What is Software Asset Management? Tools, Best Practices

One ofthe primary facets of Asset Management in Information Technology (IT) also referred to as ITAM is Software Asset Management or SAM. Over the years, the software industry has experienced a huge demand surge and interest in the services that SAM has to offer. The demand for expert professionals in SAM which is still considered a niche is seeing a steady rise in IT and various other sectors in the global job market.

Software Asset Management is a crucial component of the IT Asset Management sector. In AssetExlporer, Software Asset Management comprises software discovery, software forecasting, software license compliance, as well as making sure that there is maximum usage of the purchased licenses. It also aids in acquiring total visibility of the software installed within your network system. It is also used to keep a track of how many software licenses have been bought, how much software have been installed and also the licenses that are still remaining. With SAM, you can easily analyze the usage patterns of software and make an informed purchase decision about which licenses you need to buy.

With that being said, since you are already reading an article about Software Asset Management, it shows that you are interested in this field. If you are interested in becoming a successful IT asset manager, you need to pursue an ITIL Software Asset Management course. An ITIL Certification Course will help develop the necessary skills you need to get started in your career.  

What is Software Asset Management (SAM)?

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Most companies in the recent era have gone through numerous technological advancements that have helped them attain maximum work efficiency in the management of crucial assets that help them run their daily businesses. If we take the advent of automation into consideration, we can easily conclude that it has indeed enabled organizations to create agile, mobile and flexible business operations. However, it has led to the dependency on software tools that play a major part in optimizing processes to improve overall productivity. 

Software asset management often referred to as SAM is the administration of policies, processes, and procedures that aid in acquiring, deploying, using, maintaining and disposing of software applications inside an organization. SAM is an integral part of the IT asset management system that aims to ensure the organization’s compliance with license agreements and also helps put a stop to overspending on software.

Another very important objective of the SAM initiative is to expedite software asset discovery, ensure that the end user license agreements (EULAs) are viable and approve the ethical use of free software. SAM documentation protects organizations from anti-piracy litigations, helps prevent inadvertent license overuse and offers shadow software control on the network. In a robust organization, SAM can be quite complex and requires not only an adept team but also the necessary Software Asset Management tools to develop and maintain a database. This helps in storing information relevant to software subscriptions, purchases, patches and licenses. Typically, it is the SAM team who is responsible for the renewal of software licenses, negotiation of new license agreements and pinpointing and removing rarely used software. 

Why is Software Asset Management Essential for Businesses (Benefits)?

The Software Asset Management process is highly integral to any IT department in an organization because it offers visibility into the resourcefulness of software in your company. It can aid your organization in decision-making at the right time when it comes to its usage, exit, upgrade, and the like. Some of the other benefits of integrating the SAM enterprise asset management system have been listed below: - 

1. SAM also helps achieve optimum software ecosystem transparency in order to differentiate the ones that the vendors support and the ones that they don’t.
2. They help attain a security layer that prevents the occurrence of non-compliance risks and the costs incurred because of them.  
3. They help develop a clear timeline to comprehend the Software Asset Management lifecycle better.  
4. A SAM team also helps ensure that the SAM operations and procedures fall in line with the COBIT framework, or the service standard management standards imposed by ITIL V3.  
5. The SAM software audits the total of purchased software licenses in order to automate the mode of information gathering from multiple devices like mobiles, desktops, data centers and cloud inventory.  
6. SAM tools help keep track of the total number of licenses that still remain. This knowledge can be used to remove or reallocate software that is not currently being used in order to reduce additional costs that are incurred. 
7. The best Software Asset Management tools can be very helpful if the organization wants to optimize the mode of purchase of perpetual and subscription-based licenses or if it falls under a volume licensing program. 
8. SAM software products come with a layer of intelligence that can help flag specific criteria that are related to the software licensing as well as the Asset Lifecycle Management. Software flagging by SAM enables SAM team members to actively identify the ways that can be utilized to cut down on costs. For instance, the software may identify incidents in which support costs and licensing can be combined. 

Best Practices in Software Asset Management (SAM solutions)

It is imperative for organizations to adopt the best practices to implement SAM into their operating systems. Here is a list of some of the Software Asset Management best practices: - 

1. Gaining C-suite Support

When you think about integrating a SAM program, make sure you get the buy-in via a C-level executive with experience. During the early stages of the program engage with them so they can build and offer a strong business case to streamline the IT costs incurred as a whole.  

