What is software asset management?
Software asset management (SAM) is the business initiative for reclaiming budget and maximizing value by actively governing and automating procurement, usage and deployment of software licenses and subscriptions.
For many organizations, SAM is a tactical approach to balance the number of software licenses purchased with the number of actual licenses consumed or used. This means there are a multitude of reasons why software asset management is important.
Software Asset Management Benefits
- Reduce software and support costs by negotiating volume contract agreements and eliminating or reallocating underutilized software licenses
- Improve worker productivity by deploying the right kinds of technology more quickly and reliably
- Limit overhead associated with managing and supporting software by automating IT processes such as inventory tracking and software deployment
Imagine you’re an IT executive at a top software company. Your organization uses software from hundreds of vendors, spanning both on-premises to cloud solutions. One of your top initiatives is to save budget and cut expenses. In order to do so, you must understand which software licenses you’re paying for and then what percentage of those licenses are actually being used. With most organizations shifting to cloud-based software that can be purchased and accessed without IT’s explicit approval, the task of identifying licenses and usage has become increasingly difficult. This is where software asset management can help.
Why Software Asset Management is Important
A SAM program can help you identify the number of licenses you have for each software vendor. It can then provide you with the number of empty or unused seats allowing you to gauge overall usage in the organization. From there, you can renegotiate your contract with the vendors whose licenses you aren’t fully utilizing and redistribute those licenses to people in the organization who really need them. Simply put, SAM allows you to maximize your investment in your software products.
IT Asset Management
It all starts with knowing what’s in your IT ecosystem. Flexera One discovers even the most elusive assets whether on-prem, SaaS, cloud, containers and more.
Additionally, a company’s SAM program needs to be responsible for ensuring the usage of the software is keeping with the terms and conditions of the specific vendor license agreement. This ensures the organization is protected from liabilities associated with a vendor audit which can result in a hefty price tag.
Your software portfolio is quickly expanding into private and public clouds with bring your own software license (BYOSL). At the same time, Microsoft is creating hybrid use rights and IBM is offering Cloud Paks. (And we thought capacity-based licensing in the data center was hard.) You need more than a workflow to optimize your software spend and mitigate audit risks—that’s where Flexera One comes in. Flexera One is the only SAM solution to solve the exponentiality of licensing with the depth, breadth, algorithms and automation required to truly create a trusted and accurate license position.
