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Spotlight On...
Software Asset Management
Rory Canavan, 1E
“Your IT department budgeted for software expenditure over the next four years, but mid-way through, a software vendor conducts an audit to compare actual installs against the purchases they know about. This may considerably affect the software budget, and even the IT budget, not to mention the time and resource spent in preparing the
data required for the audit. Effective SAM from 1E can immediately help mitigate such pain; rationalize the number of applications deployed across an estate; and ensure license compliance. When faced with software vendor auditors we can arm you with all the necessary information at a stroke.”
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ory Canavan is Director of ITAM Services for 1E, he has been in the IT sector since 1999, and has focused on Software Asset Management since 2007. Rory
worked for a wide range of IT companies, from the truly global (HP, Compaq) to start-up sized organisations (SAM Charter). Rory is a regular contributor to thought-leading blogs in the world of SAM and ITAM.
What more can you tell us about 1E?
Founded in 1997, 1E is the pioneer and global leader in Efficient IT solutions. 1E’s mission is to identify IT waste, help remove it and optimize everything else. We help IT Departments fight back, with an integrated set of ActiveEfficiency tools that attack waste, eliminate over- provisioning and drive down license costs. Our tools pay for themselves in a few months then generate savings forever.
Our headquarters are in London and New York and we have offices New Delhi. With more than 24 million licenses deployed worldwide, 1,700 organizations in 42 countries trust us to help them to work efficiently, productively and sustainably. To date, our customers make
$2.3 billion in efficiency savings. This includes $1.3billion in energy costs alone and a reduction in CO2 emissions of 11.5 million tons.
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What key software-related challenges are companies facing at present?
Software Vendor Audits: Most big companies get audited fairly regularly, as a recent study we commissioned from VansonBourne shows, 76% of IT departments have been audited at least once in the last year. However many organisations are ill-equipped to cope with the spectre of a software-vendor led audit.
The fundamental comparison of evidence to installs is complicated by technical and licensing nuances that those vendors include in the fine print of a license agreement. This leads to:
Ambiguous and inaccurate contract-fee claims by software vendors: Software vendors base contract revisions on a predicted upward spiral of consumption and use of their products. Software metering can be applied to help measure actual usage and subsequently uninstall software not being used. This can reduce support and maintenance costs and
prevents companies from over-ordering when future software requests arise.
Reserving the right to change terms and conditions of usage: Software vendors typically reserve the right to change the terms and conditions of a software license without informing end organisations beforehand; an absence of vigilance around periodically reviewing licence and contract data could expose a company to sizeable financial penalties, of which they were previously unaware.
M&A Activity: Software Vendors view Mergers and Acquisitions as “green lights” to conduct a license audit, as typically a divested company will not have taken the time to consider re-negotiating software contracts. Therefore they will carry on using software formerly installed under a larger agreement that they are no longer entitled to use, now being a separate legal entity. Equally, the parent company could have sold off such a large part of its entity that it is no longer entitled to the favourable T&Cs previously granted. A software vendor will view this as grounds for initiating an audit.
BYOD: By bringing a retail-purchased device into a commercial environment a user runs
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