Software License Optimization

Garnering CxO Support for Software Asset Management Investments

By Lisa Erickson-Harris

Software expenditures for most large corporations are sizable, if not dominant, expenses in the IT budget. New models for software licensing are evolving and arriving on the scene with cloud computing, software-as-a-service (SaaS) and other utility-based computing models offering lower points of entry and more flexibility for software acquisition. Yet, the total amount being spent on software is not expected to decline; in fact software spend is growing at about a 7% compound annual growth rate according to industry analysts. Software will remain a costly expense.

When it comes time to ask for budget dollars for a product that enables IT to manage its software assets, a strong case is needed, none the less. Corporate executives may be reticent to spend money on software whose main purpose is to manage license compliance for its applications and tighten control of these expenses. Yet, perhaps these two points are exactly the justification that will sell executives on the investment in software asset management (SAM) and license optimization.

Technologies such as network management, performance management and DevOps can be viewed as esoteric to those without direct need, making it difficult to build the case for products that are strictly behind the scenes. SAM, on the other hand, has the ability to show direct return on investment. Cost savings are easily achieved through the implementation of an effective software asset management and license optimization program supported by software and analytics. CxOs will always be open to improving financial results through reduced expense. The skeptical nature of corporate leaders will demand evidence.

Dollars and cents are at the heart of any strategy to secure budget for SAM and license optimization. Within the scope of that objective, a number of steps can be taken to establish credibility and gain executive support.

• Establish credibility-Gather and provide data points even prior to purchasing and implementing a SAM and license optimization solution. In some cases, this will mean manually taking an inventory and comparing results to purchase orders and contracts. Convincing the management team that IT understands the volume of software licenses and the mechanics behind managing them will help to build the case that IT will also be able to take advantage of a tool that provides automation and analytics.
• Educate executives about market norms and trends– Locate and share typical statistics on software investments such as how much overspending is typically done to avoid license compliance issues, which software suppliers typically pursue compliance audits (see this blog post), return on investment (ROI) for successful Software License Optimization programs (see this blog post on Building the Business Case for Software License Optimization), etc. This information can be mapped to your own software investments to show the risk and return in relationship to your organization.
• Provide case studies to demonstrate potential savings-Ask solution providers for case studies, published or not, and then talk to users to gain additional insight into which products and priorities delivered the quickest results. Use this information in pitching your request for budget dollars. In some cases, you will need only charts and/or spreadsheets that show savings achieved in similar vertical markets.
• Show examples of analytics-This information can be provided by your short-list of SAM and Software License Optimization vendors in support of your business case. Detailed examples provided by these vendors can show how analytical information will fuel contract negotiations and also reduce expenses for some specific categories of software applications used by your organization. Advanced license optimization tools have built-in Business Intelligence (BI) engines, such as Cognos, to deliver complex analysis and reporting capabilities that can now be applied to software asset management. Another category of “advanced analytics” is What If analysis that is used to see the impact of hardware and software changes on your license position, before the changes are actually made.

Software License Optimization plays directly into the requirement for IT Financial Management (ITFM) by adding business discipline to the function of technology management. Through license compliance measures that ensure contract requirements are being met and which mitigate unbudgeted audit true-up expenses, IT leaders are demonstrating a perspective that moves beyond technology for the sake of itself. Similarly, cost savings and due diligence are shown when IT professionals scrutinize software investments with the aid of sophisticated tools. The business case for purchase of Software License Optimization tools will become self-evident as IT Directors and CIOs communicate the business value.

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Learn more by reading our white paper: Moving Up the Software License Optimization Maturity Curve to Drive Business Value.

App Store Essentials: Using Your App Store to Aid the Software License Optimization Process

By Laura Noonan

In many companies, more than one third of total IT spend goes toward software licenses. Software is a huge investment, so it’s no wonder that IT executives are looking for effective ways to optimize software license usage and minimize software spend. Consequently, an important goal within IT is to establish a comprehensive Software License Optimization process that aggregates, normalizes and reconciles software inventory, purchase order, usage data, license entitlement, product use rights and other information from enterprise business systems and determines an accurate license position. This enables the staff to maintain continuous license compliance and a state of software audit readiness in addition to reducing ongoing costs for software.

