Ahead of our Oracle Seminar in New York later this month Martin Thompson talks with guests about the grey zone of Oracle negotiation, cloud options with Oracle and copyright principles and standing up against unreasonable claims
View all our podcasts on SoundCloud or iTunes.
Ania Levy from Levy LeGette
Craig Guarente from Palisade Compliance
Doug Ehrenreich from iQuate
IBM is to accept sub-capacity reporting from Flexera Software’s FlexNet Manager in place of ILMT, TADd and SUA.
Whilst we’ve heard of this being acceptable on a deal by deal basis in the past, this is the first time IBM has publicly recognised a SAM tool for meeting their compliance reporting standards.
IBM allows customers to use soft-partitioning with their software, but only if measured using IBM’s tools to assess consumption (see https://www-01.ibm.com/software/passportadvantage/subcapfaqov.html#1).
We delved into the complexities of IBM and key risks in a recent podcast with Eric Chiu and Koen Dingjan see https://itassetmanagement.net/2014/10/03/podcast-started-ibm-licensing/
When audited, customers without IBM measurement in place are charged the full capacity of the underlying hardware. Recent research with the Campaign for Clear Licensing (CCL) suggests ILMT to be difficult to implement with some respondents suggesting it does not work at all on certain platforms.
Steve Russman of IBSMA, reporting from IBM Interconnect in Las Vegas said:
“IBM customers can save big using subcapacity pricing, but with it comes the requirements to install IBM’s reporting tools, which can be a huge undertaking with ongoing overhead. Plus the availability of a new version 9 of ILMT will require customers to install new data collection agents and redeploy ILMT.
This announcement gives Flexera customers an option that other SAM tool providers don’t have. To date IBM compliance has steadfastly refused to allow most customers waivers on using ILMT, but this announcement (sources verify IBM’s head of software compliance informed the group) marks an abrupt departure and could pave the way for other tool vendors to join the ranks of IBM-approved compliance reporting tools.”
- Steven Russman, reporting from IBM Interconnect in Las Vegas.
No public statement from IBM yet (please let me know otherwise). Our advice is to get this blessing in writing, ideally in the contract, for measurement.
IBM is having a tough time in the market and is becoming increasingly aggressive around contracts and auditing.
Fisher IT Asset Consulting tweeted:
#IBM updates #audit clause in #Passportadvantage, deletes "minimizes disruption", insists 2-yr back-maintenance pay pic.twitter.com/SM2VPXvryJ
— FisherITS (@auditdefence) January 26, 2015
Other ITAM Review readers have agreed with this sentiment in a recent LinkedIn discussion:
“This clause was something where end users had a chance to bypass/delay the audit.Now IBM’s message is very clear. They want the customers to respect their IP and remain compliant” said Vicky Makhija
These were added to the PAA for all “new business” back in August last year… they’re now catching up the “old business” this year. In addition to the two items already mentioned, they’ve also allowed for broader audit scope to include all data “reasonably necessary for IBM and its independent auditor to verify Client’s compliance with this Agreement. Send in the lawyers…” Mark A. Johnson
Discuss this topic and learn from your peers at our free IBM and SAP Workshop in London or New York:
Forever 21 accused of pirating Adobe software – It was reported in February that fashion retailer Forever 21 have been knowingly pirating copies of Adobe software. According to Adobe, they even told Forever 21 they were in breach of copyright, but they continued to do so. Read more about this case in our article.
IBM to accept Flexera for sub-capacity reporting instead of ILMT – IBM is to accept sub-capacity reporting from Flexera Software’s FlexNet Manager in place of ILMT, TADd and SUA. Whilst we’ve heard of this being acceptable on a deal by deal basis in the past, this is the first time IBM has publicly recognised a SAM tool for meeting their compliance reporting standards.
Lenovo faces lawsuit for pre-installing Superfish adware – Big news that broke in February was that Lenovo had pre-installed software called Superfish that was used to attack users of their hardware. Computer Weekly provides the full story within the link above.
Businesses opt for Amazon Web Services public cloud – AWS are currently leading the way in cloud services for businesses. However, the article states that Microsoft Azure is catching up, but AWS are currently the ‘go-to’ platform for organisations.
Microsoft achieves ISO cloud certification – Microsoft has achieved compliancy with ISO/IEC 27018:2014, which relates to data protection within cloud services. This relates to Microsoft products including Azure and office 365.
Data breaches up by 49% in 2014, exposing more than a billion records – Cyber criminals have accessed over 1 billion data records for the calendar year of 2014. This is a 78% increase in the number of data records stolen from 2013. Have you secured your data?
