Flexera Software (formerly Acresso) has strengthened their technology portfolio in the Enterprise level SAM software space with the acquisition of ManageSoft.

Flexera Software has a focus on high end applications in the DataCenter such as Oracle and SAP whilst ManageSoft has a similar focus on Microsoft and Adobe on the desktop. ManageSoft also has inventory, license compliance, contract management, and software/OS deployment.

AT A GLANCE:

More details on Flexera coming soon.

View the press release here.

Martin Thompson

Martin is an independent software industry analyst, SAM consultant and founder of The ITAM Review and The ITSM Review. Learn more about him here and connect with him on Twitter or LinkedIn.

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Flexera Software Vendor Profile

I am pleased to announce that Flexera Software is the first ITAM Vendor to complete their expanded vendor profile within the new Vendor Directory.

Unlike the rest of The ITAM Review, which aims to be educational and informative, the vendor profiles allow vendors to showcase their technology and detail their key strengths and differentiators – like a virtual conference booth.

Flexera Software is the first of several vendors offering expanded vendor profiles over the coming months – stay tuned for further updates.

Visit www.itassetmanagement.net/vendors/flexera-software/ to view the profile.

Martin Thompson

Martin is an independent software industry analyst, SAM consultant and founder of The ITAM Review and The ITSM Review. Learn more about him here and connect with him on Twitter or LinkedIn.

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This article has been contributed by Brent Pietrzak from Flexera Software.

Nearly every company I know is faced with budget constraints, but very few recognize just how much money they have tied up in software licenses and how much of that they could save with strategic software license management.

The challenges of managing software include constant negotiations with vendors, different acquisition methods and license types (pre-loaded and downloaded, volume purchases, and hosted applications), and multi-user software with enterprise, transaction, processor, concurrent user or named user constraints.

Pitfalls of Software License Mismanagement

A lack of visibility into actual software usage can lower a company’s profits. Over-licensing, (“shelfware”), caused by a desire to ensure users always have access to the software they need, unnecessarily increases software costs. Under-licensing, typically the result of trying to save money, leads to denial of service and reduce productivity. And some companies do both, over-licensing in some departments and under-licensing in others. Sharing software licenses could reduce costs and increase productivity, but most managers have only a local view of their software assets, making it difficult to identify and resolve these allocation issues.

Using Strategic Software License Management to Optimize Expenses and Increase Productivity

There are next-generation software asset management tools out there that provide comprehensive information about actual license usage. This information enables IT managers to implement strategic software license management in order to purchase and pool software licenses in a way that corresponds exactly with usage needs. With strategic software license management, organizations obtain the maximum return from their software investment by optimizing every dollar spent.

The following five-step methodology for implementing strategic software license management demonstrates the value of license sharing and usage-based purchasing across the enterprise. At each step unnecessary spending is reduced, under-utilized licenses are redeployed, and end-user productivity is enhanced.

Step 1: Centralize All Software Licensing Operations

Decentralized licensing, a common feature of today’s IT landscape, makes it difficult to see how, when and where licenses are being used. This lack of visibility can result in too many or too few licenses purchased. It also forces multiple administrators to become licensing “experts,” resulting in operational inefficiencies.

By centralizing software license management, IT can pool the licenses at headquarters and satellite facilities so enough are available wherever they are needed. IT managers and administrators obtain a single view that allows them to manage licenses and servers across the global enterprise. This in turn allows them to inventory current software assets to see which licenses are available and when they will expire. Under-utilized licenses can be re-deployed or shared among departments, eliminating shelfware and unnecessary purchases while boosting end-user productivity throughout the organization.

Centralization enables proactive management, which includes receiving alerts regarding problems before they affect end-users and customers. Resolving issues early helps ensure ongoing productivity and lower administrative costs. Centralization also makes much better use of valuable IT staff resources. Instead of needing a licensing expert at each location, the IT department can designate one administrator to manage all servers and licenses globally.

Step 2: Leverage Accurate Usage Statistics

Relying on data that has even a five percent error margin can result in costly mistakes. Consider an organization with 4,000 licenses, each costing $5,000. A five percent error in peak usage data translates to more than $1 million of unnecessary costs over the life of the license contract.

Unfortunately, traditional software asset management tools monitor only when users install software on their desktops, not the use of software licenses or specific modules. Users can’t “check in” a license when they are done with the application, which forces their companies to buy excess licenses. Such packages present this information as a crude, highly inaccurate approximation of basic license usage, and they don’t, for example, accurately report on bundles of software sold as software suites.

With a next-generation software asset management tool, however, an organization’s data will match the software vendor’s license management results, and IT managers can base their purchase and renewal decisions on complete, accurate data derived from historical usage over time.

Step 3: Analyze Usage Reports

By segmenting and analyzing usage data by project or user group, managers can gain granular insight into their organizations’ actual software usage. This enables them to address key issues such as:

• Reducing Spending on Unnecessary Software Purchases – Eliminating or reducing update and support costs for unnecessary, unused, or under-utilized software is a painless way to reduce software costs. In addition, vendors often sell software licenses at significant discounts if the licenses are purchased as part of a “competitive upgrade.” There is no better software to trade in than software your organization isn’t using.
• Managing Peak Demand – The best way to determine how many software licenses are needed is using peak demand periods. If peak demand is set at 90 percent, then, for example, if an organization has 10 licenses, peak demand occurs when only one or none is available.

By understanding the usage patterns that emerge relative to time of day, week or month, IT managers can determine average duration of usage and decide whether to allow denial of service, and, if so, for how long. A denial of service lasting only a few minutes may be acceptable if it significantly reduces software licensing costs. A longer denial of service, however, may be unacceptable because of a serious impact on users or customers. Analyzing usage data enables IT to manage according to peak demand, and it provides the granular, user-level and department-level information they need to make usage-based purchasing decisions.

Managing software assets based on peak demand is most critical for shared licenses, such as floating licenses. If an organization has enough shared licenses to meet peak demand, there will be sufficient capacity for off-peak times as well. It is also important to encourage users to change wasteful and inefficient behavior, such as “hoarding,” which occurs when users refuse to exit applications not in use because they’re afraid of being denied service in the future.

Optimizing Software Renewals and Remixes – Analyzing usage data can also help managers avoid erroneous assumptions leading to costly software renewals and remixes. It’s been estimated that some IT departments spend 10-20 percent of their budgets on software updates and maintenance they don’t need. In addition, usage data over time can help managers verify whether shifts in usage trends are permanent or just upturns and downturns in the business cycle. This allows them to optimally redistribute the mix of software offered by a vendor. For example, a product design project may require one set of software tools to build a conceptual model, another set to build a prototype, and a third set to test the prototype.

By analyzing usage data, IT managers can determine how best to weight the percentage of each software product and module within their remix. This ensures that users have the right number of tools available when they need them, and allows enterprises to derive the most value from their software contracts.

Step 4: Automate Software Licensing Operations

As long as a company continues to pay maintenance fees, managers must constantly reevaluate their usage patterns and reassess their licensing needs. By automating the collection and generation of key data, they will always base their business decisions on the latest information.

Automation can also be used for departmental chargebacks. Sharing software licenses among departments saves money, but the departments must be able to cross-charge for the shared usage. Managing these chargebacks manually with monthly spreadsheets is extremely time consuming and inefficient. Automating chargebacks makes it easy and cost-effective to share software licenses while improving internal accountability. IT organizations can use automated chargebacks to allow individual departments to purchase specialized software while keeping them accountable for the cost.

Automated chargebacks also enable IT departments to establish shared license pools with prioritized resource allocation. This allows departments or users with high-priority needs to “reserve” a fixed number of shared licenses, ensuring software availability. The reserved licenses and any additional ones they use are billed back to them, providing better cost-efficiencies across the board.

