Software Asset Management (SAM) is the entire infrastructure and processes necessary for the effective management, control and protection of the software assets within an organisation, throughout all stages of their life cycle, from acquisition through to disposal/de-install.
On the face of it, this can seem as a very dry “rear view mirror” approach to satisfy an accounting need. Actually, I view SAM as a more pro-active capability that’s pretty important in helping an IT department get the most value from what it has acquired (or is about to).
Having an effective SAM capability in your organisation means that you can :
- Get legal AND stay legal
- Understand what you actually have compared to what you use which means that you can start paying for what you use not what you have
- Have more meaningful conversations with software vendors when it comes to negotiating licenses. Having real information about what you use means that you can re-shape licensing deals to more accurately reflect what your organisation needs
- Save money be reallocating licenses away from “dormant” installations to people that actually need specific software, ultimately this may allow you to release licenses for software you do not use
- Have a much better visibility of what you users are doing
- Spotting unusual pockets of software, one organisation I worked for on an engagement where we were shocked to discover that one part of the organisation had 2000 copies of a software development suite installed on end user PCs – what were those people developing!
Below is a sample set of goals or critical success factors (which can easily be turned into KPIs) for an organisation to aim for when establishing a SAM capability:
- Records should exist for for all software that is purchased, these should be held centrally in one integrated asset management system.
- There should be an enforceable policy for defining who can buy software and how with direct accountability for business unit managers to ensure that this policy is followed.
- Executive level accountability should exist for maintaining accurate records of software purchases. The performance (including accuracy and completeness) of this role is measured monthly.
- Technology (or an outsourced service) should be in place to audit which software is installed on equipment the organisation is responsible for. This should be integrated into other management capabilities covering the entire estate. Outputs from this should be automatically included as KPIs in the corporate performance dashboards used by the board.
- Mature and proven process should be in place for the monthly auditing of licensing position. This should be a fully automated process covering the entire estate. KPI data from this licensing audit is consolidated and included in the core management KPI reports.
Ultimately, there should be confidence that the organisation can demonstrate license compliance level and have proactive activities and measures in place to manage this position and get the most value from software assets!
Posted by Andy Savvides 
