessed, and the way with which it is protected are all critical for businesses to function properly. Data lakes are the newest means of storing data, but how does it work? Are they right for you? And, is there a way they can actually help you with software asset management?

At MetrixData 360, we have found that data lakes can be particularly useful in our efforts to wrangle our client’s software environment into order.

What is a Data Lake?

For a long time, data was stored in warehouses, a familiar term for the veterans of the tech industry. While it may be easy to assume that a data lake is just the newer version of the data warehouse, there are a few distinct differences.

A data lake can be thought of similarly to real-life lake water. The data gathered in a data lake might stream in from a variety of sources, accepting and retaining data from all sources, types, and schemas.

This data may not be formatted in any way, with no hierarchy or organization to speak of, instead it is in its rawest form, neither processed or analysed. This allows businesses to apply the scheme and organization model that best fits the nature of the data that data lake houses, often proving both its greatest strength and its biggest drawback.

How a Data Lake Works

The sheer volume of data that companies have can be overwhelming and traditional data management isn’t equipped to handle big data or its analysis. Data warehouses are designed much like their namesake, with rows and columns of organized data. While this provides limitations like lack of flexibility and the requirement to standardize all data that is stored in these warehouses, they do allow for quicker operations.

In contrast, data lakes are commonly built using either Hadoop or through the use of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). Both AWS and Azure offer data lake architectures to store and analyze current data.

Data lakes provide their structure through one or two methods:

Why is a Data Lake Needed?

If you’re working on a big data project, you’ll need to know what data you’ll need to reach your desired outcome and you’ll also need to get your hands on the right data to analyze and leverage to better achieve those outcomes.

One of the major benefits of data lakes is their ability to provide cheap scalability, allowing you to keep large quantities of data for a good price. Data lakes can allow you to draw from a variety of data, and in turn store any data you wish on the data lake and create unlimited ways to query in search for data, providing you with tremendous flexibility. The use of data lakes can help break down data silos and allow for a unified view of data across your organization.

Data Lakes and Software Asset Management

Data lakes can prove quite useful in assisting efforts surrounding software asset management if executed correctly. Auditors don’t typically look to data lakes when conducting a software audit at the moment. We suspect they will become a target of scrutiny in the future, as their use becomes more sophisticated and wide-spread.

A good example of when these data lakes might be accessed is in regards to hybrid use benefits in Azure, which allows you to bring your own on-prem licenses to Azure at a discounted rate.

Technically speaking, there would be nothing stopping your company from using hybrid benefits to deploy software on Azure while still having it installed on-prem, and Microsoft is currently turning a blind eye to this loophole, trusting that you’ll respect your arrangement.

However, with the rough year 2020 has proven for everyone (except Zoom), Microsoft may be eager to make up losses by conducting audits in new areas. This is why it is also best to understand how the data stored in these data lakes can be used to your advantage.

Data lakes can help you hunt down Shadow IT and they can prove to be an excellent resource in the event of an audit. This is because they can often provide missing data such as VM guest to host relationships, processors, cores, perhaps even unique details about your software environment.

They can also be used as a means of tracking cloud usage and cross-referencing other data sources. In order to use your data lakes to serve your SAM goals, you’ll need to make sure the data is accurate and complete, you can do so by considering the following:

Get Your Data Lakes to Serve Your Goals

Data lakes are an excellent way to keep your resources stored and organized. It’s important to be aware of how data lakes can potentially help your organization remain in compliance with software vendors and keep your software infrastructure organized by assisting in software asset management.

Software Asset Management in and of itself is a great way to allow your organization to discover an estimated 20% to 30% of savings pulled out of their current IT spend through simply cutting out unnecessary licensing and making sure that costly fines and unbudgeted spending are avoided.

If you’d like to learn more about how Software Asset Management can benefit your company, you can check out Software Asset Management for Beginners.

People tend to not take a keen interest in software asset management, brushing it off as half-baked assumptions, corporate fairytales, and IT lore and mythology — until their company’s most recent software audit has gone south and they’re now looking down the barrel of a multi-million-dollar settlement. Then, all of a sudden, they care an awful lot. At MetrixData 360, we take pride in educating our customers in order to demystify the complexity of your software, so that it’s not a game of Russian roulette every time you’re audited by one of your software vendors.