Your enterprise app store can be an integral part of your overall Software License Optimization program by helping you eliminate the waste that occurs when software that is installed on user machines sits idle. The software may be unused because the user has changed jobs. Or, it may be that the user needed the application for a particular project and, once the project was done, never used it again. 

The good news is that an enterprise app store with the right feature set can help you track down unused software and then reclaim the associated licenses. The benefit: you spend less on software because you don’t buy additional licenses unless all the software you own is actually being used. Two features in particular are instrumental in helping you do this: License reharvesting and software leasing.

Let’s start with license reharvesting. Here’s how this feature helps you achieve substantial savings with respect to licensing costs:

• License reharvesting leverages installation and usage data to automatically identify software that is deployed but unused. Usually the organization will specify a period of time, such as 90 days, whereby, if the software is unused during that period, it is a candidate for reharvesting.
• You want to ensure your app store includes the ability to conduct automated email campaigns, so you can engage users in the reclamation process by sending them an email message that offers the option of keeping an application or surrendering it.
• If the users opt to surrender the application, the app store then triggers a de-install of the application through your software deployment tool. The software license management tool will detect the removal of the software at the next inventory collection and should be able to automatically add the license back to the available pool.
• Effective license reharvesting campaigns track user responses for you and provide full visibility into results, including how many users did and did not respond, the percentage of users who opted to keep or surrender the software and the users' justification for keeping software.

Now let’s look at software leasing. Leasing is particularly useful in project-based environments where application needs change as employees move from one project to another as well as in environments in which contractors are brought in to perform specific functions for a period of time. Here are some of the ways leasing helps you keep license costs in check:

• Leasing gives users access to an app for a limited period of time, after which the license is reclaimed automatically unless the user extends the lease.
• An effective leasing capability gives you the flexibility to set a maximum lease time and a default lease time based on the needs of your business.
• When a lease is about to expire, it’s important to have an automatic notification capability so users aren’t caught off guard and they can extend the lease if necessary.

As you can see, license reharvesting and software leasing options give you a real edge in optimizing usage and spend by reclaiming unused licenses so you can assign them to users who need them. Some companies report that they were able to recoup the acquisition cost of their app store solution within six months simply by using the license reclamation capability.

Read the next blog in the App Store Essentials series, “Connecting Your App Store to IT Service Management Systems,” to find out how integrating your app store with IT service management systems such as BMC Remedy, ServiceNow and Microsoft Service Manager brings the app store into your service management processes to ensure that software delivery complies with corporate policies and external regulations.

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To learn more about software license optimization, please view our on-demand webinar:  Go Beyond
Traditional Software Asset Management with Software License Optimization 

 

Whose job is it to manage software licensing?

By John Emmitt

Whose job is it to manage software licensing? This was the title of a blog posted by Brian Von Hatten of Scott & Scott LLP. Brian goes on to say that there has been a large increase in the number of software license audits over the past few years. We have blogged about this topic as well-- see this blog post from last year: New Gartner Report Shows Software Audits Up Again in 2011. But the main thrust of the article is about whose responsibility it is to manage software licenses and maintain license compliance.

Brian reports that it seems to vary quite a lot from organization to organization, based on responses to this question on a professional networking site. Then Brian suggests that it is really everyone's responsibility. While that may be true overall, it is usually a good idea to assign specific individuals or teams to have this type of responsibility, to ensure that someone can be held accountable. The c-suite is going to want someone to be accountable, especially if there is a large unbudgeted audit true-up expense. In some companies, this type of expense must go to the board for review and approval.

It's true that the people responsible for software asset management and license compliance do vary-- from software asset managers to IT procurement personnel. Sometimes it falls under the CIO's organization and other times the CFO. Sometimes there is a Chief Compliance Officer in larger enterprises who would ultimately be responsible for license compliance, in addition to regulatory and other compliance issues. At Flexera Software, we have seen a wide variety of job titles and organizational reporting structures for software asset management and license compliance in the companies that we work with.

