IT Infrastructure Control
Introduction
The degree to which technology has become a part of normal life and day-to-day commerce has prompted a change in the way business approaches how they manage the money, the processes and the assets within an organisation.
As technology becomes more widespread within an organisation and takes a more prominent critical within the vital processes of that business, it is important to make sure that an appropriate level of attention is applied to this technology. Technological assets that may have once been ignored are now key in the decision making process.
Technology have come a long way during the past few years and are now seen as essential elements of any company. As such, they are allocated greater budgets but must also be able to handle a greater amount of work. There is an eternal race between corporate demands and IT capabilities.
But once you have spent a substantial amount of your budget on developing an IT infrastructure and seen the circumstances of your organisation change, how do you ensure that the technology you are using can keep up with demand? Moreover, how can you achieve this without spending a prohibitive amount of money?
This is the role carried out by IT management software and procedures.
Every company and every situation will have different requirements and will create unique issues. To satisfy these requirements there are a number of different solutions and approaches that can be used to help control the IT assets of your business.
Software Asset Management
SAM ( Software Asset Management) is built to do exactly what it says on the tin – monitoring and maintaining the deployment and usage of software packages within your business. It is a business process rather than a distinct area of expertise and is becoming a more essential part of the modern corporate environment, particularly for corporations operating in the field of IT. 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 a tool for technicians deploying software across a large company network, but can be a crucial tool to help improve performance at all levels of a organisation. The aims of SAM include managing of the IT infrastructure within a organisation, negating legal threats associated with incorrect software license usage and maintaining 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 thought of as an unnecessary evil due to the intangible nature of what it is designed to deal with, and the business case for using a SAM solution is not always obvious until a full of the software infrastructure of a company has been done.
Economic benefits remain the most driving commercial factor when choosing to employ software asset management technology within a company. Every corporation needs to make money after all and revenue is a very measurable figure. The financial benefits of software asset management do certainly exist however.
An increasingly large proportion of a company’s IT budget is spent on software licensing so there is a critical need to invest to correctly handle this spending. As companies grow and spread, their software needs can change radically and hardware and software can swiftly become outdated. There is no need to spend money to maintain the licenses on this outdated software, which is where software asset management really delivers an advantage.
SAM is not limited to simply the technology of your company either. As a management operation it will often include many of the branches within a organisation, including Finance Human Resources, to ensure that it runs as cost-effectively as possible.
When choosing an appropriate provider of a software asset management solution for your network virtualisation should be a product that is considered amongst many.
Why follow a SAM Strategy?
Having heard the various advantages of utilising a SAM solution, how do you know that it would be correct for your company? 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.
There are more than simply cost benefits that can be gained through the management of licensing and maintenance agreements across an organisations IT network. Productivity can be vastly by ensuring that staff have the newest editions of software available under current licenses held, and communication within the company is aided when support staff know exactly what is in use on every workstation under their control. The benefits of software asset management are not confined to the technological hardware of your organisation.
Financial Savings
As discussed previously, perhaps the most convincing reason to utilise SAM within your company is the potential cost savings that can be achieved. The profitability of your company is always going to be the bottom line so any system that can help to improve this profitability by lowering expenses is one that should be considered.
The most direct way that SAM can help to lower costs is by identifying any applications running on your corporate network that is no longer needed. The software might not be being used anymore, it may be too outdated to be of use or it may be duplicated on your system. SAM can be used to remove this unnecessary overhead.
By clearing these items of software that are no longer a help to the running of your company you are streamlining a large portion of your IT infrastructure. Paying for unnecessary software licenses and maintenance agreements means that more money can be spent on the critical parts of your IT infrastructure.
Mitigate Risk Factors
A surprising amount of software that is actively used in the business environment is either licensed incorrectly or not licensed at all. Having any amount of unmonitored software on your IT network is not advised, because when left unchecked it can become very unpredictable. This is becoming an increasingly frustrating factor for network managers.
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 first purchased although the original software licenses may have expired. Without the correct control policies in place, users may also be able to install their own software onto the system.
The danger of running unlicensed software on your system is clear. When anything goes wrong with the hardware or software platform behind your critical processes, how do you recover the situation? Running a complicated software system without the appropriate support can create a metaphorical minefield when it comes to disaster recovery and can critically limit your responsiveness to unpredictable events. The cost of recovery will forever outweigh the cost of mitigation when it comes to data systems.
Many businesses have reported increases in productivity since my company worked alongside their current IT support staff.