2. Choosing the Correct Tool

If you look around for a SAM tool, you can easily get intimidated by the sheer volume of options in the market. It is important to ensure the scalability and flexibility of the SAM tool so that it can be aligned with the business model of the company. It should be ready to offer features of software license management with the ability to measure financial and operational metrics. All in all, they should be able to aid in all the decision-making within the teams. 

3. Creating the Perfect SAM team

With the most appropriate tool for the smooth flow of the Software Asset Management process, you need the required skill set that comprehends all nuances pertaining to SAM tools and effectively each one of them is implemented. Therefore, creating a perfect SAM team by choosing the most appropriate people for handling Software Asset Management is the key to making SAM work with the highest efficiency.

4. Measuring the Success of SAM

You need to set up the KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) to measure the success rate of your SAM. Some of the metrics that are integral comprise the total number of software licenses ratio vs. the number of licenses that have not been used, the monetary value and percentage of licenses periodically recycled by the SAM team and finally the software utilization rate. 

5. Categorizing the Software Assets

One of the key responsibilities of the SAM tool is to chart out all software that are currently in use by your organization. Every single software needs to be categorized on the basis of how impactful it is to your business and determine if the priority is high, medium, or low. 

6. Recycling of Software Licenses

A SAM team needs to prioritize the recycling of software licenses over buying new ones wherever it is feasible. Let us take the instance of an employee leaving your company. In this case, you are allowed to allocate the software license to any new employee without wasting money on a new license. This is one of the best practices in Software Asset Management because it can potentially reduce overall IT costs to a huge extent.

7. Always Being Audit-ready

Similar to gap analysis, you need to run a SAM analysis periodically in order to strictly monitor and keep track of the software that have and lack licenses. Additionally, you are also required to run a compliance analysis to differentiate between over and under-licensed software. It prevents your Software Asset Management from suffering bad audits that can bring potential harm to the financial standing and reputation of your organization.

Best Software Asset Management Tools

In the IT sector, Software Asset Management (SAM) has advanced to its peak efficiency and has included multiple kinds of tasks in recent years. Companies are making heavy investments in SAM when it comes to time, knowledge and capital. The primary aim of Software Asset Management is to make sure that the balance of licensed software assets is at their optimum level. It also helps monitor how much they have been used from acquisition to disposal. This makes a huge impact on asset optimization with the growth of the company. Before heading on to integrate a successful Software Asset Management strategy, you need to know the numerous SAM tools that are extensively used. 

1. Symantec Asset Management Suite

The primary goal of the Symantec Asset Management Suite is to help companies acquire an exact idea about their assets, make sure of the following: - 

1. There is compliance during software audits. 
2. Make sure there are no vendor-related fines or penalties incurred. 
3. Save more on capital by preventing the buying of unnecessary licenses.

This IT Asset Management solution is designed for discovering inventory, track all hardware software and hardware assets in the IT infrastructure of an organization via CMDB. The CMDB handles the hierarchical relationships of assets and links them to different items of configuration such as users, departments, locations, contracts and cost centers. As per the vendor, this gives organizations viable information regarding the license status and location of all important operating systems, platforms or application instances. The vendor’s proposition of value states that with highly detailed and updated information, organizations can identify problems, come up with solutions, and set up document compliance at a quicker pace. 

2. Snow License Manager

Snow License Manager is another widely used Software Asset Management tool that comes with cloud options or on-premises delivery. Snow License Manager has the following advantages: -

• It is built to cut down on costs, mitigate risks, and reduce the overall complexity associated with software licensing and assets.  
• It offers a complete view of every asset available across networks, enabling staff members to use only one interface for managing numerous software vendors, locations and device types.  
• Audit data can be easily imported with Snow License Manager from numerous sources of inventory to cover a wide range of computing platforms for enterprises such as Windows, iOS, Mac OSX, Unix, Linux, Android and more.  
• Snow License Manager also helps in automatically calculating the compliance position for every available software. It also includes the processor and its core licensed software on both physical and virtual resources.  