But beyond assigning this area of responsibility, it's incumbent on organizations to also invest in software asset management (SAM) processes and tools to better manage software licenses and proactively maintain license compliance-- as discussed in the above Software License Optimization blog. Organizations cannot simply throw people at this problem, due to the complexity involved. There are at least three areas of complexity that make license management a difficult problem:

• License complexity-- including complicated volume purchase agreements that vary from vendor to vendor, myriad license models and metrics, and complex software product use rights that must be understood and fully leveraged to minimize license consumption.
• IT environment complexity-- including many flavors of virtualization technology (server, desktop (VDI), application, hard partitioning, ...), public and private clouds, SaaS, BYOD, roaming use, etc.
• Organizational complexity-- including globally distributed organizations, mergers, acquisitions and divestitures, decentralized procurement, etc.

Furthermore, organizations must go beyond merely maintaining software license compliance and optimize their licensing to reduce ongoing costs. While maintaining license compliance helps ensure that your company won't have any unbudgeted audit true-up expenses, it does nothing to ensure that you aren't over spending on licenses and maintenance. This is the added advantage of Software License Optimization-- enabling organizations to maintain license compliance and reduce software spend by 5 to 25% per year.

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To learn more about software license optimization, please read our whitepaper: Moving Up the Software License Optimization Maturity Curve to Drive Business Value.

 

Webinar: Meet the BYOD, Computing Anywhere Challenge

By John Emmitt

As today's workforce becomes ever more mobile and flexible, organizations are adopting virtualization technologies that deliver desktops and applications anytime and anywhere. Users want access not only from their corporate laptops, but also their mobile phones and tablets. Attend this webinar to learn how you can deliver an on-demand, bring your own device (BYOD), 'computing anywhere' experience, while addressing such challenges as multiple devices, diverse platforms and software license management.

Enterprises making the transition to this new computing paradigm must consider the software license management implications.

Register Today to hear Barb Goldworm, President and Chief Analyst at Focus, LLC, discuss the adoption, challenges and benefits of well-managed desktop virtualization. Vincent Brasseur, from Flexera Software, will discuss how organizations can ensure license compliance and control software costs when implementing virtual desktops.

Attend this webinar to learn about:

• The adoption, challenges and business value of desktop virtualization
• The Citrix XenDesktop solution
• How to effectively manage software licensing in virtual desktop environments with Flexera Software's FlexNet Manager Suite solution.

When:

North America: Tuesday, April 9, 2013 at 10:00am CT

EMEA: Tuesday, April 16, 2013 at 11:00am (UK)

APAC: Thursday, April 18, 2013 at 9:00am (Sydney)

About the speakers:

 

Barb Goldworm 
Founder, President and Chief Analyst at Focus, LLC

www.focusonsystems.com a research, analyst and consulting firm focused on transformational technologies in virtualization, cloud computing, systems and storage. Barb is a well-known industry expert, frequent keynote speaker, author, and columnist on virtualization, systems management,
and storage, with over 30 years’ experience in various senior management, technical, marketing, sales and industry analyst positions with IBM, StorageTek, Novell, Enterprise Management Associates and other successful startup ventures.

 

Vincent Brasseur 
Director of Product Management at Flexera Software

Vincent has over 15 years of experience in software asset management and license optimization. He has held various positions from software development, and professional services to product management. At Flexera Software he is responsible for defining product enhancements and setting strategic direction for FlexNet Manager Suite for Enterprises products based on customer requirements and business goals.

REGISTER TODAY and learn how organizations can ensure license compliance and control software costs when implementing virtual desktops.

 

Using IT Configuration Management to Support Software License Optimization

By Natalie Overstreet Lias and Martin Kurzinski

As more organizations adopt best practices based on standards such as IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL), infrastructure teams increasingly demand configuration management databases (CMDBs) and other configuration management systems in order to track key attributes of the organization’s IT environment.  The CMDB contains key attributes of the configuration items (CIs) under management, which may include not only computers (both physical and virtual) but also mobile devices, printers, routers, monitors, or any other item tracked as an IT asset. 