Implementing SAM in your Organisation
As previously discussed, there are many potential benefits to employing a good software asset management strategy within your business, both financial and otherwise. It is vitally important to consider which parts of SAM you should implement first since some benefits will be achieved more quickly than others. Some may take a period of years to be fully felt.
The discovery process can be viewed as three basic areas that have to be undertaken to really develop an accurate picture of the deployment of IT assets within your organisation. These are:
Inventory
Inventory is the most fundamental function of the discovery process. It is crucial that an accurate audit of IT assets within your organisation is created to aid your IT department to maintain baselines for your IT network. This inventory process must be performed before carrying on with discovery.
Thankfully, this process can now be automated and even the largest of infrastructures can be investigated and analysed in a reasonably short period. Inventory should be able to identify your software assets regardless of their geographical location or computing characteristics. Modern inventory processes are capable of this.
Capture
The second step in the discovery cycle is the capture of the software license entitlements that manage the software assets identified in the inventory. The capture process should gather entitlements for all of the software that exists on your network, even if the software is not currently in use.
The risk of human error can be mitigated by using automated tools that are specifically designed to build a library of license entitlements. Tools that are currently available are very efficient at gathering accurate data. These tools will also maintain databases containing up to date information from software vendors.
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 occurred anywhere from the original paperwork for software to the most recent audits undertaken on your IT network. These errors can now be rectified.
One critical factor in the validation step is the ability to associate the license entitlements on your network to your organisation’s proof of entitlement. This will be essential if any arguments with software resellers arise as a consequence of the discovery process.
Once these steps have been performed you will have built an incredibly rich image of how your IT network is serving software assets to its users. It will be much easier to identify particular trouble spots on your network, or areas of software use that are no longer of any particular benefit to your activites.
You can now begin a period of reconciliation on your system. You should compare the software packages that are actually used on your system against the licensing and support entitlements that you are paying for and close any divides between the two. This is when the financial benefits of software asset management start to take effect.
The software spread within your system may include many hundreds or even thousands of individual instances, and there may be any number of rules that may be associated with the licensing contracts you have in place. It is therefore essential to automate the reconciliation stage, utilising one or more programs to apply intelligent rules to the process. These rules can be catered to the specific needs of your organisation.
To learn more about the software asset management process you could use Centennial reseller information through the Internet.
Compliancy and Flexibility with Software Asset Management
Many of the fundamental practices of a modern SAM strategy are based upon the concepts set out in the Information Technology Infrastructure Library, or ITIL. This library defines a number of principles and best practices that should be adopted for successful management of IT operations. The ITIL can be found online.
This library is a dynamic entity and is often updated with new concepts and policies that reflect the constantly changing IT environment of modern business. A good software asset management strategy should be flexible enough to follow the guidelines set out in the ITIL whilst matching the changing requirements of the business within which it is actively utilised. This is an essential requirement of successful SAM
The International Standard Organisation (ISO) has created a standard that applies specifically to SAM practices. This standard, ISO 19770-1, is an incredibly comprehensive set of suggestions that are built to ensure that software asset management is used in such a way as to “satisfy corporate governance requirements”. Standards of this kind play an important part in realising standardisation across an industry.
The ISO standard should certainly be followed when planning a SAM strategy for your own organisation, although the level of detail included within can quickly become a daunting challenge. It is vital to remember that no matter what guidelines you follow when planning a software asset management strategy, whatever you decide to employ needs to aid your business rather than stifle it.
Designing a complete and comprehensive SAM strategy for your own organisation may actually never come to fruition. Your strategy must be flexible to change and mature as your organisation does, and it should allow for updates to your daily tasks, no matter how small or fundamental they might be.
Conclusion
It is easy to see that as the scope and importance of IT systems within your organisation grow, so does the need for good and effective management of these systems. Gone are the days when an IT branch was a luxury that would sometimes forward the business. Computer networks are now critical to the modern business. Crucial systems need to be controlled to an appropriate level.
As with other branches of any business, a number of different plans should be evaluated and used in order to ensure the smooth running of day to day activities. SAM should not be the only tool used to manage computing resources within your company, but rather one of a multitude of complimentary techniques used to manage the system as a unit. SAM can go a long way toward aiding your company but should be supported by other strategies.
So if you think that your organisation is really suffering from a lack of structured monitoring and management over its IT network, or that the possible benefits described in this article could manufacture a critical market edge over your competitors, then it would be worth investigating how software asset management could be employed within your company.