Software Asset Management is Not as Important as IT Asset Management

While IT Asset Management and Software Asset Management both belong to the technology department, they approach that technology in different ways. ITAM is interested in the lifecycles around all IT assets, including hardware, software, devices, keyboards etc. while software asset management only deals with…well, only the software side of things. Since ITAM has a broader scope and tangible assets to work with, ITAM will often have more opportunity within a company to interact with different departments and display their worth. Compare this to software asset management, which deals primarily with intangible assets like software and deals with either the IT or financial department exclusively, so SAM can easily get lost in the shuffle of things.

I’m Not in a Software Audit, so I Don’t Need to Worry about my Compliance

Software audits are on the rise, and they won’t be slowing down any time soon due to the massive amounts of revenue that the software publishers can generate from them. There are many factors that can increase your risk of receiving an audit, such as the size of your company, the software vendors you have in your profile, and even your recent conversations with your sales rep. However, there is a certain level of inevitability to software audits as some software publishers send out audits on a routine basis or at random. For many companies it is hard to go more than three years without receiving notice of an audit of some kind. It is not a matter of if you will be audited, it’s a matter of when. The moral of the story is that if you are not being audited, you should still prepare as though you will eventually be audited (odds are, you will be).

On that note, there are many benefits to remaining in compliance other than avoiding potentially paying out huge auditing penalties (although that is the main appeal), such as:

I have Installed a Software Asset Management Tool; My Job is Done!

Many companies struggle with software asset management but not for lack of trying. However, their struggle begins when they rely too heavily on automated software for licensing and inventory. Software asset management is not really a flip-the-switch-and-leave-it-alone type of processes but that also doesn’t mean that you should get out a pen and note pad and start counting things yourself, unless you want to repeat that phase in your childhood where you tried to count to a million. Even after your SAM tool is deployed, SAM is a journey that requires a lot of work to reach full optimization, which can take anywhere from a few months to a well over a year, depending on your goals for software asset management and how deep down this compliance rabbit hole you want to go. After implementing your SAM tool, you will need to address work towards finding the answers to the following questions:

These aren’t easy questions to answer, and the data that you gather could be interpreted to draw different conclusions. It requires knowledge and experience in different software vendors and licensing metrics to be able to read and manage your SAM tool effectively. This is why it is important that you hire a SAM expert, either in-house or outsource the project to a third-party. Your SAM tool is just that: a tool, it will never be anything other than a waste of money if you don’t have someone who knows how to use it.

If We can Run the Software, it must be Properly Licensed

This would a nice scenario for an ideal world where every day is sunny but sadly, life and licensing, tend to get a bit messy sometimes and there are many scenarios that can leave you running software that isn’t licensed. There are many software vendors that will allow the installation and running of their software without a proper license in place, trusting you to know whether your software is properly licensed or not. Microsoft for instance, will often let their EA customers install software under the pretenses that they will pay for any missing licenses during the next true-up. For IBM, customers have the option of either licensing their software as Sub-Capacity and installing ILMT or licensing them at full capacity. If you do not have ILMT properly deployed over every piece of software that is licensed at sub-capacity and you do not have it licensed at full capacity, you’ll be smacked in the face with some massive penalties in the next audit. If you have your software properly licensed but then you move to the Cloud, your licensing metrics could change, and you could suddenly be missing licenses.

On the flip side, you could also have a license for software that you cannot run. We have often seen when using our Office 365 Consumption tool to evaluate our customer’s software licensing environments that they have licenses with blocked users that were unaware that they had licenses because…they couldn’t access Office 365.

Here’s the moral of the story: Don’t take the fact that you can turn it on and run a piece of software as any solid indicator that you’re allowed to do so.

Software Asset Management is Nothing but an Expensive Luxury

When it comes time for companies to pick which processes will be invested in, software asset management often gets the short end of the stick. It can often seem like SAM isn’t worth the money but when SAM is properly implemented the return on investment can be huge, for a number of reasons:

Sure, software asset management might not be everyone’s cup of tea. It might be hard, tedious, and overwhelming but important things are often hard and having a clear understanding of what software asset management is and how it can better your company can mean the difference between watching your company flourish and watching it flounder under crippling software expenses. At MetrixData 360, our goal is to educate our customer base, so that they are not at the mercy of their software. If you’d like to learn more about how you can take back control, check out our other articles: What is Software Asset Management, and Beginner’s Guide to Software Asset Management.