Typically, the CMDB will include asset ownership information (either an individual or a department), the manufacturer and model information, and details specific to the type of device.  For example, a monitor may have a specific field for resolution or connector type.  In the case of computers, the machine’s CI will typically contain the processor and core count, the amount of memory and hard drive available, the IP address (if static) and MAC address, and the OS including patch level, as well as warranty and support information.  CIs for servers typically include some high-level application information as well.  This application information exists within the CMDB in order to provide information about the purpose and relationships of IT assets.  In general, this information is manually entered into the CMDB when the asset is brought online; its designated purpose is understood at configuration time and easily tracked in the CMDB as part of the organization’s standard server configuration process. 

The data in a typical CMDB can certainly assist with software asset management (SAM) and software license optimization processes, but it is not sufficient for either purpose.  There are two missing ingredients:

First, the CMDB will have no visibility into software license entitlements.  In some cases, CMDBs can be configured to link purchase information to IT assets, but in general a CMDB is not designed or scoped to actually create a record of, and manage, software license entitlements (including upgrade and maintenance entitlements). Nor do they typically keep a record of the raw software purchase order (PO) data.  Moreover, software asset managers are generally not the core users and consumers of the CMDB; they may be using the CMDB on a read only basis but will not make updates, unless they also perform hardware asset management functions.  For these reasons, it is usually impractical to make the CMDB a viable resource for tracking software license entitlements. 

Second, although the CMDB may have high-level information about which applications are installed on servers, it generally has no information about clients (desktops, laptops), except for the contents of the organization’s standard image.  Even its server application information is typically insufficient to correctly calculate software license consumption.  Because typical CMDB application descriptions are manually entered, they almost never have the amount of detail required to identify each installed component and calculate the associated license position.  Major applications will almost certainly be correctly documented, but it is rare to find quantities of named users, separately licensed options or add-ins, or other details in the CMDB.  These details are not required for the business purpose of the CMDB. Furthermore, the IT infrastructure team generally lacks visibility into the appropriate details for tracking software license consumption. 

Software license optimization tools provide an Application Recognition Library that can distinguish standalone products, suites, versions and editions.  These tools also maintain a SKU library to automate purchase order processing and help generate a ‘purchased versus installed’ license position. And finally, software license optimization tools deliver a Products Use Rights Library that is used to automatically apply software license entitlements—product use rights, to minimize license consumption and reduce software costs. None of these capabilities is provided by a CMDB.

It is important to remember the goals for ITIL and SAM/License Optimization— how they are similar and also how they differ.  ITIL’s goal is to manage the logical model of the IT environment in the CMDB, thus enabling the ITIL processes: Incident Management, Problem Management, Change Management, Release Management and Configuration Management. The goal for software license optimization is to optimize the management of cost, risk, inventory, contracts and vendors throughout the asset life-cycle, including strategic planning, acquisition and retirement processes. 

To properly incorporate the data in an organization’s CMDB into a software asset management and license optimization program, you need to consider the business purpose and contents of the CMDB and how they supplement the overall SAM data set.  The CMDB’s wealth of detail on IT (hardware) assets must be married with accurate software inventory information and correctly applied software license entitlements in order to successfully optimize an organization’s software license position. 

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To learn more about software license optimization, please read our white paper: Moving Up the Software License Optimization Maturity Curve to Drive Business Value.

 

All Major Vendors Decide to Eliminate Software Licensing!

By John Emmitt

Rumors have been swirling for weeks and now the news is out—all of the major software vendors have decided to eliminate software licensing. This will allow their customers to just buy the software and use it in any way they choose, for as long as they like. This, of course, also means the end of software audits and unbudgeted audit true-up expenses—no licensing terms and conditions—no software license compliance issues. What a relief!  We have heard of one organization that is in the fourth year of the same software license audit. One can only hope that the vendors will simply drop all audits that are already in progress as part of this new paradigm.

The spokesperson for one vendor was quoted as saying: “Software licensing had just gotten to the point where it was so complex that even we didn’t understand our own licensing terms and conditions. I mean, who knows what ‘roaming use rights inside the firewall’ means? It sounds like an oxymoron or something.  So we decided the best course of action was to eliminate licensing altogether. It’s going to make not only our life but our customers’ lives so much easier.”

