Software License Optimization

Software Asset Management Process Improvement: Guidance on Quality Assurance

By Rory Canavan

After my last blog, I was approached to delve somewhat deeper into the aspect of quality assurance around software asset management (SAM) processes, and to offer my experience in this area.  Here are some points I believe are worthy of note:

Effective Work-rate: Whatever quality assurance indicators are considered in a process, make sure that their measurement does not exceed the work required to carry out the process in the first place.  It could very quickly become the norm for a company to be expending more resources on ensuring statistics are collected than actually achieving the overall goal(s) of the process.

Automate wherever possible:  The days of clipboards and note-taking in respect of quality assurance are hopefully behind us; greater reliance on automation offers the opportunity to measure success factors for processes in places or times individuals might consider unpleasant or unacceptable.

Relevance: Quality Assurance data collection should be done in support of the overall process objectives – i.e. the number of requests handled in a “Request software title” process might be of some interest; but of greater interest might be, what’s the typical turnaround time for a request, from acknowledgement by the IT department to the time of installation?

Exception handling:  If a process is designed properly, it will be grounded in the real-world and so recognise that not everything runs smoothly 100% of the time.  Therefore, exception handling for when processes go wrong can offer quick wins in determining which elements of a process to measure.

The following acronym (SMART) has been well used in operations management, but applies here as well:

Any Quality Assurance objectives should be:

Specific: Don’t be ambiguous with your quality control objectives—“The purpose of this function step is to re-enforce the correct choice of license type in the creation of a license record in FlexNet Manager Platform” is much clearer than “I’m just checking that Stephen is doing his job properly”.

Measurable:  How people feel or think about a given situation or product is the preserve of politics. It is very difficult to dispute facts and figures – and these should be easy enough to select in the world of Software Asset Management. For example, specify the frequency of hardware and software inventory data collection and measure the percent coverage of your IT estate.

Attributable: The task of a process and/or function-step should always be assigned to a specific individual – this is not to associate blame; but rather to highlight that if a training requirement is to be addressed then a QA assessment can properly identify the correct individual; alternatively, process improvement could be required.

Realistic:  Any objectives asked of an individual or process should be within their skill-set, or the achievable scope of the system used to carry out the process.

Time-based:  In business, we can’t wait indefinitely for the completion of a process.  Therefore, thresholds are required to assess whether a process is a success or a failure based on time to successful completion.

Derivations of the SMART acronym abound; however these are the principles I attempt to adhere to when creating points of assessment for quality assurance in the realm of software asset management.

I would wrap up by saying that quality assurance should have objectives in its own right, and should be culturally addressed within a company as being part of the overall standards by which that organization is run – the company does not exist to stand over its employees shoulders to make them fearful of doing their job, but rather to encourage and promote continuous improvement and idea generation.

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To learn more about best practice software asset management processes, download our whitepaper: NCC Guideline for IT Management: Software Asset and License Management Best Practice, or view our on-demand webinar: How to get started on a SAM Program

Webinar: Strategies for Optimized License Management

By John Emmitt

Join Flexera Software and IAITAM for a Webinar on Strategies for Optimized License Management to learn how your organization can maximize savings and achieve a faster return on investment (ROI) on your software asset management (SAM) program . As noted by industry analysts, software asset management is transforming into a core financial management discipline. We will discuss multiple strategies for license optimization, including how to leverage product use rights to minimize license consumption and reduce costs. We will also introduce ‘What If’ analysis for assessing the impact of hardware and software changes on your license position.

Register today for this free live Webinar to learn about:

• Leveraging license entitlements, including Product Use Rights
• SAP user-based license optimization
• ‘What If’ analysis for proactive license management in dynamic IT environments

When: Wednesday, February 29th
Time: 2:00pm ET / 1:00pm CT
Duration: 60 minutes 

Speaker: Jill Powell, Manager - Consulting Services, Flexera Software

This Webinar is the final one in the 4-part Webinar series on how to get to the highest level of software asset and license management optimization. If you missed any of the webinars in the series, you can view them on-demand: 

• How to Get Started on a Software Asset Management Program
• Discovery, Inventory and Application Recognition
• Software License and Contract Management

Application Recognition Library requirements for software license management

By Vincent Brasseur

License management tools use hardware and software inventory data to calculate a license position for each entitlement. Before this data can be effectively used, it needs to be filtered and normalized. On an average computer, dozens of software titles are found from the hardware drivers to applications used by end users. From a license management perspective, only a few of these software titles carry a commercial license that requires monitoring of the license compliance position and management of the software contracts between the organization and resellers. The identification of these titles is performed using an Application Recognition Library.

