Software Asset Management: Mistakes, Truths & Best Practices in Sam

As organizations increasingly rely on the applications they use, whether through on-premise installations or cloud subscriptions, it is essential for you to understand:

• What you have
• Who is using it
• How it is supported
• What you are paying for

Well-developed and clearly understood software asset management (SAM) processes are your key to getting value from your software investments. SAM also ensures that you are neither using more software licenses that you are paying for (leaving you open to legal consequences), nor less, which means you’re paying for more than you need.

Let’s introduce software asset management, including:

• The concept
• Common challenges
• How to avoid them
• Best practices for choosing SAM tools
• Additional resources

What is software asset management?

Software asset management is an ongoing IT practice. Like the overarching practice of IT asset management (ITAM), the primary end goals of SAM are usually to:

• Ensure compliance
• Mitigate risk of penalties
• Avoid security breaches
• Reduce risk of unplanned costs
• Optimize investments (i.e., lower costs)

Software is a huge, ongoing financial investment for all organizations. The ability for departments, or individual users, to acquire software licenses through software as a service (SaaS) providers means that it can be difficult to understand what software is being consumed by your organization, much less control the financial and legal implications of software use.

To demonstrate this challenge, the image below indicates a variety of asset types you’ll need to manage. Many of these will fall within your SAM practice:

This means that SAM is more important than ever, but also more difficult to do effectively due to the decentralization of software procurement. There is no easy button for asset management—regardless of the tools and content.

I have heard SAM referred to as a “dark art”, which implies SAM is much more than a tool or technology. It requires skilled resources and the right technologies to cover all platforms, titles, and license models within scope.

Common SAM mistakes

Many organizations start with unrealistic expectations because they have not been exposed to the challenges inherent in building a SAM program. Therefore, to build a successful and sustainable SAM program, start with a critical understanding of the most common challenges.

There are many mistakes organizations make when setting up a SAM practice. These three are the most common mistakes I come across:

1. Setting unrealistic expectations when planning or maturing a SAM program.
2. Not identifying a roadmap, a phased approach with a clear, prioritized list of requirements.
3. Not performing the proper due diligencewith SAM vendors to fully understand what you can do out-of-the-box vs. what requires customization, professional services, or consulting. This can have a significant impact on cost.

Any one of these three can delay or even completely derail a SAM project. Not in the list above is something that is almost more problematic—so here’s a fourth mistake:

4. Expecting a tool to do all the work for you. As the saying goes: “A fool with a tool…” A SAM tool can do a lot of heavy lifting for you by discovering software and enumerating license usage. But no single tool is going to provide all the answers you are looking for. If you do not design the SAM practice well BEFORE implementing a tool, then you are very unlikely to have a successful outcome.