Step 5: Select the Right Software Asset Management Tools

Implementing a successful strategic software license management strategy requires a comprehensive set of next generation software asset management capabilities. Such next generation solutions are called Enterprise License Optimization solution and they make managing software easier, reduce the burden on administrators, and increase end-user satisfaction. When evaluating next software asset management tools, make sure they:

• Generate accurate and complete usage data—down to the feature and module level—that both software vendors and customers can trust
• Give license priority to critical users and excludes unauthorized users from access to software licenses
• Use alerts to notify administrators of potential problems and use job schedules to automate routine maintenance and generation of usage reports
• Generate advanced warnings when licenses are about to expire
• Allow administrators to stop unlicensed applications from running if such use violates licensing terms
• Allow organizations to strategically manage application usage and optimize at the usage level, thereby reducing software spend

The day is long past when IT professionals can leave the vagaries of software licensing to chance. The stakes are too high, the issues too complex and the downside too severe. With companies of all sizes struggling to squeeze every penny of value out of their assets, strategic license management has become a key element in the IT mix.

Brent Pietrzak is the Vice President, Client Service, for Flexera Software and consults with large enterprises on the best ways to optimize high-value software licenses such as engineering applications, SAP, Microsoft, Adobe and Oracle to deliver business benefits on an ongoing basis by helping them fully use the licenses they have, buy only the licenses they need, and control license costs.

Martin Thompson

Martin is an independent software industry analyst, SAM consultant and founder of The ITAM Review and The ITSM Review. Learn more about him here and connect with him on Twitter or LinkedIn.

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The chart below represents a high level summary of how vendors are currently scored within the ‘TOOLS INTELLIGENCE’ service from The ITAM Review.

Vendors have been assessed against our ‘Enterprise SAM’ criteria. The summary for ‘Mid-Market SAM’ can be found here.

IMPORTANT: Every vendor has unique slant and a unique way of going about their business. The scores shown below are based on standard criteria as chosen by The ITAM Review and not based on your circumstances. The results applied to your business will vary significantly depending on your environment, goals and maturity. For this reason The ITAM Review is available to provide custom analysis; collating the 79 data points assessed for each vendor and mapping them against your unique requirements. See TOOLS INTELLIGENCE for further details.

100% Independence:

• Vendors participated in this research on a voluntary basis with no charges or entry fees.
• No reprint rights or advertising rights are available for the vendors who participated.
• This research is not sponsored or affiliated to any other organization.
• The ITAM Review does not try to write nice things about vendors in the hope they might buy a reprint. This is 100% independent research.
• The assessment criteria are open and public and available free to anyone that subscribes to the free monthly newsletter.
• The ITAM Review would like to sincerely thank all vendors for their cooperation and time.

Market Synopsis: Enterprise SAM Tools

Martin Thompson

Martin is an independent software industry analyst, SAM consultant and founder of The ITAM Review and The ITSM Review. Learn more about him here and connect with him on Twitter or LinkedIn.

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Are Companies Underestimating IBM Audits?

I recently interviewed Alan Swahn, VP of Product Management at Flexera Software. We discussed IBM Licensing and the IBM audit program.

Q. Why IBM? Shouldn’t companies spend more time focusing on Microsoft, Adobe or Oracle audit compliance?

Many of IBM’s customers are facing significant software audit risk, as IBM has implemented a comprehensive audit program. IBM has undertaken what may be the most comprehensive software audit program in history. Performed by Deloitte LLP, these audits drive compensation for any unlicensed software discovered and back maintenance for previous years.

According to a recent Gartner survey, software audits are increasing. (Gartner, Survey Analysis: Survey Shows Another Increase in Software Vendor Audits? IT Asset Managers Should Prepare Now, 2 March 2011) The Gartner survey of 144 respondents attending Gartner’s IT Financial, Procurement and Asset Management Summit indicated that 61% have been audited by at least one software vendor in the past 12 months. This is the highest percentage of any comparable survey. In 2009 the percentage was 54%; in the prior three years it was between 30% and 35%. The vendors listed as carrying out the highest number of audits were IBM (41%), Adobe (40%), Microsoft (35%) and Oracle (19%).

Q. What do companies need to know about IBM Licensing complexity in order to ensure compliance?

Most IBM software licenses require that companies pay for software installed regardless of whether is it executing. This is one of the primary issues with software audits because of the technical difficulties of accurately determining what has been installed.

IBM licenses are delivered with no constraint on the number of software installations. As a result, in a distributed environment, many installations may occur with the same license, bringing the company out of compliance. Audits can reveal problems in other areas such as Lotus where Client Access Licenses (CALs) are used. For instance, Notes Enterprise CALs allow access to a full range of features including the use of Domino Designer, but this is not the case for Notes Messaging CALs. As there is no license control on CALs it is fairly easy to drift out of compliance.

IBM offers a variety of licensing and pricing programs to address the diversity of its customers and its large number of products. Each program has its own metrics, rules and options. Close monitoring of the IBM offerings, which change on a regular basis, and internal product usage is required prior to negotiation to select the right offering.

IBM uses multiple contractual documents including the IBM Customer Agreement (ICA),  International Product License Agreement (IPLA), and  License Information (LI). Each carries its own set of terms and conditions, which sometimes creates confusion on licensing entitlements. Furthermore some policies such as backup and disaster recovery license entitlements are not detailed in any agreement, but are detailed on the IBM web site and could change at any time. All these documents and references contribute to the difficulty with managing IBM licenses.

Alan Swahn, Flexera Software

Q. What about Virtualization?

Virtualization adds an additional layer of complexity.  Virtualization is the hottest trend in the market today and will remain so for several years. It is used for both infrastructure modernization and cloud computing.

The market for Operating System Virtualization will grow, in terms of volume, as much as five-fold in the next three years (Gartner, Magic Quadrant for x86 Server Virtualization infrastructure, May 2010). To further illustrate the magnitude of this trend, as of the end of 2009, 18% of enterprise datacenter workloads that could be virtualized have been virtualized. This number is expected  to rise to 50% by the end of 2012.

IBM has been a leader in datacenter consolidation and has provided its customers with opportunities to drive down costs with its hardware partitioning technology (LPAR), license type (PVU, WLC, etc.) and sub-capacity licensing rules.

LPAR is a partition technology enabling the installation of multiple instances of operating systems on the same physical machine. With the LPAR technology, processors and cores are attributed to each partition. The sub capacity licensing rules are  based on the number of processor cores available to each partition running a given application, rather than number of cores in the entire physical server.

Enterprises underestimate the license management complexity introduced by virtualization technologies. For instance the possibility to create, delete or move a virtual machine to another server with a simple click, to modify the properties of a partition or its pool of hardware resources, potentially impacts the license compliance position of an enterprise. Virtual environments should be managed and optimized with the same diligence as the software running on an enterprise’s physical devices.

Alan Swahn is VP Product Management at Flexera Software.

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Martin Thompson

Martin is an independent software industry analyst, SAM consultant and founder of The ITAM Review and The ITSM Review. Learn more about him here and connect with him on Twitter or LinkedIn.

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We are in the process of compiling our third annual SAM Tools Review.

The tentative list of vendors participating in alphabetical order is as follows:

1. 1E
2. BMC  / Numara
3. Compliance Console
4. Flexera Software
5. HP
6. License Dashboard
7. LicenseWatch
8. Matrix42
9. Sassafras
10. ServiceNow
11. Softwaremanagement.org
12. Symantec

There will be no charge for the research. As with the Inventory Review and SCCM Plug-ins Review all results will be free to access without registration. We are aiming to publish results in the summer. Subscribe to The ITAM Review newsletter to receive a notification when the report is published.

UPDATE: View this page for the 2012 SAM Tools Group Test results. 

Martin Thompson

Martin is an independent software industry analyst, SAM consultant and founder of The ITAM Review and The ITSM Review. Learn more about him here and connect with him on Twitter or LinkedIn.

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Chris Hughes, Flexera Software

This article has been contributed by Chris Hughes of Flexera Software.