How to Save Money on Your Software Licensing

There are plenty of things that can be unpleasant about a work week: that annoying coworker, that difficult proposal, bumper to bumper traffic, and chances are that an unpleasant software audit is also thrown into the mix. However, it’s easy to ask why software audits are so necessary; can’t the software vendor just trust your company to be an honest paying customer? You’re already giving them so much of your IT budget and yet, it seems they keep on coming back for more.

At MetrixData 360, we’ve put a lot of time and effort into understanding the auditors and the software vendors who hire them. So today we’re going to discuss what’s going on in the minds of the ones who send out software audits.

Reason #1: Software Vendors Like Making Money

Software audits are big investments that publishers are putting time and resources into. If you are found out of compliance in a software audit, not only will you have to pay for the missing licenses, you will also have to cover the auditing process, which will include compensating the third-party auditors. Your licenses must be purchased at full price, not at your contractual or historical discounted rate, and, in the case of a Microsoft audit, you will also have to pay an additional 5% penalty fee. A poorly conducted software audit could eat an IT department’s annual budget.

For the software vendors this is an effective means of generating revenue because your options are paying out the auditing penalties year after year or finding a different software vendor to support your company’s IT infrastructure. If your software vendor views your software audit as an investment, it would be logical to assume they would prefer safe investments, the type that are certain to yield a profit.

You can therefore lower your risk of incurring a software audit by making yourself appear like a less profitable target. Being prepared is the best defense against audits.

Reason #2: Compliance Audits Mean Software Sales

Not only should software audits be seen as investments, they are also viewed by the software vendors as sales opportunities. Infoworld’s article, Software Audits: How High Tech Plays Hardball, states that software audits usually end the same way, with the customer handing over cash either to pay for missing licenses or to strike up a new deal with the software vendors.

Vendors go into audits to find mistakes, to strike fear into the hearts of their clients, and just when the sweat has glistened the top of the client’s brow, they offer a deal, then the vicious cycle continues. It is important to not rely solely on the advice of the vendor’s sales rep because they will not be interested in ensuring you spend wisely, just that your spending continues to increase.

The sales department of these software vendors have quotas to meet and they will always push their customers to spend more with them. They are trying to drive up their company’s stock, price after all. When your license is up for renewal, this is the sales rep’s chance to offer better maintenance and better products, not necessarily because it can benefit your company in a substantial way but because it was what they were told to sell. However, if you manage to keep your spending with the vendor what it is, or if you manage to even lower your spending with the vendor, then the sale’s team has a problem because now their quota wasn’t met. How else are they going to squeeze that extra cash from you? Simple, the company will send an audit notification and the vendor’s sales team will practice looking surprised in case you ever mention it to them.

Reason #3: Software Licensing Complexity Plays to the Vendor’s Advantage

There are plenty of reasons that software vendors give to explain the over complication of licensing. According to Softchoice, constant updates to technology means that there needs to be constant license updates to accommodate for those changes. A client may also require unique contracts with licensing specifically tailored to their demands, which makes for a complicated licensing system.

While these points may be true, software vendors do very little to remedy this confusion. In 2009, according to PCworld, then-Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer stated that there could be no simplification of licenses expected in the near future.

Having a license for a piece of software doesn’t mean that you own it, it means you’re being granted the ability to use it. Software contracts are unique compared to other types of intellectual property since they can be written to include virtually as many agreements as both parties are willing to sign onto. Contracts are still written by the software vendor’s rules. In fact, the language the software publishers use to write up their licensing agreements is vague enough to make it difficult to understand and tempting to skip over.

However, if you don’t have a full understanding of the rules, how are you supposed to follow them? How are you supposed to work the rules to your advantage if they keep changing? You can’t, and that inability to know all the rules, let alone follow them, is the idea. Software Vendors perform audits the same way you would make your rounds checking the mouse traps in your house to see if any of them have been sprung.

Reason #4: Software Audits Aren’t Meant to Save You Money

Software audits or SAM reviews can be presented in a friendly way, as though it is an opportunity to check that products are being used properly and effectively. However, during a software audit, the third-party auditors will take the data from your software estate and come up with their own estimated licensing position.

It’s important to ask why were they hired? They were hired to find your compliance gaps and might even be paid based on how big a compliance gap they can find. There’s nothing to incentivize the auditors to scrutinize the accuracy of their findings.

