What is Software License Optimization?

Software License Optimization (SLO) is a term used to describe a range of capabilities that complement traditional IT Asset Management and that provide organizations with the ability to maximize use of their procured software licenses while minimizing spend associated with those licenses.  Those organizations remain in compliance with their software license agreements, while avoiding over buying of software. Some important characteristics of Soft…

September 26, 2014 Steve Schmidt

Top 5 Causes of Software License Non-Compliance

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 w…

February 6, 2012 Flexera

Software Asset Management Best Practices—Policy, Process and Hardware Asset Management

Software asset management (SAM) best practice principles that companies should adopt include: Manage hardware assets effectively throughout the full asset life-cycle Define software application requirements (i.e. which applications, versions and editions should be purchased) Centralize purchasing and maintain a central license repository Collect hardware and software inventory (including physical and virtual machines) Reconcile installations aga…

March 25, 2011 Flexera

Why a SKU is important to Software Asset Management

Background of the SKU Most folks are familiar with bar codes. Every time we go to the grocery store and check out, the cashier scans our groceries one at a time and the register automatically knows what we purchased, how much it is, and they probably even trigger when they need to reorder that item. Part of that bar code is the SKU (Stock Keeping Unit), which is a uniform method of tracking products sold. As the name implies, the SKU is intended …

June 30, 2010 Steve Mullins

Top Ten License Negotiation Concerns

I came across a white paper by Budd Larner of the The Technology Executives Club recently listing the Top 10 Issues in Software License Agreements and Negotiations. He actually listed 12.  I thought there were some interesting insights. "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" While many of us would like to think that managing licenses is a simple problem of counting software entitlements and can be solved by implementing …

June 21, 2010 Steve Mullins