Generally, when we think about SAP named user license optimization, the focus is on three key optimizations:

• Identifying inactive users
  Inactive SAP user accounts are retired to free up licenses for other users and to forestall additional purchases.
• Identifying duplicate users
  Each SAP user requires a single named user license regardless of how many SAP systems they are using. When generating a SAP LAW¹ license audit report, SAP consolidates user accounts based on one or more user fields.

If a user has different usernames on different SAP systems, that user’s accounts may not be consolidated correctly by SAP and the company will end up purchasing multiple licenses for a single user. Identifying such instances in advance allows enterprises to update their user account details and eliminate duplicate users.

• Assigning the optimal named user license type to each user
  SAP puts the onus on its customers to assign the appropriate named user license type to each user account. This can be easily accomplished using generalizations such as “Everyone in the finance department requires a Professional User license”, and indeed this type of analysis may drive initial license purchases. However, by analysing whether and how individual users actually utilize SAP, a different picture often emerges that can reduce SAP license consumption significantly. See the chart below showing an example of the considerable difference that can occur between the LAW report of licenses consumed (allocated to users) and the actual usage of the system for several categories of SAP licenses:

These optimizations rightfully belong at the forefront of any discussion of SAP license optimization and each can bring significant cost savings to an enterprise. However, some related topics also deserve consideration. Let’s explore.

• User data validation and cleansing
  User account data is not always in a state to allow all duplicates to be easily identified. Enterprises that have been through a merger or acquisition are likely to have changed user names and email addresses. Other fields may be blank. A single user may go by different names, for example I could appear as Chris on some systems and Christopher on others.To ensure duplicate users can be reliably identified and resolved, existing user account data must first be validated. This includes identifying the following:
  • Empty fields
    This is critical for fields used by SAP LAW to consolidate users. It is also important for other fields such as username, first and last name, email address and accounting number, which can be used to identify duplicate users.
  • Naming conventions
    For enterprises with username and/or email address naming conventions, finding exceptions to these conventions might help identify duplicate users, particularly if the same users have additional accounts on other SAP systems that do conform. Flexera’s naming convention is< firstinitial><lastname>@flexerasoftware.com. My proper email address is then chughes@flexerasoftware.com. If chris.hughes@flexerasoftware.com was found in SAP and there is no chughes@flexerasoftware.com in SAP, then there is no problem, except for violating the naming convention. However if both are found, it’s clear that chris.hughes@flexerasoftware.com is a duplicate and you are paying twice for the license.
  • Plausibility / activity checks
    When a system measurement is run, checks are performed to ensure SAP systems are being appropriately used. While not an optimization, enterprises should ensure that these checks don’t reveal questionable activities that could bring their license position under unnecessary scrutiny. Some examples of these checks include:
    • Users who have changed the source code in the last 12 months and therefore should require a developer license.
    • Users who are working around the clock with no break in their usage patterns, which may provide evidence of indirect usage².
    • Users who have been recently expired.
    • Users who have logged on since their validity has expired.
    • Users with multiple concurrent logins.

Several license management solutions provide at least basic support for identifying inactive and duplicate users and assigning named user license types. But there is disparity in the richness and flexibility of the approaches to calculating a user’s optimal license type.

When looking to optimize your SAP named user licenses, consider how each solution helps to bring your user data into a clean and consistent state that will maximize the outcomes of the other optimization techniques. Also look for an understanding of plausibility / activity checks and the ability to run similar types of analysis more frequently than your SAP system measurements.

This article has been contributed by Chris Hughes of Flexera Software.

¹ LAW: License Administration Workbench supports users to perform an SAP license audit, consolidating user and engine measurement data from all SAP systems into a single license position.

² Indirect usage: Non-SAP systems that exchange information with SAP systems require a license, as do users of these systems.

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SAP founders: Klaus Tschira, Hasso Plattner, Dietmar Hopp (from left to right) in 1982

This article has been contributed by Chris Hughes of Flexera Software.

SAP engines (also known as packages) are optional applications for which additional licenses must be purchased. The metric used for licensing is unique to each engine, and based upon the objects that exist within that application.

For example, SAP Payroll Processing uses the number of master records while SAP E-Recruiting uses the number of employees. Other metrics include the number of orders, contracts, patients, etc.

Many engines provide counting functions used by the SAP measurement program (USMM) to determine whether an engine is being used and how, and the results are included in the License Administration Workbench (LAW) report.

Each counting function returns one or more measurements which can subsequently be used to determine the total license consumption for an engine. For example, in one recent landscape we analysed, SAP Human Resources returned 15 measurements but only three of those contributed to the actual license consumption.

The reason why there can be more measurements than needed for the license calculation is that SAP doesn’t remove old measurements as the system evolves, at least in some cases, for compatibility between various versions of the SAP Basis and the engines. Rather, new measurements are simply added – and it’s up to customers to know which ones are important in which scenarios.

Not all engines are measured using a counting function. In any case, it may be unwise to measure license consumption only at true-up time. More regular measurements will better allow an organization to plan its SAP spend and avoid nasty surprises at true-up time. With the right techniques, you can lift the lid on engine license consumption anytime.

Let’s explore:

• Running counting functions:
  Each SAP system stores a list of engines and counting functions in the TUAPP table. The counting functions can be run independently of the SAP measurement program at any time to gather the latest measurements.Once the measurements have been gathered, they must be combined in various ways, as defined by the license agreement, to determine the current license consumption for each engine. It is recommended that organizations work closely with an SAP licensing expert to avoid potential pitfalls which include:
  • Some counting functions may return measurements from the end of the last period (i.e. at true-up) and should not be used to calculate the current license consumption.
  • Some engines are considered to be active only when their measurements exceed a threshold value – below this threshold the engine is considered inactive.
  • Many measurements are not used in license calculations – in the SAP Human Resources example above, only 3 of 15 measurements were relevant.
  • License calculations may change based on various conditions. For example, the license calculation for the SAP Human Resources engine varies based on both the Basis version and the price list version.
  • Several measurements contain a program error and according to SAP are no longer considered relevant for licensing, but USMM will continue to return measurements as if everything is working properly.

• Some engine measurements are not reliable when certain other engines are also found in the same landscape.
• Your SAP contract may contain clauses that change how individual engines should be measured.
• Analysing CPU consumption data: Some engines are licensed based on the number of users using the application. The methods for accurately determining the number of users can be complex and must be performed for usage during the true-up period.
• Counting employees: There are many ways to measure the employees in your organization, for engines licensed by number of employees. Possibilities include counting the active personnel records in SAP Human Resources, user objects in Active Directory, user records in your configuration management system and much more.

SAP offers hundreds of engines, and the variety of measurements makes engine licensing a very challenging problem. The techniques above can be applied to many SAP engines but there are many exceptions as well.

Support for engines in SAP license optimization solutions is limited; especially those products that run externally to SAP and so cannot access its engine counting functions. To be successful not only requires a product with engine capabilities but most importantly a vendor with the expertise to guide you safely through the pitfalls.

This article has been contributed by Chris Hughes of Flexera Software.

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Application Usage Management company Flexera Software has been added to the US Department of Defense (DOD) list of approved providers for IT Asset Management.

US federal defense agencies can now use FlexNet Manager Suite to help implement new Software License Optimization provision in the National Defense Authorization Act.

As a specialist provider to enterprises and governments, the firm is no doubt pleased to find that its FlexNet Manager Suite is now the only solution on ESI’s approved-vendor list that provides Software License Optimization capabilities.

NOTE: ESI is a joint initiative sponsored by the DoD Chief Information Officer and is designed to save time and money on commercial software, IT hardware, and services by lowering procurement costs and gaining greater visibility into IT assets.

Flexera Software partners DLT and Immix Group were awarded rights to sell FlexNet Manager Suite under the ESI contract.

As a result of this award, federal military agencies have access to the leading solution that will enable implementation of Section 937 – the Software License Optimization provision – of the recently passed National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

The law mandates the DOD’s CIO to conduct a department-wide software asset inventory – an examination of current license utilisation rates, and an assessment of the means by which the DOD can achieve the greatest possible economies of scale and cost savings in the procurement, use and optimisation of selected software licenses.