Inventory data comes from discovery, inventory, usage monitoring, and configuration management tools that capture way more information than needed. As discussed in a blog last month, the raw inventory for each device consists in thousands of executables and dlls, hundreds of registry entries, ISO 19770-2 tags, package signatures, file contents and other evidence types. This data is filtered and translated into proper software titles using rules provided by the Application Recognition Library. Some of these rules can be very simple, for instance when a unique evidence type enables the identification of a software title. Many are extremely complex as they involve the detailed analysis of multiple evidence types (file header, file content, registry entry…) to identify properly not only the software product title, but also the version and edition.

The Application Recognition Library rules are also used to identify software bundles and product suites.  Additional complexity crops up due to the abundance of software patches and fixes from publishers that create many variations of the same evidence type and the lack of normalization from publishers. For instance it is not uncommon to find the publisher name in packages or file headers written in different ways due to lack of standards on the publisher side or simply typos from developers. Another important feature of the Application Recognition Library is the capacity to attach software usage data to a software title. Usage data is sometimes the only means for software identification, but is also used by the license management tools to reclaim unused licenses.

An Application Recognition Library must be constantly updated. New products, new product releases, patches, and fixes are published every day and require new recognition rules or adjustments to existing ones. Events such as product rebranding or mergers and acquisitions across software publishers must be accounted for. There is always a delay between a software publication and the update or creation of recognition rules, but the more frequently the library can be updated and published, the better. Organizations must also be able to add their own rules for unrecognized (e.g. custom/bespoke) applications and share this data with the library provider. Once the new rule has been added by the library provider, a process capable of reconciling the local rule created by the organization and the rule from the Application Recognition Library is needed.

In many organizations, applications are repackaged before being distributed. During this operation, evidence types provided by the publisher are often altered, impacting the capacity of the Application Recognition Library to identify the software title. For instance, the name of the publisher or the description of the software title is replaced by an internal standard name, to differentiate publisher from organization packages. Only solutions able to manage both re-packaging and application recognition (i.e. as part of a broader license management solution) are able to provide an automated solution to this problem. During the repackaging process, a mapping between original publisher data and organization specific one can be recorded and made available to the Application Recognition Library.

Many Application Recognition Library publishers will claim to recognize hundreds of thousands of software titles. But, the numbers vary according to what is counted, from evidence types to software title sub-versions to products, versions and editions. Most libraries offer coverage for a large number of software titles and are able to distinguish commercial applications requiring license management from others. Only a few offer the features able to address all the problems and processes mentioned above related to on-site custom recognition rules and repackaging.

Learn more about discovery, inventory and application recognition by viewing our on-demand webinar.

6 Key Insights About New Disruptive Technology

By Randy Littleson

Just read an interesting article entitled “How are CIOs looking at today’s disruptive tech trends?” that summarizes a recent roundtable on digital strategies featuring the CIOs from American Express, Bechtel, Chevron, Eastman Chemical, Eaton Corporation, the Hilti Group, Holcim, Nestle, Sysco, and Time Warner Cable.

It’s an interesting look into the challenges these CIOs face as a result of the major disruptive technologies that are getting so much press these days (mobility, social media, consumerization, cloud and big data).  The article details 6 key insights about new disruptive technology that I think are insightful for anyone in IT (there’s a link to a 17 page report within the article as well).

One of the six insights really caught my eye: “Designing for loss of control” is one of IT’s key challenges.  In essence, it acknowledges that IT can’t keep up, but is still going to be held accountable for security, reliability and performance.  I would add spend management to this as well.  This is very true and matches what we see every day around applications.

IT is being asked to deliver applications faster to their business users, cope with rapidly changing access requirements (e.g., the same app accessible on a laptop and an iPad) while trying to leverage new technologies (e.g., cloud, virtualization) to meet these needs and save money.  Most organizations don’t have mature application readiness processes because in a more static world, it just wasn’t the priority.  But, in today’s rapidly changing, heterogeneous and increasingly complex environment, they need to establish a robust process to automate and manage application migrations and on-going operations to accelerate Windows application availability for on-premises, virtual or cloud deployments.  This process needs to automate and manage compatibility assessment, application packaging and deployment, which now excludes the expectation of applications being virtualized, deployed in the cloud and accessible to employees via a self-service enterprise app store.

In addition, given the strategic importance and aggregate spend of applications, IT must establish processes for software asset management and license optimization to ensure they are buying what they need and using what they bought.  But this too is becoming increasingly difficult with the influx of new technologies such as virtualization and bursting to the cloud which makes tracking and understanding application usage that much more challenging.  Processes need to be established to continuously ensure usage is in compliance with software license agreements and to provide the organization the insights they need to manage how many software licenses are required based on actual usage on a global basis.