When asked about things like product upgrade rights, the spokesperson said that of course the company wants to get paid for new versions of the software—it’s the only way they can stay in business after all. But that it would be up to the customer’s discretion if they wanted to pay for the new version, assuming they had already paid for a previous release of the software. This really puts the pressure on the software vendors to continue to produce software products that their customers want to use, and are willing to pay for.

This is a wakeup call for software asset management and license optimization tool vendors (see this Gartner Report: Software License Optimization Vendor Overview)—there’s not much need for sophisticated tools that understand and apply software product use rights (see this recent blog on the topic). No need to minimize license consumption by taking advantage of right of second use, disaster recovery/failover rights and virtual use rights. Now you can spin up as many virtual machines as you like and run the software on all of them. Without worrying about license mobility rights, you can move your on-premise software to the cloud if you want to. It’s a crazy world we live in.

Wait, this just in… Someone just informed me that today is April 1st, 2013… Happy April Fool’s Day everyone!

3 Reasons Why You Should Centralize Procurement of Your Software Licenses

By John Smith

In my dealings with customers that are using Engineering and ERP applications I find that the most frequent cause of oversupply is due to local and uncoordinated software procurement activity.  Because there is no oversight at the enterprise level, licenses are obtained for new staff or projects without checking existing license inventory or application usage levels.

Furthermore, the software is deployed without having any tracking mechanisms in place, often on an unshared basis—meaning that only one department or group of users has access to the applications and licenses. These applications are also frequently purchased with sub-optimal contract terms attached.

By establishing central purchasing and control of software licensing, full visibility of your software assets can be achieved. Processes can be designed to reclaim and reallocate unused and under-used licenses (also known as license reharvesting), allowing your organization to only buying more software when absolutely necessary.

Another major benefit of this central control is that negotiations with each vendor can be carried out by IT procurement specialists who are knowledgeable of software purchase agreements and licensing terms and conditions. They are in a position to use more than just price as a lever to obtain the best deal.  They can use incentives that influence vendors (revenue recognition, for instance) to extract concessions that are significant to the corporate customer.  Professional procurement officers will end up with contracts that are flexible from the customer’s perspective and relevant to a modern, dynamic organization, covering possible eventualities like mergers, acquisitions and divestitures.

For example, the software may be leased for several years, instead of having the larger initial investment associated with perpetual licenses for software that may be superseded or become irrelevant due to technology advances.  Another example is to negotiate a clause that allows global access to the pool of (concurrent) licenses, to ensure the maximum utilization of the software assets.

Clauses may also be added that limit increases of maintenance costs or that provide access to emerging products at guaranteed prices.  And buy-back options may be negotiated so that legacy products and features may be exchanged or re-mixed for newly- released products. In some cases, such as for electronic design automation (EDA) software used by semiconductor design teams, remix can allow the organization to change the number of concurrent licenses available for each application in a set of design and verification tools depending on where they are in the design cycle.

To summarize, there are three major reasons to centralize software procurement and software license management:

• To gain oversight of your software assets (know what is owned, deploy what was bought and use what was deployed)
• To implement best practice processes that allow effective management of licenses throughout the entire software lifecycle, control costs and increase utilization of existing software assets
• To negotiate better software contracts that are allow flexibility and cover the needs of a dynamic organization

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To learn more about setting up a software asset management (SAM) program for managing concurrent licenses (e.g. for engineering and technical applications), please view our on-demand webinar: Creating a Mature SAM Process for Concurrent License Management

Three Reasons Why Software Asset Management Programs Have Difficulty Realizing Value

By Gwen Lyons

Many companies are anxious to spin up a global Software Asset Management (SAM) program to gain better visibility of their IT assets with the additional goals of cost savings, cost containment, and risk management.  Yet in some cases, three years down the road, the SAM program is still struggling to demonstrate value.  Tools may be in place, but the foundation required to effectively run a SAM program has yet to be put in place.  Over the past few years, in working with companies across multiple industries, three primary areas have come to the forefront as root causes for the perceived failure of SAM practices –

1) Trying to Tackle Too Much – many companies fail to put a plan in place to achieve success.  They set a goal of having 100% of their environment managed and tracked within the first year, but they fail to prioritize how that is going to happen or what vendors should be targeted first, second, third…in order to gain some quick wins to maintain the momentum.  It is true for most companies that 80% of a company’s software spend is comprised of the top 20% of the supplier portfolio.  And, for the most part, that spend entails most, if not all, of your complex license metrics where the savings opportunity and the risk is the greatest.  The incremental value achieved by focusing on that final 20% of spend (and associated vendors) is often minimal.  If you get focused on trying to address all software vendors and licenses right out the door, the task becomes too daunting and you have often already lost the war before the first battle has been fought.  Most successful SAM programs embrace a “crawl, walk, run” mentality.  Prioritizing those areas where you can go after your quick wins and claim success goes a long way to sustaining forward momentum as you continue the SAM journey.