“Section 937 reflects bi-partisan congressional recognition of the tremendous savings the DOD can enjoy by implementing industry-recognized best practices around software license management and optimization,” said Jim Ryan, Flexera Software’s Chief Operating Officer.  “The ESI contract awarded to FlexNet Manager Suite now makes it possible for the government to leverage the most trusted solution on the market to help it comply with the law and significantly reduce waste in software spend.”

NOTE: Overspend on software occurs when the government buys more software than it actually uses – so-called shelfware; when it doesn’t fully utilize the software it has a right to use based on its license entitlements; and when the government uses more software than it is entitled to, throwing it out of compliance with its contract and subjecting it to financial penalties from software vendors.

According to the 2012 Key Trends in Software Licensing and Pricing Survey Report prepared by Flexera Software with assistance from IDC, 38% of organisations surveyed indicated that 11% or more of their application spend is associated with applications that are overused, and therefore out of compliance.  Moreover, 56% of respondents said that 11% or more of their application spend is associated with shelfware.

Adrian Bridgwater

Adrian is Editor of The ITAM Review and ITSM Review. Adrian is also regular writer and blogger with Computer Weekly, Dr. Dobb’s Journal and other IT publications. Connect with him on Twitter or LinkedIn.

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Which SAM service provider will come out on top?

Aspera, Concorde, eTelligent, Flexera Software, ITAMS, Computacenter, SHI and Softline Group are confirmed participants for our upcoming SAM Managed Service Providers review.

Our review will delve into the SAM capabilities of companies providing SAM expertise as an ongoing managed service.

Our assessment criteria at a glance:

• SAM Capabilities
• Conflicts of Interest
• References
• Audit Defence
• Deliverables

Read the outline assessment criteria here.

Reviewer: Martin Thompson

Confirmed Participants:

1. Aspera (Germany)
2. Concorde (UK)
3. eTelligent (USA)
4. Flexera (USA)
5. ITAMS (UK)
6. Computacenter (UK)
7. SHI (USA)
8. Softline Group (Germany)

All results will be published free of charge without registration on The ITAM Review. You may wish to subscribe to the ITAM Review newsletter or follow us on Twitter to receive a notification when the research is published. Reviews will take place in August and September.

Martin Thompson

Martin is an independent software industry analyst, SAM consultant and founder of The ITAM Review and The ITSM Review. Learn more about him here and connect with him on Twitter or LinkedIn.

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It was great to attend the Gartner ITAM conference in London last week (thanks to our friends at the big G for inviting us).

Sentiment from the show floor and delegates was positive. I heard the odd grumble about content but overall I think Gartner, as always, did a great job of capturing the industry zeitgeist.

Especially as:

• a) Old timers in the SAM industry need to remember the influx of newbies who are completely fresh to the topic and
• b) the vast majority of organizations are still fumbling with basics

My favourite sessions were from Terry Reddy of ‘The Welfare’ in Ireland and Alexa Bona’s session on Cloud Sourcing and Contracting. Great pragmatic stuff.

Above all, great networking.

But don’t take my word for it – below is a quick showcase of industry suppliers:

Rimini Street were presenting Gartner delegates with a refreshing alternative to spiralling SAP and Oracle maintenance contracts. Rimini Street claim 73% of Oracle User Group members admitted to only upgrading their Oracle estate to stay supported. The Rimini alternative is to upgrade when it suits the business and in the meantime enjoy maintenance renewals at half the normal cost.

Rimini Street

The ‘Livingstone’ team were showing off their new brand (formerly SSS) which is said to reflect the evolution of their business from consulting to managed services. Livingstone has new investors and new senior management team structure in the UK. Co-founder Jason Allaway now has his sights set on US expansion.

Livingstone

The 1E team declared strong interest in their ’1e Workspace’ offering (VDI at 1/10 the cost). The team also noted a maturing ITAM market with organizations recognizing license management as a standard business function rather than ‘nice to have’.

1E

The License Dashboard team were out to prove that the ‘Solution Provider Tracks’ needn’t be a graveyard slot by pulling in more delegates than the average Gartner analyst session (Highest attended Solution provider session in EMEA apparently). The team reported a positive event with good conversations with delegates.

License Dashboard

007 lookalike Martin Prendergast, CEO at Concorde, said it was good to see ITAM growing in stature with Gartner bringing new thought leadership into the space and helping Gartner clients navigate new trends. He also noted that there continued to be a mismatch in Gartner coverage.

(BMC and HP cited a ‘leaders’ in the space yet not present at the event. See also Gartner Asset Repository Marketscope and Disconnect in Tools coverage from 2012.)

Concorde

Neela Mistry-Bradshaw, Marketing Manager at ITAMS, was taking an ‘assertive’ approach to engaging delegates on the Aspera stand. Aspera were pleased with their interactive session on Compliance Audit Defence.

Aspera

James Benn of Flexera Software reported a ‘full-house’ to see their License Optimization session with Patrik Hillelson from Ericsson.

Flexera

The iQuate team were very pleased with their ‘Gartner Cool Vendor’ status and stated it was good to see the market addressing datacentre issues, a trend reflected in Gartner sessions.

iQuate

Snow Software were pleased to be building their relationship with Gartner and validating their place in the market after many years ‘flying under the radar’.

Snow Software

Finally, the shy and retiring David Bloxham reported good conversations with delegates and strong interest in their session with Iain Brown with Aviva. David also stated, after he’d finished impressing everyone with his David Brent moves, that it was good to see ITAM as a topic getting some appreciation.

Software One

Martin Thompson

Martin is an independent software industry analyst, SAM consultant and founder of The ITAM Review and The ITSM Review. Learn more about him here and connect with him on Twitter or LinkedIn.

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This article has been contributed by Vincent Brasseur of Flexera Software.

On May 6th 2013 Adobe has announced that it will move away from perpetual licenses for Creative Suite products. Following this announcement, since June 17th 2013, all new Creative Suite products are now only available through subscriptions. They have been rebranded as Creative Cloud products.

This change has brought some misconceptions due to the “cloud” reference in the branding and features provided with the new products through the cloud infrastructure. The products are not delivered through the Software as a Service (SaaS) model that is commonly found in the cloud; they are downloaded from the cloud and installed locally on devices. There is no change here, except that from time to time the software will connect to the internet and validate the license. Additional cloud features are delivered with these products such as the capability to store files, up to a specific limit in the cloud, or file sharing and collaboration. From the licensing side, it is a basic subscription and this is the most visible change of all: customers will no longer be able to purchase perpetual licenses; these products are now offered only through subscriptions.

Creative Cloud products come in four plans: Individual, Teams, Enterprises and Education. The benefits of the Creative Cloud for Teams edition include the ability to provide a centralized administration, licensing and purchasing console with the flexibility to add or reassign seats as needed, shared storage in the cloud, access to Adobe experts (two sessions per user, per year) and central deployment. It requires an annual commitment.

One of the strong limitations of the Teams edition is that it provides only the full suite of products; subscriptions for individual applications are not available. If a user only needs Illustrator, subscribing to the Teams edition ($69.99/month) will cost up to three and half times the price of an Individual subscription for a single application ($19.99/month). The other issue here is that Individual subscriptions are separated from Teams edition ones—there is no management or data sharing possible across editions. Another limitation with the Team edition not related to licensing is that organizations can’t really prevent users from storing data in the cloud. The only solution provided is to change the organization firewall settings. The Enterprise edition is similar to the team edition but offers additional services such as custom deployment, software management through the Adobe Licensing Website (LWS), enterprise customer support and expert services from Adobe.