If there are grey areas, if there’s room to make assumptions in your profile, they’ll always assume that the most expensive case is the reality, and if they’re wrong, then it’s so much the better for them. The only way you can gain an accurate depiction of your data and know what you actually owe the software vendors is by gathering trustworthy data yourself in order to challenge the software auditor’s findings.

The only way you can have trustworthy data at the ready is by having a strong software asset management system already in place long before the auditors arrive. The auditors will also fail to provide you with any information that indicates where you are overspending because that’s not what they were hired for. Even if there are areas where you could save money with the vendor, even if there are ways you could maximize the efficiency of how the software is utilized, those won’t be the talking points during an audit.

MetrixData 360 Makes Software Compliance Easy

Software audits happen; it’s an unfortunate truth that businesses must live with. With software audits only happening more frequently, it’s not a matter of if your business will be audited, but when. It’s important that you have a system in place that can accurately capture your data, which is where software asset management comes in. At MetrixData 360, we know how the software vendors think, and we know how to defend our client’s time and resources throughout the process. By clicking the link below you can head over to our Audit Defense page, where you can learn more about how MetrixData 360 can help you through a software audit.

Software asset management, especially when you are just starting out in your SAM journey, can easily prove an overwhelming, exhausting, and discouraging experience. It can be a laborious headache if you take the wrong approach to it, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be this way – there are things you can do to make software asset management a little easier. At MetrixData 360, our job is to make your job easier regarding your software licensing environment, so today we’ll be discussing ways to work smarter and not harder on your SAM program.

Don’t Set Unrealistic Expectations

One of the greatest pitfalls for someone just starting out with software asset management is getting too overwhelmed too quickly. Peeking into your software environment is enough to reveal an endless number of tasks and potential problems you now have to fix. For many companies, they feel it’s better not to look and hope the problem will sort itself out eventually.

While sticking your head in the sand is not an effective way to tackle software asset management, neither is trying to do everything at once. There are varying levels to SAM maturity, each with their own goals and objectives.

It may not be necessary for you to achieve the highest level of SAM based on what your company is hoping to get out of it, and it’s important to remember that 100% visibility and 100% accuracy will be next to impossible with enterprise-level software environments. 70%-80% would be a more realistic and attainable goal.

Communicate with Staff

Companies are made up of a lot of different people and very few of them will probably take deep enjoyment out of hearing about software asset management, but it’s important that staff are all on the same page with software, especially when it comes to the following pain points.

Comers, Movers, and Leavers

Companies are full of many moving parts; new hires coming in, employees moving from one department to another, and retiring employees all pose the question of what happens to their software licenses? Not having a strong process in place could mean accidentally having to pay for duplicated licenses or active ‘shelfware’ that your company is still paying for even though no one has used it in ages. Where do new hires go to get their new desktops? Where do retirees take their desktops when they’re done? Do people take their licenses with them to new departments? If not, what do you do with them afterward? Making sure that people understand these processes is critical to the success of your software asset management.

Shadow IT

Not knowing what people are downloading can become a serious issue for companies. Especially when seemingly free versions of things become less free when introduced to a corporate setting. An example of this can be seen in our article, The Invisible Risk of Oracle VirtualBox, where Oracle has ended up auditing clients based on their use of the seemingly free application VirtualBox. While it may be impossible and impractical to monitor everyone’s access to every website, especially given that forcing employees to seek permission every time they download free software might bog down productivity, it is nevertheless important to make staff aware of the risk of downloading certain products off of the Internet.

A Single Tool Won’t Save You

The last thing you want to do is put too much faith in your inventory tool. While inventory tools are essential to modern software asset management (unless you’d care to be driven to insanity counting your licenses manually), your job with software asset management is not finished when the tool is done installing. A single tool has the potential to increase your visibility by only 20%. It’s only after the installation of additional SAM tools, and their proper management and upkeep, that companies reach that 70%-80% visibility range.

Be Careful When Buying Bundled Packages

Buying a bunch of software in bundles may seem like it would be more convenient but when trying to organize these bundles, you’ll find that things can become quite a challenge. For one thing, SAM tools are often confused by bundled packages and it could fail to accurately document the bundled software, leaving you with a blind spot in your software asset management that you’ll eventually have to fix, either now or later when you’re in the middle of an audit. It also creates issues because bundles do not always come with sufficient proof of purchase receipts, which are imperative for success in any copyright infringement claims.