SAM Tool buyers guide – ITAM Review – A fantastic guide on what to look for when looking to purchase a SAM tool. There are a number of useful tips and key ingredients for successfully picking and implementing a SAM tool. This is also available as a PDF.
The Problem With ITAM – A short blog post after a conversation I had with a friend. This article highlights the issues from a personal perspective on what challenges are currently being faced by modern day ITAM professionals.
The Importance of Effective HAM – It is fact, you cannot successfully do Software asset Management without hardware asset management. This article explains the importance of managing hardware assets, and how you need the people, processes and tools in place to manage said assets, and how HAM impacts on SAM.
IT needs to reassess the meaning of compliancy for cloud – Computer Weekly reports that IT departments need to reassess the technology they deliver in identifying compliancy. The article states that 40% of cloud users admitted to using applications that have not been approved by their organisation. Another reason as to why SAM is needed with SaaS and Cloud based applications.
The End User Review – The End User Review is our new feature that allows you to have your say on what are currently challenging you within ITAM. All submissions are anonymous, and will be posted in the form of an article. The aim is to give all of our readers an insight into challenges that other ITAM professionals are facing, so there is a feeling of community and other readers can provide advice and guidance. Please have your say and fill out the form!
We announced our spring listings! We look forward to seeing as many of our readers as possible at the following events:
This independent review is part of our SAP Tool Review.
Also participating are:
| Elevator Pitch | FlexNet Manager for SAP Applications is a software license optimization solution that allows organisations to optimize their SAP estate. FlexNet Manager for SAP Applications helps identify the optimal SAP named user license type for each user within an organisation via the analysis of detailed usage data, and also helps eradicate any idle or duplicate users from your license count. In addition, FlexNet Manager for SAP provides proactive SAP package license management and helps reduce audit risk associated with indirect access.The solution helps organizations to be proactive in the management of their SAP estate, and it helps recommend the optimal license types that should be in use whilst adhering to the contractual agreement. |
| Strengths |
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| Weaknesses |
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| Primary Market Focus |
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| Vendor | Flexera Software |
| Product | FlexNet Manager for SAP Applications |
| Version Reviewed | Version 2014 |
| Date of version release | February 2014 |
| Year founded | N/A |
| Customers | 1200+ |
| Pricing structure | FlexNet Manager for SAP Applications is priced per SAP user on a volume discount schedule |
| Competitive Differentiators |
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FlexNet Manager for SAP Applications is a sophisticated SAP license and user management tool from Flexera Software. It provides SAP license managers with the ability to ensure they maintain and optimize their software licenses. It also helps establish usage data so that the correct named user licenses can be assigned to the right users to ensure license compliancy is maintained and avoid over spending on SAP licenses.
The inbuilt Product Use Rights Library is a unique selling point of this solution, and provides SAP license managers with pre-installed standard license metrics and consumption rules for SAP packages. This will aid SAP license management and license compliancy and will help with the overall management of SAP applications, licenses and users.
The ability to provide users with recommendations based on license usage is a really impressive feature, and one we really liked. This will help organisations save money on licenses and ensure compliancy is maintained throughout the SAP estate.
Whilst obviously the data within a tool is important, the user interface is also just as important. If the tool takes a rocket scientist to manage then it’s not fit for purpose. FlexNet Manager for SAP however has an attractive user interface, and it is easy to identify a number of different datasets. We think the data is displayed in a useful, easy to use manner, with important pieces of information easily seen.
The only issue we had with FlexNet Manager for SAP Applications was the fact that Cloud based applications are not currently supported, so users can’t manage HANA (Cloud model) in this version of the solution. However, Flexera have stated that Cloud based applications will be integrated into future products and is firmly on their product roadmap.
SAP is increasing the number of software applications in its product portfolio through acquisitions and the introduction of new technologies. Flexera Software have categorized SAP products into three different brackets for license management:
For the core SAP products, FlexNet Manager for SAP Applications provides agentless inventory collection for on premises customers and inventory for cloud/SaaS (Software as a Service) customers. The inventory collection uses SAP’s own external remote function call (RFC) connections to pull in user licensing, role and usage data from all of SAP’s systems, and also applications running on a JAVA stack with an ABAP layer.
SAP packages require a unique approach, as there are no external connections provided to collect the needed license metrics. Flexera install SAP admin module on a central SAP system (e.g. Solution Manager or CUA) to manage the extraction of package data from relevant systems. Customers also need to install transports on systems to be measured to extract the package measurements. The data is then transferred to FlexNet Manager for SAP Applications by SOAP interface. The central Product Use Rights Library (PURL) contains the package license metrics and license consumption calculation rules for a large number of SAP packages out of the box. This allows organizations to proactively calculate package license consumption independently of an SAP system measurement.