2) Thinking a Tool Alone Will Solve the Problem – many companies believe putting a solution in place to track assets will magically bring software assets under control.  They forget that software asset management is about people, processes, and tools.  If the right skills sets aren’t in place to manage software assets, the right level of buy-in and accountability driven from above, and the right mix of processes and governance in place, the tool reports will never be anything more than numbers on a page.  It is the best practice processes that are wrapped around your assets and how you are going to monitor and govern the use of your assets that will enable the successful and sustainable management of assets. This will, in turn, drive cost savings, mitigate risk, and improve  utilization of your company’s assets.

3) Not Defining Success – many companies fail to define the metrics and dashboards that will measure the success of a SAM program.  Software Asset Management is so often viewed as a back office operational function, when in fact, it can be a valuable enabler of financial and strategic IT processes as well.  Creation of value scorecards that measure and report on key metrics – financial (i.e. cost savings, cost avoidance, risk avoidance), process efficiencies (i.e.  technical, operations, etc.), risk avoidance (audit penalty reduction, true-up savings, etc.) and stakeholder adoption (i.e. % of assets under management, business units (BU) compliant, cross-BU buy-in, etc.) – are key to communicating success to the enterprise.  Without the ability to measure and communicate savings and successes, the value of a SAM program can go unrecognized.  Eventually, funding for SAM will become diluted and the “cost of doing nothing” becomes a significant, yet hidden, risk within the enterprise until a major event occurs to re-prioritize the focus.

Defining your company’s expected SAM outcomes and prioritizing the “plan”, putting in place adequate governance and processes, and establishing measurable success criteria are fundamental to a successful software asset management and software license optimization program. 

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To learn more about realizing value from your SAM and software license optimization program, please view our on-demand webinar: Achieve Breakthrough Results with Your Software License Optimization Program

 

Software License Optimization Becoming the Talk of Washington

By John Lipsey

Software overspend is not just a problem afflicting private enterprises.  Government institutions could also solve some of their budget shortfalls by taking a closer look at how they spend money on software licenses.  And as the US Federal Government faces the realities of sequester and draconian budget cuts, advocacy groups are discovering that one area of low hanging fruit for savings comes from implementing Software License Optimization.

At least that is the opinion of Citizens Against Public Waste (CAGW), a public watchdog group committed to eliminating wasteful government spending.  CAGW just issued its “Prime Cuts 2013” – an annual recommended blueprint for the government to eliminate waste.  Page 25 of the document contains a recommendation around Software Asset Management:

The federal government can save money by reducing the number of unnecessary or excessive IT software licenses, many of which are bought because the government is unable to keep
track of which licenses its agencies currently own or use. On July 19, 2011, the GAO issued a report criticizing government agencies’ inventory management of data centers, noting that 15 federal agencies did not list all their software assets in their reports.

The procurement and utilization of software licenses should be routinely and systematically managed through the use of software asset management (SAM) tools. There are several SAM auditing systems available that offer software-licensing audit tools. These tools could be applied to government systems to ensure that chief information officers and purchasing agents are aware of existing software licenses and can document actual usage in order to make smarter purchasing decisions. In other words, SAM can prevent buying products that agencies already possess.

Tom Schatz, CAGW’s CEO has already come out in support of better federal software license management policy, in his February 5 in testimony (See p.16) before the US House Committee on Oversight & Government Reform:

Another area of IT spending where the federal government can save money is by reducing the number of unnecessary or excessive IT software licenses, bought in part because the government is unable to keep track of what agencies currently own or use. On July 19, 2011, the GAO issued a report criticizing government agencies’ inventory management of data centers, noting that 15 federal agencies did not list all of their software assets in their reports.