Pros and Cons

There are pros and cons in any subscription model:

Pros

• The biggest advantage here is to provide a low entry price to an amazing suite of products delivering high quality features.
• Free access to the latest releases of the products. Some will point out that you need to pay every month to keep the software running and pricing may not stay the same overtime compared to an upfront fixed price offered by a perpetual license.
• The cost of the subscription compared to a perpetual purchase, is worth it for many organizations. For instance, the full master collection price is about $2,500. This amount represents three to four years of subscription depending on the edition considered and does not includeupgrades, which costs about $500 when going from CS5.5 to CS6. In this case, the subscription is very attractive.

Cons

• Editions such as Design Standard ($1,299) are less attractive as the subscription price is still the same; over three years, the subscription price will be more expensive than a perpetual license.
• Overall on the very long run, a subscription will typically always be more expensive: rather than collecting $600 to upgrade products every 2-3 years from perpetual licenses, Adobe will get about the same amount or more every year with subscriptions.
• Adobe could always raise the subscription prices in the future.

Automated Cloud Compliance?

With a subscription model and internet validation from time to time, compliance of Creative Cloud products should not be an issue.

Organizations should be always compliant as the mechanism to avoid under licensing situations is included in the product. This assumption may be defeated by illegal installations: the Creative Cloud products have been already hacked and are available for download from pirate web sites. If an organization has only valid subscription installations, software license optimization needs to be performed to avoid over-buying.

With perpetual licenses, installations can reside forever on devices. When a user requests access to an application and no more licenses are available from the organization’s licensing pool, then license re-harvesting can occur to locate unused installations of the product that can then be reallocated. With the subscription model, it works almost the same way but there are few caveats. For individual licenses with no commitment, constant monitoring is needed. As soon as an application is no longer being used by a given user, there is no compelling reason to pay the monthly fee. For all licenses with yearly commitment, monitoring usage prior to the anniversary date will be required to renew only the seats needed. Note that with the Creative Cloud for teams, licenses can be added at any time but they all co-terminate at the anniversary date of the membership.

Vincent Brasseur, Flexera Software

Perpetual to Cloud Migration

Adobe offers incentives to migrate existing perpetual licenses to subscription. Again, depending on what licenses the organization currently owns, the offer may or not be attractive. Some organizations will take the opportunity to go full subscription. It is likely that many customers will carry a combination of perpetual and subscription licenses for many years; not all users migrate to the latest release or need to get the additional benefits offered by the subscription. In the short run, this will add a bit of complexity to license management rather than simplification; figuring out the overall license compliance position for the organization will require sorting out each installation according to its licensing model. When a user requests a license, perpetual licenses should be allocated first and then subscriptions, if available, should be used.

Adobe has been incredibly successful with the Creative Cloud offering. So far they have 700,000 subscribers as of the end of June, well ahead of its 600,000 subscriber goal. It will help bring many organizations into license compliance and avoid costly software audits; however, it will not help organizations to optimize licenses and driving their costs down. This is the purpose of Software License Optimization tools such as FlexNet Manager for Adobe.

This article has been contributed by Vincent Brasseur of Flexera Software.

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Adobe Acrobat 9 and Creative Suite 4 were the first products to take advantage of ISO/IEC 19770-2 tags.

The new Creative Cloud subscription offering from Adobe also includes swid tags.

Adobe define tags as :

“Software tagging is the process of maintaining a set of tag files (.swidtag) on a client machine to determine the installation and license state of various software products. A software tag file is an XML file that contains information for identification and management of software products. The tag format that Adobe utilizes is the ISO/IEC 19770-2:2009.”

“Installation” state is particularly useful from a security point of view, but for the purposes of SAM we’re interested in this point:

“For asset management, an administrator can run a SAM tool that scans the tag files on the client machine and parses them for analysis and reporting.”

Adobe admits that

“Identification of standard Creative Suite application installs compared to Creative Cloud subscription based applications can also be difficult.”

Since Adobe Creative Cloud is not really a cloud offering but a normal install with cloud registration/management we can also use ISO-2 tags to track Creative Cloud variants and differentiate them from traditional perpetual Adobe installs.

It is possible to differentiate between Creative Suite and Creative Cloud using the XML tag (using the human eye or a SAM tool which handles -2 tags). However a serious limitation of using -2 tags with Creative Cloud is a tag is not installed for every installation. The example used by Adobe is that if Photoshop and Dreamweaver were installed as part of Creative Cloud only one tag would be installed. Close but no cigar…

So in summary, whilst -2 tags are a great way to validate and support your existing data sources (such as add/remove programs or SAM tool software recognition libraries) it is not advisable to use them in isolation for Adobe.

The screenshots below show Flexera Flexnet Manager for Adobe picking up -2 tags XML data and layering the information within their own install library information. The screenshots were taken during a review of Flexera’s Adobe license management capabilities for a feature to be published soon (we also looked at 1E and License Dashboard).

Further Reading

• Tagvault.org
• Software ID Tag Identification for Creative Cloud Applications FAQ
• Adobe Creative Suite Enterprise Deployment
• Software Tag Implementation in Adobe Products (Tech Note 2011)
• Controlling access to Creative Cloud Services

Flexera Flexnet Manager for Adobe

Flexera Flexnet Manager for Adobe

Martin Thompson

Martin is an independent software industry analyst, SAM consultant and founder of The ITAM Review and The ITSM Review. Learn more about him here and connect with him on Twitter or LinkedIn.

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It was great to attend the IAITAM Conference in St. Petersburg, Florida last month, and thanks to our friends there for inviting us to be part of such a superb event.

There was an engaging and friendly atmosphere especially at the Beach Bash Opening (not surprising with a beautiful sunset and fireworks and sparklers for all), which continued throughout the conference with great networking and excellent keynote sessions.

There was a general consensus that the event did an excellent job of addressing current ITAM issues with a balance of practitioners and Vendors in attendance.

IAITAM did a great job of keeping things fresh with news of their international partnership with APMG-International for expanding its ITAM training courses globally, as well as much needed corporate light entertainment from Greg Schwem towards the end of the event.

The exhibitor’s hall also presented a great opportunity to see how the ITAM marketing is evolving through the showcasing of products and services. Overall the event was a great place to learn, network with peers, and meet friends old and new.

Below is a quick showcase of industry suppliers:

Eracent attended “because IAITAM is the first organisation to provide a platform and venue for practitoners”

Mobile Reach attended to promote its mobile solutions for ITAM and said the conference was a place “where they could learn and teach at the same time”

CDW attended to spread awareness of its SAM capabilities and different way of working

SHI said that at the IAITAM conference they “learn as much as we do teach” and that the volume of SAM practitioners who attend makes it a great event

Express Metrix revealed news of a new office opening in the UK

Destruct Data attended to promote its data security and data destruction services

Aspera attended to meet customers and practitioners (with the opinion that the event “reaches a broader audience of practitioners” than most)

Miro Consulting attended to make its presence felt as players in the ITAM community

Dynamic Recycling felt that the attendees were the “right people for them”.

Flexera Software said it has been “proud sponsors of the event for the past 6 years because it has a targeted audience for SAM and ITAM and the practioners who attend are the right fit for us”.

Siwel Consulting said the event was great because “you meet real people with real problems”

1E attended to meet and discuss the latest challenges as everyone strives to save cash and improve ITAM

SIMS Recycling wanted to demonstrate its reach to the ITAM fraternity and demonstrate its capabilities in end-of-life electronics

HP attended to support the ITAM industry, discuss its latest HP releases with customers and to listen to competitors presenting

Airwatch said the event gave them “exposure to the right people making IT decisions”

ITRenew wanted to discuss electronic recycling and data sanitization with its target market

Sassafras were there as supporters of the event with John Tomeny being an IAITAM fellow

ECS Refining wanted practitioners to know that it was ‘a one stop shop’ for finding the value in recycling and resales within Asset Management

Microsoft said that the event was a key investment for them as it offers great networking and learning opportunities

The next event

Their next IAITAM conference Spring 2014 ACE will take place in Las Vegas 29th April – 1st May. As the Official Media Sponsor of this event, we have secured a special discount for all of our readers, please CONTACT US to find out more about our negotiated rates and how to book your place.