For SAP acquired products such as Ariba, Sybase and Business Objects, FlexNet Manager Platform for SAP Applications discovers the applications and collects usage data. In the case of these systems, the implementation team would create custom business adapters during the customer implementation to collect the necessary usage data. Cloud products such as SAP HANA are not currently supported out of the box, but HANA is a priority on the product roadmap and will be driven by customer demand.
Furthermore, FlexNet Manager for SAP Applications is a fully automated solution that helps deliver continuous license compliance for SAP products. Inventory is periodically collected from all SAP systems on a schedule, and from this inventory data, the SAP license position is automatically re-calculated. The license position is actually calculated two ways:
Flexera Software state that an accurate and up-to-date license position is available at all times for SAP applications.
FlexNet Manager for SAP Applications provides a license simulation capability that allows organizations to perform best case and worst-case analyses of their SAP license position. Users can plan for future purchases or contract negotiations and also plan for future projects that may have an impact on SAP licenses. This license simulation capability also allows organizations to ensure that they are ‘audit ready’. We think this is extremely important in allowing the organisation to effectively manage SAP licenses both in the present, and the future.
FlexNet Manager for SAP Applications provides a Product Use Rights Library that incorporates SAP package licensing rules. These rules are used by the product to calculate license consumption, independently of taking an SAP system measurement. The licensing rules define how metrics are combined to determine a single license consumption figure for each SAP package. This allows organizations to proactively manage their SAP package licenses and avoid any true-up surprises during the annual audit. We believe that the PUR incorporated into the FlexNet Manager Suite is a key selling point of this solution as it provides another source of licensing and usage data for the end user and helps automate complex license management tasks.
Inactive users
FlexNet Manager for SAP Applications collects detailed SAP usage data and provides customizable user inactive and retirement rules that are used to determine which users should be retired or a license revoked based on criteria such as the following:
For retirement, users can be retired one-at-a-time, in a single bulk retirement action that spans multiple SAP systems, or anything in between. Being able to see inactive SAP users allows organisations to pursue license optimization with their SAP licenses.
Duplicate users
Identifying duplicate users starts by establishing a baseline of what SAP’s License Administration Workbench (LAW) tool detects. FlexNet Manager for SAP Applications allows you to specify the user fields used by LAW to consolidate users, which is used to identify the outcomes of the LAW tool for duplicate user detection. What then happens is the customizable user consolidation rules in FlexNet Manager for SAP Applications are used to identify additional duplicate users.
In practice, a single user field is rarely sufficient to reliably consolidate all users across all SAP systems in a large organization. What FlexNet Manager for SAP Applications provides are customizable duplicate user rules that can compare users using additional user attributes. The product also finds users with similar but not identical attributes. Once the complete list of duplicate users is found, changes can be made in SAP to reduce the number of duplicate User-IDs. LAW will subsequently pick up this data. We think having this feature within FlexNet Manager for SAP Applications is key to ensuring licenses are optimized and the organisation are not purchasing two licenses for the same user unnecessarily.
License types for users
Every SAP contract has unique requirements, and SAP license optimization requires a highly flexible solution to meet the needs of a broad range of SAP customers. Many SAP contracts provide vague license definitions, with Limited Professional defined as being a user who performs “limited” operational functions, while some provide a very specific set of actions that these users can perform.
FlexNet Manager for SAP Applications has the ability to collect information and datasets around the user, role and usage information and provides a range of license rules that help translate this information to determine the optimal user license type for each user. The license type calculation is based on the user license definition in the contract, their role and the user’s individual usage of SAP.
Transaction profiles can be created to identify transactions, reports and jobs used by different types of users. Users are then matched against the profiles to determine whether their usage or activity matches those of the specified license types. It also shows groups of people who could have a Special License type based on usage. These profiles can be used for users with existing user definitions as well as for users with a certain usage pattern and license type not yet negotiated or associated with SAP. The ITAM Review believes this will help SAP administrators manage SAP users effectively, and ensure that the users have the correct licensing types to meet their usage needs at the lowest possible cost.
FlexNet Manager for SAP Applications provides a comprehensive solution for identifying, managing and optimizing indirect access to SAP applications. To begin with, all SAP systems are monitored for key metrics that might indicate the presence of indirect access. So FlexNet Manager for SAP Applications uses these metrics to identify any indirect access.
The solution then uses three steps to identify and manage indirect usage:
We believe indirect access to SAP applications is a licensing ‘gotcha’, so there needs to be active management of any applications that are using SAP data indirectly to ensure license compliancy is maintained and to avoid any unbudgeted audit true-up expenses.