Moving to the Cloud also can pose challenges if done incorrectly. We have seen that there is often a spike in software cost when businesses transition to the Cloud due to staff given free rein to spin up Cloud instances, leave projects running, or simply buying more than they need.

It is important to be aware of these issues and the expensive headaches they can cause if your company heads to the Cloud thoughtlessly.

Moving to the Cloud Comes With its Own Challenges

Have a Software Audit Process in Place

The sad reality is that software audits do happen and so it is important to have a standard procedure in place in case one occurs. Instead of panicking, have a series of response emails ready to pick from, have a strategy prepared and in place, and know exactly what to expect out from a software audit. This will keep you from scrambling to get your data and responses together. At MetrixData 360, we’ve designed a Software Audit Defense Process, which can provide you and your company with the insights they need to create a strong, effective software audit procedure.

SAM Makes Everything IT Related Easier

From IT Staff and Security to Procurement, having a strong software asset management process implemented throughout your company will make the lives of your staff easier. IT Security will have a cleaned up, streamlined, and complete picture of the software environment that they monitor. Procurement will have full confidence in knowing what they need to purchase and whether there are licenses that already exist in their software licensing environment that can be recycled. With SAM, the CFO will not have to crunch the numbers to come up with the cash for a massive audit penalty, instead they can harvest saving opportunities for the betterment of the IT department. The IT department will have the data they need to effectively advocate for needed software. While this isn’t necessarily a point in how to make your Software Asset Management challenge a little easier, it does demonstrate how much easier everything else can become when SAM is properly implemented.

Want Easy Software Asset Management? Call MetrixData 360

Software Asset Management is far from an easy task, and it can quickly become complicated and overwhelm you if you try to jump headfirst without looking. However, there are ways to limit this confusion and make your life (and the lives of your IT Staff) that much easier.

At MetrixData 360, we pride ourselves in making your software asset management easier by taking care of the heavy lifting for you. We have had clients with year-long audits who barely put in a few hours of work, and we’ve provided clients with reports on their software environment that would have taken weeks to collect, with barely an hour’s work on their part. The rest of the work was left to us, the SAM experts. If you would like help on your software asset management, you can contact us today and get connected with our Director of Client Success for more information.

SAM After COVID-19

Right now, it may seem like there’s no end to this COVID-19 madness, but with small glimmers of light at the end of this dark tunnel fast approaching, it’s important to consider what the other side of this pandemic will look like for businesses. According to Research and Market’s book, Software Asset Management – Market Analysis, Trends, and Forecasts, Software Asset Management was expected to grow by USD$2.1 billion worldwide, although that was before the world turned upside-down. While these exact numbers may no longer be the case, in a pandemic, software asset management is still expected to become a major asset for companies wishing to drive down their software costs.

At MetrixData 360, we’ve been demonstrating our knowledge as software asset management experts for seven years now, and we thought we’d share how we expect the software world to change once COVID-19 comes to an end.

For the Short Term

Welcome to the Cloud

Businesses were already packing up and moving to the Cloud to take advantage of the flexibility and the freeing up of resources it provides even before the pandemic struck. However, when COVID-19 swept the global stage, companies either had to figure out a way to keep their employees working remotely, file as an essential service, or essentially shut down. This has left companies scrambling to get into the online Cloud business quickly – on both sides of the aisle. Video Conferencing Channels are booming, Zoom for instance has received more downloads of their product in these past few months than they saw during all of 2019.

With employees still meeting targets at home even without checking in at the office, it offers a great argument for remote work, that you don’t necessarily have to clock your employees’ productivity by the number of hours they sit at their desk. Remote work could very easily pick up in popularity, which raises the question – are you ready for the Cloud?

There can be issues with moving to the Cloud, especially when the transition is rushed. Such issues like improperly sized instances and licensing metric changes can cause an unexpected spike in costs.

What this means for SAM is that monitoring Cloud usage and spending will become a bigger priority as COVID-19 continues into the summer.

At the SAM Summit in Chicago, presenters pointed out that most companies see 35% of wastage when it comes to their Cloud profile. Getting such unneeded spending under control should be the priority for many companies in the upcoming months. This wastage comes from the complexity and variety of Cloud pricing models, the lack of control over provisioning, and the constant stream of system updates.