We hope to see you there!

Glenn Thompson

Glenn is the Commercial Director at Enterprise Opinions and is responsible for all commercial operations and partnerships within the group.

If you would like to discuss commercial opportunities across any of the Enterprise Opinions sites please contact Glenn via email or social media.

When not working attending industry events and networking you will find him obsessed with anything to do with Martial Arts and flying planes. Glenn also supports Chelsea Football Club (but don’t hold that against him – everyone has their cross to bear!)

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This review of Flexnet Manager for Adobe is part of our Adobe License Management feature.

Flexera Commercial Summary

Flexnet Manager for Adobe License Management

Flexera Software’s key competitive differentiator for managing Adobe Licensing is their product use rights library that encapsulates the license entitlements provided by Adobe. Other competitive differentiators include Flexera’s discovery, inventory and Application Recognition Library that includes the ability to collect and utilize ISO tags for Adobe software identification and suite recognition. ISO tags can also be used to validate inventory sources for Adobe software. (See this article for further details). In addition, their SKU library of more than 600,000 software part numbers, including 30,000 Adobe SKUs allows automated purchase order processing and reconciliation between licenses purchased and installed software.

The use rights for Adobe will vary according to the product purchased and the license mechanism used to procure it. Flexera helps navigate this myriad of potential options by linking use rights to specific versions via a SKU catalogue.

I have written before about harnessing the value of software SKU catalogues. By identifying the specific product use rights relevant to each individual software line item you have purchased (Only really possible by using a SKU), organizations can fully utilize every product use right available to them.

There are specific Adobe product use rights that Flexera exploits, including the following:

1. Upgrade Rights – with the right license program, Adobe customers can upgrade to the latest version when it becomes available (Except Adobe Creative Cloud).
2. Downgrade Rights – Adobe customers have the right to use a version of the software older than the one purchased.
3. Second Use Policy or Portable Use Policy – Adobe allows customers to use an application on a user’s second device – for example a work and home PC.  (Does not apply to dual boot machines or mixed operating systems).
4. Multiple copies on the same device – Adobe allows multiple versions of the same application on one device. So several different versions might be installed and only consume one license.

By taking advantage of each and every one of these rights, and verifying their entitlement against procurement records via the SKU, a Software Asset Manager can squeeze every last drop of value from Adobe investments whilst also mitigating their compliance risk.

Minimising compliance risk is not just about counting installations on endpoint devices, but also requires an understanding virtual delivery models such as virtual desktops and application virtualization. The way Flexera calculates license consumption includes not only physical installations but also these virtual delivery models. This requires the ability to collect data from access control lists (ACL) and usage data, if available, from the virtualization server (e.g. Microsoft App-V, Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop servers).

SKU data from purchasing is captured during the import process and linked to installs to ensure exactly the right product use rights are used. Flexera then goes to work to ensure these are used to full capacity and the customer is in their optimal position.

This approach might seem like licensing nit picking with no obvious business value – but taking advantage of these product use rights can significantly reduce the amount of licensing required.  Even a small proportion of users in an estate using Adobe on a second device and a handful of users with multiple copies on the same device can make a big impact.

Similarly, organizations that find themselves with an Adobe shortfall or a mishmash of the wrong installs for the wrong licenses – can take advantage of upgrade and downgrade to reduce their exposure.

In addition to the Adobe discovery and recognition features above,  FlexNet Manager for Adobe also provides management of Adobe Contracts and advanced reporting and trend analysis.

Screenshots

This review of Flexnet Manager for Adobe is part of our Adobe License Management feature.

Links & Further Resources

• Flexnet Manager for Adobe Product Page
• Flexnet Manager for Adobe Data Sheet
• Whitepaper: ‘What does it take to achieve Software License Optimization?’
• Contact Flexera Software

DISCLAIMER, SCOPE & LIMITATIONS

The information contained in this review is based on sources and information believed to be accurate as of the time it was created. Therefore, the completeness and current accuracy of the information provided cannot be guaranteed. Readers should therefore use the contents of this review as a general guideline and not as the ultimate source of truth.

Similarly, this review is not based on rigorous and exhaustive technical study. The ITAM Review recommends that readers complete a thorough live evaluation before investing in technology.

This is a paid review. That is, the vendors included in this review paid to participate in exchange for all results and analysis being published free of charge without registration. For further information please read the ‘Group Tests’ section on our Disclosure page.

Martin Thompson

Martin is an independent software industry analyst, SAM consultant and founder of The ITAM Review and The ITSM Review. Learn more about him here and connect with him on Twitter or LinkedIn.

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Let the battle begin!

We’re excited to be kicking off our research briefings next week for our competitive analysis on Asset Repository. Scheduled for publication in February, vendors confirmed to participate so far include:

• Axios Systems
• Flexera Software
• ServiceNow

The research will highlight competitive differentiators; feature key strengths (and weaknesses too of course); and focus on three key feature areas: lifecycle, money and governance. Once reviewed, we will crown one Vendor “Best in Class” and the “leader” in Asset Repository.

Our research is based solely on responses to an in-depth questionnaire as well as a series of briefings, but we are always interested in hearing the end-user perspective.

Do you have experience with any of the participating Vendors? Do you have any views on their capabilities when it comes to Asset Repository? Are there any Vendors that you think are successful in this area who are not currently scheduled to participate in this review?

The review will be conducted by Martin Thompson. For more information on the assessment view the Group Test criteria here. Vendors can still sign up to be involved up until Friday 31^st January.

Subscribe to the ITAM Review newsletter or follow us on Twitter to receive a notification when the research is published.

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Sophie Danby

Sophie is the Marketing and Community Manager at Enterprise Opinions. She acts as public liaison for the audience, contributors and industry partners across ITAM Review, ITSM Review, Energy Demand and Cloud Developer Review.

If you would like to contribute an article to any of the Enterprise Opinions sites please contact Sophie via any of the social media channels below. Contrary to popular rumour she does not whip people who submit articles later than the agreed deadline.

Sophie is also an independent Digital Relationship Marketing Specialist working with vendors and small businesses to improve their social media and digital marketing efforts.

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I am pleased to announce my report on SAM Managed Service Providers (MSP) is now available.

Download the full report here: (registration required)

http://download.itassetmanagement.net/sam-msp/

A competitive comparison of specialist SAM providers

An independent review of leading worldwide SAM Managed Service Providers

This group test looks at the capabilities of six leading SAM Managed Service Providers: Aspera, Computacenter, eTelligent, ITAM Solutions, SHI International and Softline Solutions.

There is considerable interest in ITAM managed services, although the market is very much in it’s infancy. The key difference when buying SAM Managed services rather than SAM tools and consulting is that organizations are buying an SLA or a business outcome rather than technology.

Service providers were rated based on the expertise, methodology and strength of customer references. General market observations during the study included the industry skills shortage, the use of underlying SAM technology, commercial independence and conflicts of interest, the scope of services, the duration of service relationships, key market drivers and using ISO as a reference model.

Contents Summary

• Introduction
• Assessment Criteria
• Market Observations
• Buyers Guide to Selecting a SAM MSP – General Advice
• Buyers Guide to Selecting a SAM MSP – Anecdotal Feedback
• Overall Best in Class
• Partner Summaries
• Anecdotal References for Providers

Download the full report here: (registration required)

http://download.itassetmanagement.net/sam-msp/

Martin Thompson

Martin is an independent software industry analyst, SAM consultant and founder of The ITAM Review and The ITSM Review. Learn more about him here and connect with him on Twitter or LinkedIn.

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Mathieu Baissac

Ahead of the Compliance Manager Summit 10-11 March in Santa Clara, we interviewed speaker and VP Product Manager at Flexera Software, Mathieu Baissac about his thoughts on compliance and the ITAM industry in general.

Q. Is it possible to deploy compliance aware software and still be non compliant? I.e. does compliance aware lock usage to prevent non-compliance or is it just an information mechanism?

