IT Management Tools
Introduction
The degree to which technology has become a part of everyday life and day-to-day commerce has seen a change in the way management approaches how they manage the finances, the tasks and the assets within a business.
As technology becomes more widely used within a company and takes a more prominent vital within the vital functions of that business, it is necessary to make sure that an appropriate level of attention is given to this technology. Technological systems that may have once been ignored are now important elements in the decision making process.
IT capabilities have come a long way over the past few years and are now seen as essential parts of any business. As such, they are allocated greater budgets but must also be able to deal with a greater amount of work. There is an eternal race between corporate needs and computing capabilities.
But once you have spent a substantial amount of your budget on developing your IT infrastructure and seen the needs of your business change, how do you ensure that the IT you are using can keep up with demand?
This is the role undertaken by IT management software and procedures.
Every business and every environment will have different needs and will present unique issues. To satisfy these requirements there are a range of different technologies and approaches that can be implemented to help control the IT network of your organisation.
Software Asset Management
SAM ( Software Asset Management) is built to do exactly what it says on the tin – monitoring and controlling the deployment and usage of software suites within your company. It is a business process rather than a distinct area of expertise and is becoming a more critical part of the modern business environment, particularly for corporations operating in the field of Information Technology. Despite the many benefits of SAM, there are still a great many companies that are not utilising it to its full potential.
SAM is not simply an aid for support staff deploying software across a large corporate network, but can be a crucial tool to help improve performance at all levels of a business. The goals of SAM include controlling of the IT infrastructure within a business, negating legal threats associated with incorrect software license usage and preserving high levels of productivity by making sure software is up to date and fit for its purpose. As IT usage in a company grows, so do the potential benefits of SAM.
The practice of SAM is often seen as an unnecessary evil due to the abstract nature of what it is designed to deal with, and the commercial case for going with a SAM solution is not always obvious until a broad audit of the software infrastructure of a company has been carried out.
Financial benefits are still the most driving business factor when deciding to use SAM technology within a company. Every corporation needs to make money after all and revenue is a very measurable metric. The financial benefits of SAM do certainly exist however.
An increasingly large proportion of a company’s IT bank roll is spent on software licensing so there is a critical need to invest to correctly handle this spending. As companies expand and spread, their software needs can change radically and hardware and programs can swiftly become out of date. There is no requirement to spend money to maintain the licenses on this outdated software, which is where software asset management really delivers an advantage.
software asset management is not restricted to simply the technology of your company either. As a management process it will often involve many of the departments within a business, including Finance Human Resources, to make sure that it runs as efficiently as possible. It is a process that does not need to follow established corporate models.
Ironically, IT service companies themselves, such as the service vendor Centennial require equally as much IT management as their clients.
Why follow a SAM Strategy?
Having seen the multiple advantages of deploying a SAM solution, how do you know that it would be right for your business? Each company is different and has its own unique set of problems and benefits, so any strategy you will use needs to be catered to these specific characteristics. The benefits of software asset management do cover the basic aspects of IT management.
There are more than simply financial advantages that can be gained through the management of licensing and maintenance agreements across a businesses IT system. Productivity can be vastly by ensuring that staff have the newest versions of software permitted under current licenses held, and communication within the corporation is aided when support staff know exactly what is deployed on every computer under their control.
Cost Savings
As discussed previously, perhaps the most convincing reason to utilise software asset management within your business is the potential financial savings that can be achieved. The profitability of your company is always going to be the bottom line so any plan that can help to increase this profitability by descreasing expenses is one that should be considered. Money can be saved in a multitude of ways.
The most immediate way that SAM can help to lower costs is by targeting any applications running on your corporate IT system that is no longer necessary. The software might not be being used any longer, it may be too outdated to be of use or it may be duplicated on your system. software asset management can be used to remove this unnecessary overhead.
By clearing these items of software that are no longer a help to the operation of your business you are streamlining a large portion of your IT system. Paying for unneeded software licenses and support and maintenance agreements means that more money can be spent on the essential sections of your IT system. Focusing your attention on these critical components will improve the overall performance of your IT department.
Mitigate Risk Factors
A surprising amount of software that is currently used in the business environment is either licensed incorrectly or not licensed at all. Having any amount of unmonitored software on your IT system is ill advised, because when left unchecked it can become incredibly unpredictable.
Unlicensed software programs can be introduced into an uncontrolled IT system in a number of ways. Software may have been bundled when your IT hardware was originally purchased although the initial software licenses may have expired. Without the correct security policies in place, users may also be able to load their own software onto the network. Running a corporate IT system in this wild way will almost certainly lead to trouble.