3. Snow Inventory

Snow Inventory is a popular SAM tool whose potential is slowly being realized with more and more implementations by robust companies worldwide. It helps in the maintenance of the SAM structure in the following ways:- 

• It automatically collates the usage information on every application running throughout the cloud and the network.  
• It additionally collects, finds and meters the usage of streamed and virtual applications as well as other applications like Microsoft RDS and Citrix that runs from inside the data center.  
• Snow Licenses Manager can use the data in order to identify areas of potential cost optimization and license harvesting.  
• It also helps generate management reports regarding the usage of software across cloud services and every application. 

4. Belarc BelManage

BelManage is more like an IT system management tool developed by the company, Belarc that is headquartered in Maynard. Through BelManage, the company wants to streamline Software Asset Management in robust organizations that deal with a large number of software and digital assets. The benefits of availing of this tool have been listed below: -

• It emphasizes the initial discovery phase of Software Asset Management (SAM) 
• It uses the system of data analytics from Belarc that is essentially used for the management of licenses. 
• It is also useful in the management of hardware IT assets.  
• It makes configuration management easier. 

5. Flexera ONE

Flexera One is another highly renowned tool for the optimization of software licenses. The advantages of using this SAM tool have been listed below: - 

• It helps users visualize the whole estate starting from the on-premises to the SaaS and finally to the cloud.  
• It is well-integrated with robust features that boast the software’s ability to mitigate risks. 
• It helps reduce costs and optimize all technology investments starting from the costs related to cloud and SaaS management.

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The Relation Between SAM and Software Licensing

Although they might seem similar in many ways, software licensing and Software Asset Management are two entire worlds apart belonging to two separate disciplines that intertwine with each other. Let us look at the definition of both Software Asset Management and Software licensing separately to understand how the two are closely associated with each other.  

1. Software Licensing

 A software license is more like a legal agreement that takes place between the end user and the software vendor or the copyright holder. It is similar to a legal document that clearly defines the rights to the dos and don’ts of the application. With software licensing, the end user becomes aware of what they can and cannot do with the said application. Although quite a lengthy and highly complicated process, if not taken seriously and understood completely, it can bring potential harm to the company leaving it in a financial mess. Therefore, the management of licenses should be carried out correctly. If there are any discrepancies or instances of non-compliance, it could lead to a possible fallout from an audit that could be highly damaging, both reputation-wise and financially.

2. Software Asset Management

Software Asset Management, on the other hand, is a highly important element of the IT Asset Management sector. It is more involved in the discovery of software, software license compliance and software forecasting, as well as ensuring that there is optimum utilization of the licenses that have been purchased. It also helps in the acquisition of complete visibility of every installed software installed inside a networking system. It helps monitor how many software licenses have been purchased and installed, and how many still remain unclaimed. SAM is primarily used for analyzing software usage patterns.

Now that we have separately described the two entities, let us look at the factors that associate them with each other in their similarities.  

3. Relation between SAM and Software Licensing

Needless to say, Software Licensing in itself is a major part of Software Asset Management. It also involves the management of licenses as a whole. SAM relates more to software assets whereas software license relates more to which are the rights that an organization has when it comes to its software assets. 

A typical organization will not have both a SAM team and a Software Licensing department at its disposal. Therefore, their first choice is always a SAM team which is also bestowed with the responsibility of license management. Therefore, the SAM team is entirely responsible for the holistic management of not only the software assets but also the license. They should ensure that the terms and conditions set forth by the license are not broken. 

With a reliable ITSM Certification, you are bound to know more about what Software Asset Management as a career choice has to offer.  

Conclusion

Regardless of the industry or the sector, an organization will fail to operate without the use of software. They will always need to depend on software and software licenses even for the most basic tasks such as emailing and typing, Furthermore, the lack of a reliable SAM structure set in place cannot function with the highest amount of efficiency. All employees, as a matter of fact, are ultimately the customers of SAM, if they are required to use an application or a piece of software. Throughout the lifecycle of a software asset, it is imperative to manage it efficiently. This is where the role of SAM comes in. With companies now being heavily reliant on software, SAM needs to be given utmost importance as a core competency for all organizations. If you want to know more about Software Asset Management and are seeking to establish a career in it, KnowledgeHut's IT service management certifications online will help you kickstart it with ease.