The Short-Lived Generosity of Software Vendors

In this turbulent time, the software vendors have offered generous packages to help businesses adjust to the pandemic. Microsoft announced Teams will be available to everyone for six months, an E1 license available to businesses, and an A1 license for those in academia. These licenses are the minimum level you need to access Teams. Likewise, Adobe has also announced that it will allow students and teachers temporary free access to the Creative Cloud until either the schools reopen or until May 31, 2020.

A Rise in Software Audits

We have all faced some difficulty with COVID-19, and the software vendors are no exception. They’ll be eager to make up for the lost revenue that they experienced while businesses were shut down or weathering the pandemic’s storm. So, we can expect to see an increase in software audits as soon as this crisis is over, if not before. We have already had customers come to us with an audit notice from a software vendor, wondering how they will ever get the information that’s required if they can’t even go to the office!

It’s important that your company is ready, despite the circumstances. Make sure that even seemingly free software is not installed without your knowledge, and be sure you understand whether or not your licenses can be placed on personal devices for remote work. Ignoring these issues now can easily lead to huge problems later.

For the Long-Term

Software Asset Management Tool Dissatisfaction is on the Rise

This is true, regardless of COVID-19, Smarter with Gartner points out that satisfied customers for SAM tools will only sit at 25% this year, with most SAM customers finding that the product fails to meet expectations. The reason for this can be found in the ever-increasing complexity of SAM, especially with the Cloud coming along to muddy the waters further.

SAM tools also have their limitations, as we discuss in our article, Why Do Software Asset Management Tools Stink at Software Asset Management? Some of the limitations of SAM tools include:

These shortcomings that appear in SAM tools will force businesses to either compensate by buying another SAM tool or take up the work themselves by creating spreadsheets and manually counting, which will be increasingly difficult as the pandemic carries on and more impractical as IT infrastructure grows more complex.

API Transactions

What we think will take place in the rest of the year and into 2021, according to our professional opinion at MetrixData 360, is that there will be a surge in microtransactions through APIs. “Microtransaction” is currently only a term used to describe any additional purchases that occur inside a video game, such as paying real money for additional weapons or resources. It can be frustrating for players who have already purchased the game, especially when the additional purchases become necessary as a way to advance through the game (pay-to-win scenarios), and it may become a term that frustrates IT departments in the workplace as well in the coming months.

Few people understand what APIs are or the key role they serve within a company’s IT infrastructure. APIs basically act as messengers between different applications. Applications themselves don’t talk to one another and their interaction is dependent either on some poor intern writing the same information repeatedly in each application, or the APIs doing it.

APIs, therefore, are imperative for the functioning of business, and we think that software vendors are going to begin charging businesses for the use of their APIs. For instance, two years ago, Salesforce purchased Mulesoft, which manages APIs, and is now offering businesses the use of Mulesoft’s technology to connect their applications to one another.

We have already begun seeing it as our clients rack up massive bills because their vendors have begun to charge them a seemingly small fee every time that APIs are used. In the same way that gamers can become frustrated when they are forced to whip out their credit cards for every level they advance, so too will such constant minor charges cause a headache for software asset managers.

Currently, there is no sufficient way to monitor API usage, and if there is no way to know how much you are using, you cannot accurately determine if you are being charged in a manner that reflects what you actually owe.

A New Way to Conduct Software Asset Management

Despite the hardship and tragedy of COVID-19, we will get through this, and it’s important that we work together while the economy recovers. Great tech doesn’t solve a people problem; the new age must be powered by people who are on board with IT investments and willing to gain control of their software environment before such disorganization leaves them exposed to software audits and wasted spending. At MetrixData 360, we pride ourselves in being educators so that our clients understand what we are doing and will be able to improve their SAM practices even after our engagement has closed, providing them with long-lasting value.

If you’d like to learn how you can cut your software expenses down during a Crisis, you can check out our article, How Will Your Software Contracts Be Affected By COVID-19?

How Software Asset Management Can Help Your Vendor Relationship

There are many advantages to software asset management; it can provide you with valuable cost-saving opportunities, and it can make sure that your software environment is both legally sound and safe from security threats. However, many companies hesitate to adopt software asset management solutions because they are afraid it will create tension in their software vendor relationship. They would rather nod their way through a software audit than challenge any of the software vendor’s findings, and they’d rather sign any deal that is offered to them as opposed to going toe-to-toe in negotiations.