This is an area where the federal government can learn from the private sector. The procurement and utilization of software licenses is routinely and systematically managed by the private sector through the use of software asset management (SAM) tools. There are several SAM auditing systems available that offer software licensing auditing tools. These same tools could be applied to government systems to ensure that chief information officers (CIOs) and purchasing agents are aware of existing software licenses and can document actual usage in order to make smarter purchasing decisions.

This sentiment was echoed in recent testimony by House Oversight Committee Chairman, Darrell Issa (R-CA) at a hearing on federal IT procurement:

“We buy [software] as though we are different companies and we pay different prices and actually we redundantly end up buying excess licenses, which is another factor that we know is low-hanging fruit to save money, at least if the price of a license does not change…”

Flexera Software is encouraged that Software Asset Management and Software License Optimization are becoming recognized as an ideal way to find cost savings “low hanging fruit”, which if harvested, could help government agencies bring their yawning deficits closer to balance.  

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Learn more about the benefits of a mature software asset management and license optimization program by reading our white paper: Moving Up the Software License Optimization Maturity Curve to Drive Business Value.

 

Integrating Application Usage Management Business Processes across the Software Lifecycle

By Randy Littleson

Enterprises today are investing heavily in applications, with software licenses accounting for as much as 35 percent of total IT spend. Driving maximum usage  and optimizing return on software investment has become a business imperative. As simple as that seems, enterprises face many obstacles in their efforts to use applications effectively and gain maximum value from them through more mature software asset management (SAM) processes. Thousands of applications may be spread across multiple business units and geographies. Those applications change constantly as IT rolls out upgrades, patches and new applications. Moreover, licensing terms, conditions and software product use rights differ from one application and vendor to another, increasing the software license management challenges organizations are facing.

The continuous stream of evolving and emerging technologies only adds to the problem, placing intense pressure on the IT staff to deploy new operating systems and implement self-service models to give users convenient application access. More recently, users have begun demanding that the enterprise adopt the emerging bring-your-own-device (BYOD) model in which employees access enterprise applications using personal devices such as smartphones and tablets.

Addressing these challenges effectively will be essential to successfully guiding the enterprise through crucial technology initiatives that include operating system migrations, desktop transformation, consumerization of IT, virtualization and cloud computing, and the management of license compliance risk and software spend.

The Software Lifecycle

Global research firm IDC detailed the software lifecycle as illustrated below—starting with the application producer creating the software (including the development of the software installer), configuring it based on how they want to package/price their product and then entitling and delivering the software to their consumer, the enterprise. Once purchased, the enterprise must install/deploy the application and then control and manage it post-deployment.

The install phase of the lifecycle is managed by an Application Readiness process that helps enterprises confidently discover, assess compatibility, model, manage and package applications for reliable deployment on-premises, to virtualized and cloud-based environments, and mobile devices. An end user may initiate a software request for an approved, packaged application via an enterprise app store such as App Portal. The install process ends with deployment via an enterprise-wide configuration management solution such as Microsoft's System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM).

The control and optimize phase is where the enterprise focuses on Software License Optimization to gain visibility and control of IT assets, reduce ongoing software costs, and maintain continuous software license compliance.

Integrating Business Processes

While each of these business processes is essential in its own right, unique and incremental value is achieved by integrating them for flawless management throughout the software lifecycle. It is only through this integration that, for example, application packagers can seamlessly handoff applications directly from their toolset to the enterprise app store. Likewise, through process and product integration, end users requesting applications from the app store can see whether or not software licenses are available and proper purchase approval processes can be automated in the event they are not.

Through this unique integration, IT is able to drive greater application usage and value from software investments while meeting its needs to ensure reliable application deployments, manage software license compliance risk, achieve full lifecycle software asset management, and optimize software spend in a cost effective way.

For more information, please read the following:

• Press release: Flexera Software App Portal Release Now Integrated with Software License Optimization and Application Readiness Solutions to Ensure Optimized Software Spend and Continuous Compliance
• White paper: Getting Maximum Value from Enterprise Software with Application Usage Management