SOFTWARE ASSET MANAGEMENT
Get more business value from your IT with SAM,
Software Asset Management (SAM) is a vital business process that provides a system for the effective management, control, and protection of the software assets within your organization
Do you need SAM?
Ask yourself (or your IT department):
• Are you using all of the software licenses that you’ve paid for?
• Could you be saving money under a different license agreement?
• Do you have the appropriate licenses for each application in use?
If you don’t immediately know concrete answers to each of these questions, you need SAM.
SAM can improve daily business throughout your company.
IT Staff
• Make everyday easier by knowing what you have, so you can streamline procedures and efficiently plan upgrades and deployments.
• Demonstrate the value of IT assets with accurate data.
• Reduce help desk workload and maximize effectiveness with system standardization.
Department Heads/Business Unit Managers
• Increase the visibility of current IT spending to ensure better budget planning of projected spends and acquisitions.
• Understand exactly what assets you have and maintain better control of their use.
• Enjoy easier procurement and deployment procedures
with centralized control.
Legal and Human Resources
• Be ready with complete documentation of compliance, should the need ever arise.
• Ensure employee compliance by implementing and enforcing policies that minimize legal and security threats.
• Rest assured that your systems are compliant with all government regulations, as well as your own corporate policies,
Purchasing
• Gain centralized control and implement and enforce procurement procedures.
• Greatly simplify reporting, budgeting, and acquisition of IT assets.
• Reduce costs with optimal volume licensing agreements and minimize the risk of over-purchasing.
How to gain control of your software costs
A GUIDE FOR BUSINESSES
If there was a strategy by which your company could reduce business costs Improve and boost competitiveness in the marketplace, you’d be keen to adopt it, wouldn’t you? Yet analyst agree, the majority midmarket companies are missing out on just such a golden opportunity, because they have no software Asset management (SAM) policy
• according to analysts Gartner, less than 10% of companies worldwide have a SAM policy of any sort yet. by properly managing your company’s software assets you can gain verytangible rewards.
The benefits SAM Brings
• With a SAM programme, the return on investment (ROI) is clear.
Gartner calculated that optimal IT asset management leads to a 25% reduction in total cost of ownership.
- A properly structured SAM policy will help you manage, control and protect your software assets through their lifetime. As a consequence you can:
- Reduce costs
• Without an accurate picture of your assets, you are at risk of either being under-licensed in which case you risk bad publicity, large fines and even jail sentences or even over licensed. The potential saving on reducing such ‘shelf ware’ is great.
- Companies who are over licensing are doing so by a factor in excess of 10%, notes Compass’ Andy Gallagher. Additional savings can be made by taking advantage of the financial benefit of volume licensing plans, or of redeploying current licenses where needed.
- Increase competitiveness
Optimal deployment also provided for more informed decision making, which Increases competitiveness. ·Companies that don’t begin to manage these (software) costs now will not be
competitive in the future, because they will be building their budgets from a much higher cost base·, says Gartner analyst Edward Younker.
- Improve Performance
By identifying your company’s actual software need you can standardize the software used, This:
• Boost productivity by putting resources in the right place
• Reduces support helpdesk calls.
• Increase employee satisfaction
- Enforced security
Through SAM Audit, IT Managers can stamp out unauthorized software installations,
- Protect data
SAM involves a proper data recovery plan, making it easier to ensure back-up systems are in Place and data kept secure.