software asset management (SAM) review
Given the increasing importance of the software resource where software expenditures generally increase with rapidly growing IT infrastructures, it therefore follows that Software Asset Management (SAM) is now a key task within any organization, but especially the larger business.  However the role of SAM has not necessarily been clearly defined within organizations, often either fulfilled on a part-time basis by either the centralized procurement or specialized IT departments.  Inevitably procurement personnel don't necessarily understand how the software should be deployed, while the IT personnel don't necessarily have the requisite negotiation or commercial contractual skills to secure a solid and cost efficient software price.  Therefore historically and even as of today, many organizations could be paying far too much for their software and often find themselves subject to "Software Stiffing" scenarios...

Software expenditure has increased from ~10% of the overall IT expenditure in the early 1990's to ~40%+ as of today.  Without a SAM function it becomes impossible to identify "shelfware", paying for products that are not used, or indeed identify low use products or products where functionality has now been superseded, or is now included in base products (E.g. RDBMS, Operating System, Etc.).  Equally from a polarized viewpoint, there is a need to safeguard that deployed software is actually being paid for as per the legal guidelines outlined by bodies such as Federation Against Software Theft (FAST).

Value-4IT have considerable skills both technical and commercial that provide a platform for practicable SAM delivery and have considerably reduced software expenditure for many of our customers.  From a simplistic viewpoint a SAM process is based upon the following:

The "Discovery" phase facilitated by the inventory process is pivotal for establishing the possibilities for reducing and controlling software expenditure costs.  It is also important to note that software costs can be controlled without the requirement for product displacement by conversion, which should always be a last resort when observing the Keep It Simple Stupid (KISS) methodology, as per:

In conclusion, the strategic and value-added software supplier will be focussed on maintaining their client relationships and so will not necessarily be phased by their client wanting to renegotiate contracts.  Ultimately SAM outputs provide the client with the requisite information to have an informed pricing discussion with their suppliers...

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