Application Producers have different options as they weigh how strict their enforcement policies should be.

What we at Flexera Software provide is flexibility to deliver a whole range of enforcement across the spectrum of options.  Producers determine enforcement policy by understanding their markets and what works best for their customers.  For instance, a market need for flexibility would weigh in favour of loose enforcement (i.e. would it be detrimental to the customer or the customer relationship if non-compliant use resulted in a “denial of service”?)

Strict enforcement may be more appropriate when non-compliance would result in significant cost overages untenable by the customer, such as is the case with very expensive software applications – like those developed for the engineering field.   It’s critical that producers be able to make their own decisions around enforcement, and then have the flexibility to build that policy into their software quickly and easily.

In addition, there is a new trend towards providing a usage-based license models where usage is captured in the application and then shared with the producers. This is much like a cell phone plan where a customer purchases 500 minutes per month but is allowed to go beyond-and will be billed for the extra minutes at a pre-negotiated price. So “compliance aware” software can offer a full range of compliant and non-compliant use – depending upon the policies set by the producer.

Q. Many software publishers, notably Microsoft and Oracle, prefer a relaxed and open approach to licensing – preferring to allow developers to use their software unrestrained on a trust basis, placing the compliance emphasis on the customer. Can you describe instances of where companies have previously taken this approach but converted to more automated compliance mechanism? (i.e. how do you overcome the objection of allowing developers access to anything they want).

Many producers have moved from no-enforcement to enforcement and have often seen 20-30% increase in revenues by reducing non-compliance as well as by being able to provide different pricing tiers and different pricing models. The reality is that even Microsoft has moved into an enforcement model with the KMS, MAK and other solutions for their new releases of Office and operating systems. They have done this by providing value to the enterprises: (a) management tools (b) reports and (c) web sites with much information. In addition-they use an informational enforcement approach for most geographies. This is a common approach with producers who move from no-enforcement to enforcement.  It provides value to the enterprises with tools, reports, etc.  It also introduces licensing with a gentler enforcement approach generally, and then once customers are comfortable with this approach greater enforcement, for instance, for particular geographies and/or certain types of customers.

Q. Can you comment on any trends in the licensing space? Perhaps on the impact of cloud delivery and subscription models on compliance?

All of the major IT trends – from virtualization and the cloud, to mobility, SaaS, consumerization of IT and BYOD – have significant licensing implications.  Every environment in which software can be consumed, or manner in which software can be delivered – must be licensed accordingly.  Software producers must establish the rules by which their software can be consumed in, say, virtualized or cloud environments – then establish how they wish to enforce those rules – whether strictly or loosely.  Likewise – enterprises are accountable to those rules, and therefore must understand their usage needs and licensing implications before they make any decisions to migrate.

In addition to the major trends referenced above (cloud, virtualization, mobility, BYOD, etc.), we’re seeing large momentum for usage-based software licensing models.  Enterprises are moving away from perpetual licenses, preferring instead to pay for software based on how they’re actually using it and deriving value from it.  With usage-based licensing models being added to the current mix (perpetual, subscription, etc.) – this will only add more complexity.  As more software ISVs offer usage-based licensing options, enterprises’ software environments will grow even more complex.

Q. What would your advice be to someone who is struggling with compliance issues?

For enterprise users of software, complexity will not go away – and therefore compliance issues are here to stay.  Software Asset Management has emerged as a discipline to help enterprises “future-proof” their software estates, and stay on top of compliance irrespective of the changes occurring in the technology landscape.  Compliance is no longer something that can be achieved without automation – so enterprises facing compliance issues will need to invest in automation to stay ahead of the curve.

For producers struggling with non-compliance, we suggest that they start looking at either adding licensing enforcement or adding data/usage capture to their applications. We find that audit-based compliance models are losing favor with both producers and enterprises and a new approach is needed for most. Many producers are finding it desirable to take the burden of compliance off of their customers and assuming it themselves.   This is a business decision that producers must make.

Q. Looking at the industry as a whole, outside of Compliance what do you see to be the biggest issue for businesses when it comes to ITAM?

Future-proofing the application estate against constant-change: New licensing models, new delivery models, new environments.  Producers need to be able to quickly package their code, make money from them and protect their IP in a growing complexity of environments – all while still needing to focus on their core competency of delivering solutions.  Enterprises need to efficiently and cost effectively deliver and deploy their apps in ever-changing environments – all while ensuring they’re buying what they need and using what they have.

Q. Where do you see the ITAM industry in ten years time?

We believe that ITAM will migrate from a compliance to an optimization process. The producers will take the compliance burden and ITAM will then solely focus on ensuring that customers get the best value for their money.

Outside of compliance, optimization or spend management is the other side of the coin. Software spend is growing at three times the rate of other areas of the IT budget (6% vs about 2%). Organizations need to do a much better job of managing software costs and getting the best ROI from their software investment. Even as organizations migrate to the cloud/SaaS delivery model, spend management will still be critical, while compliance will be less of an issue.

Q. Finally, many readers of the ITAM Review will be familiar with Flexera Software for their ELO side of the business – please can you describe this side of the business and how it compliments the ELO business? 

Flexera Software is unique in that we provide application usage management solutions for both software producers, and the enterprises using that software. We’re in a position to understand from a first-hand perspective opportunities for efficiency, savings and maximum value that exist throughout the entire software license lifecycle – from creation to retirement.  Flexera Software’s producer-focused solutions help software vendors and intelligent device manufacturers more flexibly package and productize their code, monetize their software, protect their intellectual property and electronically deliver their software to customers.

Our licensing, entitlement management and delivery solutions complement our Software License Optimization solutions in several ways.  First, we help with updating the software to keep it compliant and ensure delivery of updates that customers are contractually entitled to.  In addition, by empowering software producers who wish to implement licensing enforcement, we enable them to assume more of the responsibility of software license compliance.  When enforcement is built into the software products rather than left to enterprises to manage, customers no longer have to worry about “discovering the applications,” nor monitoring usage and ensuring it complies with their licensing agreements.

Thank-you to Mathieu for taking the time to talk to us. We look forward to hearing from him at the Compliance Manager Summit in sunny California. 

Sophie Danby

Sophie is the Marketing and Community Manager at Enterprise Opinions. She acts as public liaison for the audience, contributors and industry partners across ITAM Review, ITSM Review, Energy Demand and Cloud Developer Review.

If you would like to contribute an article to any of the Enterprise Opinions sites please contact Sophie via any of the social media channels below. Contrary to popular rumour she does not whip people who submit articles later than the agreed deadline.

Sophie is also an independent Digital Relationship Marketing Specialist working with vendors and small businesses to improve their social media and digital marketing efforts.

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This is an independent review and comparison of specialist tools for managing Oracle licensing.

Solutions reviewed:

• Easytrust
• Flexera Software
• HP
• Lime Software
• Snow Software

How are Oracle databases configured? 

Whilst Oracle has hundreds of product lines, ITAM Review readers told us that the proliferation of Oracle databases and their configuration was a key concern. It should also be noted that Oracle tool verification (detailed below) only pertains to Oracle Enterprise Edition databases. So this review predominantly focuses on technology to identify and manage Oracle databases.

Buyers Guide – Questions to ask suppliers

The following points should be considered when selecting a tool to manage Oracle Licensing and formed the basis of our review and initial conversations with suppliers. Questions to ask:

1. Do you sell or profit from Oracle Licensing?
2. Is your company an Oracle partner, verified or in any way affiliated with Oracle?
3. Besides the product/service being reviewed – what services do you offer that support clients with the management of their Oracle estate? (E.g. Audit defence, license reconciliation, consulting etc.)
4. Please provide a high level overview of any features or deliverables that aid Oracle license management
5. What specific product lines / product families does your product / service work with? E.g. is it just Oracle databases or do you also work with other products or product families? PeopleSoft / Siebel / BEA / JDE and other Business Apps. Please specify the limitations or scope of Oracle coverage.
6. How are instances and installs of Oracle identified? How is data verified and false positives identified?
7. How are the configurations of Oracle products and accessible options identified and managed?
8. Please describe any features relevant to managing Oracle in virtual environments
9. How does your technology / service interact or support the Oracle LMS auditing and review process (e.g. Provision of data, population of Oracle Server Worksheets, working with LMS, Oracle verified status etc.)
10. Please provide a high level summary of any features or deliverables that aid clients with Oracle negotiations and reducing Oracle spend

If there any other key considerations for managing Oracle please share them via a comment below.