IT will continue to be held accountable for ensuring software license compliance and driving increased application usage despite the disruptions that all of this external technology change represents.  Establishing business processes to manage application readiness, software asset management and license optimization can go a long way to helping IT “design for loss of control” by ensuring that continuous processes are in place to strategically manage application usage.

Best Practice Processes: The Glue of Software Asset Management

By Rory Canavan

Having recently come to the end of a major professional services engagement with a global client, it got me to thinking about the value of the work I was engaged in. What long-term benefit might be derived from the numerous iterations of software asset management (SAM) process maps, process definition documents and standard operating procedures that kept me on site for several months straight?

One of my last jobs was to print off two copies of all documentation for the project manager to take back to Denmark from London.  Having viewed the substantial size of the documentation he needed to take home, we decided that the better approach would be to box it up and ship it, such was the weight!

So, my question to myself was—will the SAM process work have any lasting value?

With much relief, I believe the answer to be yes.  From a purely tool-based perspective, it would have been too easy to simply point staff towards the operations guide and let them come up with their own methods and procedures around how to efficiently manage their software estate.  However, a more holistic approach was adopted by our customer right from the outset; the company took a “steady state” view of the system that took into account where data was coming from, how it was getting there, who was doing the work, what data was being transmitted and when such activities were being completed.  These criteria were not just applied at a generic or high-level, but for each and every function step that formed a process. 

Quality assurance (QA) measurements were also added to the processes so that a metric based assessment of their effectiveness could be easily determined.  The company has adopted many operations management principles, and will be reviewing its software asset management processes to ensure that they are properly embedded and that outputs are within acceptable statistical and business parameters.

The company’s software asset management processes ensure that they capture license entitlements (purchase orders, contracts), collect accurate inventory and usage data, and perform license reconciliation and license optimization on an ongoing basis. The result is continuous license compliance and control over their software spend.

And this brings me nicely to my introspective question above – had this company merely paid lip service to the process work, with no regard to the flux that businesses go through, change could have made their processes, and the documentation, obsolete in short order. But, because we helped the company develop a set of robust, best practice SAM processes, and built in a periodic review process that will look to modify the documentation on an “as required” basis, their processes will remain up to date and relevant.  Best practice processes are the glue that make software asset management work, but they should be open to review and amendment every bit as much as the software they are used to manage.

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To learn more, download our whitepaper: NCC Guideline for IT Management: Software Asset and License Management Best Practice, or view our on-demand webinar: How to get started on a SAM Program.

New Gartner Report Shows Software Audits Up Again in 2011

By John Emmitt

Gartner has recently published a report on The Software Vendors That Are Auditing Now and What to Do About It. The report is based on a survey that was done during their IT Financial, Procurement and Asset Management Summits held in Orlando and London in September of last year. Key findings from the survey:

• The percentage of clients who had been audited at least once in the past 12 months was 65%, up from 61% in 2010.
• The top five vendors in terms of numbers of audits were: IBM, Adobe, Microsoft, Oracle and SAP, with SAP jumping into the top 5 for the first time.
• Many audits lead to lengthy and confrontational discussions with vendors due to the complexity and misunderstanding around product use rights and license metrics.

The Gartner report makes a number of sound recommendations, including urging CIOs and IT Managers to invest more heavily in software asset management (SAM) programs, processes and tools to proactively maintain license compliance. Companies can and should justify the investment in software asset management by showing the financial risks involved with software audits and non-compliance. Its not just the unbudgeted license true-up costs, but the extensive audit preparation time and the lack of a strong negotiating position that contribute to these costs.

They also identify several factors that are driving the increase in software vendor audits. I'd like to touch on 2 of them: Complexity of deals, and Lack of communication between IT procurement, SAM and IT operations. As noted in the Gartner report, software licensing is becoming increasingly complex, with many different license metrics-- device, user, processor/core, memory, usage based, etc., complex volume purchase agreements, and complicated product use rights. The latter also change frequently, with recent changes to use rights related to virtualization and "roaming use", for example. License optmization tools that provide built-in knowledge of software agreements and vendor-specific product use rights, are essential to managing the complexity associated with software licensing.

With respect to "Lack of communication", Gartner correctly points out that oftentimes, the people who are responsible for deploying the software and managing the IT environment, are not made aware of the licensing terms and conditions that have been negotiated with the vendor. These must be communicated from IT procurement and software asset managers. It is critical to have a central repository for license and contract information that allows this sort of communication to take place much more readily.