The risk of running unlicensed software on your network is clear. When anything goes wrong with the hardware or software platform behind your vital processes, how do you handle the situation? Operating a complicated software system without the appropriate support can create a metaphorical minefield when it comes to disaster recovery and can critically inhibit your responsiveness to unpredictable events. The cost of recovery will forever outweigh the cost of prevention when it comes to IT systems.
Many companies have reported increases in efficiency after Centennial consultants worked alongside their current IT support staff.
Implementing SAM in your Organisation
As previously mentioned, there are many potential advantages to employing a good SAM strategy within your business, both monetary and otherwise. It is therefore important to consider which branches of SAM you should implement first since certain benefits will be realised more speedily than others.
This discovery process can be viewed as three primary areas that have to be undertaken to truly build an accurate picture of the deployment of IT assets within your business.
Inventory
Inventory is the most fundamental stage of the discovery cycle. It is important that an accurate inventory of software assets within your organisation is created to help your IT managers to maintain baselines for your IT system. This inventory process must be performed before carrying on with discovery.
Fortunately, this process can now be made automatic and even the grandest of infrastructures can be searched and analysed in a relatively short period of time. Inventory must be able to identify your software assets regardless of their physical location or computing characteristics.
Capture
The second step in the discovery process is the capture of the software license entitlements that manage the software programs discovered in the inventory. The capture process should gather entitlements for all of the software that is installed on your system, even if the software is not currently in use. Without this step the inventory would be nearly useless.
The risk of human error can be mitigated by using automatic tools that are specifically created to build a library of license entitlements. Packages that are currently employed are incredibly efficient at gathering accurate data.
Identification & Validation
The next process is to match up the software audit to the repository of licensing information that were created in the previous two stages. Errors may have been made anywhere from the original invoices for software to the latest audits undertaken on your IT system. These errors can now be rectified.
One critical factor in the validation step is the ability to link the license entitlements within your network to your company’s proof of entitlement. This will be vital if any disputes with software vendors arise as a consequence of the discovery cycle. You want to be as informed as possible in these circumstances.
After these three steps have been undertaken you will have created an incredibly rich picture of how your IT system is serving software assets to its users. It will be much simpler to identify particular trouble spots on your network, or sections of software use that are no longer of any practical benefit to your activites.
You can now commence a period of reconciliation upon your system. You can compare the software packages that are actually installed on your system against the licensing and support entitlements that you are paying for and bridge any divides between the two.
The software distribution in your system may include many hundreds or even thousands of individual instances, and there are any number of restrictions that may be involved with the licensing contracts you have in place. It is therefore essential to automate the reconciliation stage, utilising one or more programs to apply smart rules to the process.
The advantages of working with a contract Centennial reseller are greater than than ever before. You can find one such Centennial specialist at this website.
Compliancy and Flexibility with Software Asset Management
Many of the basic principles of a successful software asset management strategy are based upon the principles set out in the Information Technology Infrastructure Library, or ITIL. This library defines a number of ideas and best practices that should be adopted for successful control of IT operations. The ITIL can be found online.
This library is a dynamic publication and is often updated with new ideas and techniques that cater to the constantly changing IT backdrop of modern business. A good software asset management strategy should be fluid enough to follow the guidelines laid out in the ITIL whilst meeting the changing requirements of the company within which it is actively utilised.
The International Standard Organisation (ISO) has created a standard that applies directly to software asset management practices. This standard, ISO 19770-1, is an incredibly comprehensive collection of suggestions that are built to ensure that SAM is utilised in such a way as to “satisfy corporate governance requirements”. Standards of this kind play an essential part in realising standardisation across an industry.
The ISO standard should certainly be followed when designing a software asset management strategy for your own company, although the level of detail covered within can easily become a daunting prospect. It is vital to remember that no matter what recommendations you follow when creating a software asset management strategy, whatever plan you decide to employ needs to help your organisation rather than hinder it. Industry standards cannot simply be copied when it comes to applying them within your business.
Creating a full and comprehensive software asset management strategy for your own company might actually never come to fruition. Your strategy must be flexible enough to adapt and mature as your business does, and it should allow for updates to your daily activities, no matter how trivial or underlying they might be. This really is the key to a worthwhile SAM plan.
Conclusion
It is easy to see that as the extent and importance of IT systems within your company grow, so does the requirement for correct and effective monitoring of these systems. Gone are the times when an IT branch was a luxury that would occasionally progress the business. Computer networks are now critical to the modern company.
As with other parts of any company, a number of different strategies should be evaluated and used in order to ensure the smooth running of daily activities. SAM should not be the only tool used to manage technological assets within your company, but rather one of a number of complimentary policies used to manage the system as a unit.
So if you think that your organisation is currently suffering from a lack of structured monitoring and control over its IT infrastructure, or that the possible advantages described in this article could provide a critical market edge over your competitors, then it would be worth investigating how software asset management could be employed within your organisation. There might be no time to lose.