Competitive Differentiators – Managing Oracle Databases

Through the review process we identified twelve key technical features to consider when managing Oracle Licensing:

1. DISCOVERY – does your technology auto-discover the existence of Oracle databases
2. AGENT or AGENTLESS scanning options
3. HARDWARE – track the underlying hardware of Oracle database instances (Hardware specification, processors, cores)
4. VIRTUAL – calculate whether an Oracle database instance is installed within a virtual machine and track the virtual to physical relationship
5. CLUSTER – identify whether an Oracle database instance is connected or otherwise related to other virtual instances
6. SOFTWARE – track the version of Oracle database
7. USERS – track the user list of the Oracle database
8. OPTIONS & PACKS – track whether Oracle database options are a) Installed and b) In use c) When they were switched on
9. ROOT CAUSE – identify why Oracle database packs and options were switched on
10. OSW – auto-populate Oracle Server Worksheet
11. REPORTING – Assist in calculating compliance or generating relevant reports to support compliance and optimization
12. ARCHITECTURE OPTIMIZATION – Forecast alternate configurations – meet the same technical goals using simpler or cheaper methods.

I found point 12 particularly interesting and represents where the SAM market is going. It represents the next maturity step beyond compliance. “Now that we have proven compliance – let us optimize our architecture so we’re delivering the same or better technical solution with a more efficient or suitable licensing structure”. Partners have a key role to play here in helping customers structure their architecture in a way that gets the job done whilst tip-toeing through contractual terms.

Oracle Focus

Easytrust and Lime are specifically focused towards managing Oracle only; Flexera, HP and Snow all manage a broad range of other software publishers.

It’s a big ask and unrealistic to expect your SAM tool investment to cover every single known device and software application known to man, from your mobile device to the software on a mainframe. SAM Software providers are vying for this space, but we’re not there yet.

Organizations typically need a blend of tools to get the job done. Depending on your individual scope – it might be appropriate to use a main SAM tool here, a tactical tool there, a partner to help a bit over there and so on.

Oracle Verified

Oracle began verifying tools in 2010 with the aim of benchmarking the output of tools against the output of Oracle LMS internal tools.

If you run an Oracle LMS script in your environment, the output is raw data. Your choice is to either pass that raw data to Oracle for interpretation, sieve through it yourself or work with a third party. The Oracle verification process recognizes third party tools that interpret data to an appropriate standard.

The business advantage here is mainly a political one; you can understand your Oracle install position without necessarily engaging with the Oracle LMS team. So to a degree, verified tools provide a buffer between Oracle LMS and your organization. Theoretically customers should be more autonomous in managing their license position as a result. I say ‘theoretically’, because even an organization that has a 100% perfectly accurate view of their Oracle installations has only one half of the compliance story. Recent conversations with organizations via the Campaign for Clear Licensing suggests that even the most innocuous licensing enquiry to Oracle LMS can trigger an audit.

At the time of writing all the tools reviewed were Oracle verified with the exception of Snow. From what I have seen there are no limitations to Snow meeting the requirements, all they lack is the all important rubber stamp from Oracle, which I understand is pending.

Our review was quite close (See the features comparison table below). I would argue that the Oracle tool verification process is responsible for this – setting a clear watermark on what is required. Oracle is not everyone’s favourite software publisher, but they should be recognized for setting a standard for inventory. I wish other publishers would do the same.

More on the Oracle tool verification process here: http://www.itassetmanagement.net/2013/10/29/oracle-tool-verification/

Key Features Comparison – Oracle License Management

The table below compares the five participants in our review against the twelve key competitive requirements. Click on the image to enlarge it.

CLICK TO ENLARGE

The image is also available directly here:

http://www.itassetmanagement.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Key-Features-Comparison-Oracle-License-Management.png 

Setting Expectations and Silver Bullets

In summary, many tools on the market can track the existence of Oracle – but only a handful can truly identify how Oracle is configured – which is where the risk lies.

Software Asset Management is never an out-of-the-box experience and never is this more the case than with Oracle. The technology reviewed is focussed at helping generate the necessary configuration detail required to populate an Oracle Server Worksheet. There is much work to do beyond this point, expect to call upon the services of an Oracle Licensing specialist even if you have these tools deployed (A point echoed in our Oracle podcast).

BEST IN CLASS – LIME SOFTWARE

SAM is first and foremost a governance process – identifying and managing risk.

Given the impact and financial risk associated with Oracle in large enterprises – I felt that Lime Software went the extra mile in terms of the verification of data, had good coverage of Oracle License Management features and is competitively priced. Just because Oracle is eye-wateringly expensive doesn’t mean the tools to manage it have to be equally expensive and complicated.

Deep Dive [Coming Soon]

Click on the links below for a deep dive into the capabilities of each vendor [Coming soon].

• Easytrust
• Flexera Software
• HP
• Lime Software
• Snow Software

DISCLAIMER, SCOPE & LIMITATIONS

The information contained in this review is based on sources and information believed to be accurate as of the time it was created. Therefore, the completeness and current accuracy of the information provided cannot be guaranteed. Readers should therefore use the contents of this review as a general guideline and not as the ultimate source of truth.

Similarly, this review is not based on rigorous and exhaustive technical study. The ITAM Review recommends that readers complete a thorough live evaluation before investing in technology.

This is a paid review. That is, the vendors included in this review paid to participate in exchange for all results and analysis being published free of charge without registration.

For further information please read the ‘Group Tests’ section on our Disclosure page.

Martin Thompson

Martin is an independent software industry analyst, SAM consultant and founder of The ITAM Review and The ITSM Review. Learn more about him here and connect with him on Twitter or LinkedIn.

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This year’s SAM Summit will be held in Chicago

It is my pleasure to announce that we will be the Media Partner for the SAM Summit, 23-25 June 2014, at the University of Chicago Gleacher Center Conference Facilities.

Now in its 12th year, the event brings together top IT professionals, with 60+ presentations discussing and analyzing the latest trends and hot topics in software asset management and compliance management.

What you can expect:

• 60-plus sessions in five tracks including panel discussions, breakouts, small group discussions, workshops, tool demonstrations and more. Sessions will be grouped by experience level (beginner, intermediate and advanced levels) and topic.

• Topics including (but not limited to) audits, licensing, vendor management, IBM, Oracle, SAP, Microsoft and compliance

• Presentations from an array of companies, such as VISA, Iron Mountain, IDC, and KPMG, as well as SAM vendors such as Aspera, Snow Software, and Flexera Software.
  

• Extra networking opportunities, including a special event night 

In the run up to the event we will be publishing a series of articles on what you can expect from the conference; as well as best practice advice on a number of topics related to Software Asset Management. If there is something specific that you would like to see please get in touch and let us know.

Event Summary

WHAT

SAM Summit

WHERE

University of Chicago Gleacher Center Conference Facilities

WHEN

23-25 June 2014

BOOKING

Booking rates are available online

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Sophie Danby

Sophie is the Marketing and Community Manager at Enterprise Opinions. She acts as public liaison for the audience, contributors and industry partners across ITAM Review, ITSM Review, Energy Demand and Cloud Developer Review.

If you would like to contribute an article to any of the Enterprise Opinions sites please contact Sophie via any of the social media channels below. Contrary to popular rumour she does not whip people who submit articles later than the agreed deadline.

Sophie is also an independent Digital Relationship Marketing Specialist working with vendors and small businesses to improve their social media and digital marketing efforts.

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