The last thing you want to do is make your software vendor angry with you, especially when their software critical to your business. However, software asset management can easily provide benefits to the software vendor as well and can improve your relationship with them. At MetrixData 360, we know all about the relationship between vendor and client and how delicate that relationship can be. We have successfully navigated these treacherous waters for many years, and we have seen companies who implement software asset management and achieve a mutually beneficial relationship with their vendor along the way.

Software Audit Prevention

While software audits are performed by software companies, this doesn’t mean that it is necessarily something they want to undertake. Software audits are an investment for the software vendor, they must hire an auditing firm, or they get their own people to manage the project. The whole reason why they tolerate and perform software audits is because they feel cheated, they suspect you are using software you are not paying for and they want to be justly compensated. It may be an honest mistake on your part but to the software vendor, there is always that tiny doubt in the back of their minds that asks what if it’s not?

We have come across businesses who knew that they had software they didn’t have the licenses for and their strategy to address that issue was ‘we’ll pay when we get caught in the next audit’.

Imagine if you had a roommate who would only clean up their mess if you screamed, threatened to throw them out, and otherwise made a beast of yourself. It would obviously be an unpleasant experience for the roommate, but it would also be an unpleasant experience for you as you fight an uphill battle, straining your relationship beyond repair, just to get them to do what you both had originally agreed to. Software audits are an excellent source of revenue for software vendors, but you know what is better? Not having a compliance issue in the first place by simply following the rules and making the correct payments on time. The vendor gets exactly what they are owed, and you gain the reputation of being an ideal customer. You need software asset management to achieve such results with your software vendor.

Provide Them with Useful Feedback

The software vendors want to serve you better, they want to be able to provide you with the software that matches your business needs. However, if you have ever been in a position where you are looking for constructive feedback, one of the most frustrating type to get is just a simple nod and ‘everything’s great!’ While it might make you feel good, there’s nowhere you can really go from there. Being able to have an open dialogue with your vendor concerning the software you need and having that conversation backed by strong data, will give the vendors valuable feedback on how to better provide you with quality customer service. Instead of your conversations with the vendor solely focused on whether you’re in compliance, you can move your relationship forward with control and precision.

SAM Allows You to Frame Win-Win Scenarios

If you don’t know the first thing about your software environment, then the only real strategy you can implement during any upcoming software contract negotiations is how to get a discount. These savings may serve your company well for the short-term, but it may cut down on the quality of the product and it is an arrangement the software vendor would obviously be opposed to. Instead of resorting to strong-arm tactics and tense drawn-out stand offs, knowing what you have in your software environment will allow you to understand the whole picture of your company’s needs. You can then structure your partnership with the vendor over the long-term to ensure equal opportunities for growth and profit. Software asset management gives you the visibility into your data that you need to track the value of the software vendor’s products.

How to Educate the Rest of the Team on SAM

So, Software Asset Management has sparked your interest; perhaps it was the cost saving opportunities, or the organization and optimization that it offers for your software architecture. However, being intrigued by the idea is one thing, convincing the rest of your company or catching the rest of your team up on your research may prove a bit more of a challenge, especially if those people don’t have the same level of experience, knowledge, or interest as you do when it comes to software. To help you through the process of explaining to the rest of your team why Software Asset Management is a good idea for your company, we’ve made up at MetrixData360 a few graphics complete with talking points that can be added to presentations or emails that can help get everyone on board with this new and amazing Software Asset Management Project!

The Importance of Software Asset Management

How to Get Started with Software Asset Management

The Importance and Benefits of On-Going SAM Processes

After completing our immediate software asset management objectives such as an audit, or reaching compliance with one of our software vendors, it is important to maintain the software management processes we have in place.

It may be a challenge to get everyone on board with SAM but just remember that this is a good idea, that has the potential to save your company a lot of money. Not having a software asset management process in place can leave you exposed to the steep penalties of a software audit and it can leave you spending copious amounts of money that you don’t need to. At MetrixData 360, we have helped companies at all stages of SAM maturity to achieve their goals. If you would like any help getting started on your SAM journey, you can contact us and our Director of Client will answer any outstanding questions you might have.