Changes to the IT environment can be another challenge when it comes to communicating between departments and maintaining license compliance. Until now, there were no tools that could tell you what the impact would be on your license position, before those changes were made. New 'What If' analysis tools are available to assess the impact on licensing, due to hardware, shared processor pool settings, virtual environment and software installation changes. This enables organizations to be proactive about maintaining license compliance, even in highly dynamic datacenter environments.

To learn more about the 'What If' analysis capabilities in FlexNet Manager Suite, please visit our website and/or plan to attend our Webinar on Strategies for Optimized License Management on February 29th, sponsored by IAITAM.

Top 5 Causes of Software License Non-Compliance

By Randy Littleson

PricewaterhouseCoopers recently conducted research to determine the top 5 causes of software license non-compliance for companies.  The findings were:

1. Complexity of software licensing agreements.   As software vendors grow to support broader customer bases with varying needs and acquire other software companies that had their own software license agreements and policies, complexity grows substantially.  Many companies have complex agreements with many vendors and they all contain varying software licensing models and policies.  Making matters worse, software license agreements are written and negotiated by lawyers but software license compliance needs to be managed by non-lawyers who frequently don’t understand some of the nuances in the contractual language.

2. Inadvertent Misuse.  In many companies, policies are in place to centralize procurement and try to be compliance with software license agreements, but “stuff happens” and inadvertent misuse creeps in.  Events like mergers & acquisitions and divestitures complicate this further.  Many companies lack the processes and systems to truly manage their software assets and find that after one of these events they are immediately in a non-compliance situation.

3. Lack of software asset management processes and tools.  Most organizations don’t have a defined and institutionalized software asset management program supported by the appropriate tools to manage an increasingly growing software estate.  Surprisingly, many CIOs don’t see the value (and risk) associated with not having such programs in place.  Despite the fact that software spend has continued to grow and software increasingly is a strategic asset running the business, there are no programs in place to strategically manage application usage.  And, if tools are in place, they only offer traditional software asset management capabilities that count what you have (software installtions) rather than what you are using, or what you are entitled to use (license entitlements such as Product Use Rights).

4. Lack of education.  Related to several of the points already mentioned (e.g., complexity of software license agreements and their legalese, lack of a well-defined software asset management program), many organizations simply lack the understanding of the issues and, thus, fail to establish proper processes and programs to proactively manage software assets, their spend and their usage.  Industry standards (e.g. ISO 19770-1) and associations (e.g. IAITAM, IBSMA)  exist that can be leveraged to help, but many do not take advantage of these resources.

5. Intentional misuse.  Most companies are honest and want to be in license compliance.  It is very rare for companies to intentionally misuse their software to create a non-compliance situation, but it does exist. 

It is because so many organizations are out of license compliance that software companies conduct software audits.  In fact, PwC research indicates that an out of compliance situation is found in 80% of all software audits.

If you don’t have a software asset management program in place, you need to.  To most businesses, software no longer just aids the business, it runs it.  A strategic asset of this magnitude should have a strategic solution to manage it.  You can watch our webinar series to learn how to get started:

•             How to Get Started on a Software Asset Management Program

•             Discovery, Inventory and Application Recognition

•             Software License and Contract Management (February 7th at 1pm ET)

 

Flexera Software Acquires SCCM Expert

by Randy Littleson

We are pleased to announce that Flexera Software has completed the acquisition of SCCM Expert. We are extremely excited to be adding SCCM Expert's employees, products, partners and customers to the Flexera Software team. This is a very good fit for both organizations and we believe great news for our customers.

SCCM Expert is a Microsoft Gold Partner and founding member of the Microsoft System Center Alliance. SCCM Expert markets leading edge, customizable and affordable software solutions that maximize the capability of Microsoft's systems management technology, streamline operations, save time and reduce costs associated with managing enterprise-wide systems and software. From global corporations to schools and U.S. Government agencies, SCCM Expert offers the software and expertise to help any organization realize the long-term efficiencies and cost savings associated with automating routine IT processes. SCCM Expert also works with a network of partners, including software resellers and IT consultants, who recommend products, service and expertise to their own clients.

SCCM Expert's Self Service empowers employees with on-demand software provisioning through an enterprise app store, helping companies automate software request management and delivery. Flexera Software sees Self Service as a strategic addition that complements our Application Readiness and Enterprise License Optimization solutions. Together, these solutions offer the promise of providing IT complete visibility into their software assets and tracking them from initial purchase to software audit compliance. Flexera Software delivers strategic solutions to manage application usage across the application life cycle and Self Service helps broaden that vision.

We're very excited to be adding Self Service to our growing set of Application Usage Management solutions for enterprises.

You can read the press release here or watch a video discussing the acquisition here.