We believe that FlexNet Manager for SAP Applications is a fantastic offering for any organisation with an investment in SAP to help manage their licenses and users.
“FlexNet Manager for SAP® Applications is a scalable Software License Optimization solution that is built on the FlexNet Manager Platform. It optimizes SAP named user licenses by detecting idle users, identifying duplicate users, and assigning the optimal license type for each user based on user roles and an analysis of real usage data. It recommends the optimal license classification (Developer, Professional, Limited Professional, Employee Self Service, etc.) while also adhering to contractual requirements. This includes the ability to take into account a minimum ratio of Professional to Limited Professional User Licenses.
FlexNet Manager for SAP® Applications also helps organizations proactively manage SAP package licenses. Package (aka engine) measurements can be run independently of a system measurement, allowing collection of package metrics at any time. Its SAP Product Use Rights Library contains licensing rules that define how metrics are combined to determine a single license consumption figure for each SAP package. This streamlines the process of calculating SAP package license consumption, reducing true-up preparation time.
The product helps organizations discover instances of indirect access and optimizes the license requirements for users of non-SAP systems that access SAP data. This minimizes the license compliance risk and reduces the cost associated with SAP indirect access.”
FlexNet Manager for SAP Applications product webpage:
https://www.flexerasoftware.com/products/software-license-management/flexnet-sap-licensing/
FlexNet Manager for SAP Applications Datasheet:
https://media.flexerasoftware.com/documents/Datasheet_FNM-SAP.pdf
Whitepaper:
Curing the SAP Overpayment Syndrome
Webinar:
SAP License Management Challenges and Opportunities
Due to the unfortunate timing of ‘Storm Juno’ that struck on our last visit to New York, we are returning on May 12th to host our FREE to attend ITAM Tools Day Event. This is a unique opportunity for professionals to get together and see the leading ITAM tool vendors present their solutions all under one roof.
There are a number of ITAM tools now available on the market. The evolution of ITAM tools over the past 10 years has been dramatic, and they continue to become more sophisticated and dynamic. Eight of the leading ITAM tool vendors will be at our event and six of them will be showcasing their solutions and offering advice about managing software assets. The vendors attending are:
Tools are an integral part of any SAM program. Realistically, a SAM program will not be successful without a sophisticated SAM tool in place to assist with processes, licensing and management of software assets. It is no longer realistic to manage software licenses, warranty information and software assets via spread sheets, so a SAM tool is a vital investment for any organisation. If you are still using spread sheets to manage your software licenses, then this event is an absolute must for you and your organisation.
With so many offerings available, how do you know which solution is the best option for your organisation? It may be the case that you already have a solution in place, but you are not happy with the tool or the vendor. The ITAM Tools Day event is the ideal opportunity for you to look at the best ITAM solutions currently on the market, and compare them all there and then on the day.
We have come up with 6 critical aspects that in our opinion, are essential points for consideration when selecting your tool: Visibility, Identification, Risk, Efficiency, Agility and Continual Service Improvement. We have asked the tool vendors presenting to address how their tool covers off each point and delegates will have the opportunity to rate them against this criteria.
It is worth noting that there is no such thing as a ‘silver bullet’ tool. No solution can do everything you need without the right people and processes in place. Whilst a tool is vitally important, so are the people who use the tool, as well as the processes put in place for managing your software assets and licenses. When you come to this event, and you talk to the vendors attending, it is important to ask yourself if the solution would fit into your environment? Do you have the personnel in place to manage the SAM tool? Do you have the processes in place to fully utilise your investment in a SAM tool? And most importantly of all, do you have the backing of senior managers?
The ITAM Tools Day is also a great opportunity for you to speak to your existing vendor face to face. You will have the chance to speak to them about any issues you’re currently having, or to ask them about certain features or future releases of their product. The event will provide a more personal experience to picking a SAM tool, rather than sales orientated approach.
Attendees will also have the opportunity to speak to a wider support network in the form of their peers. They will be able to speak to other people with the same ITAM tool to compare notes, get tips on how they perform certain actions or how they have used the tool to help with certain situations. This support is invaluable to ITAM professionals as it provides a passing on of knowledge and experience that you can’t get from books or online.
Regardless of whether or not you have a SAM tool currently implemented, attending this event will provide you with a unique insight to the different solutions on offer, without having to arrange sales phone calls, meetings and demos. You will be able to see all of the solutions and make quick, informative decisions about the solution and whether or not it meets their organisations requirements.
Empire State Building, New York
So why don’t you join us for our first US ITAM Tools Day event? It’s completely free to attend and promises to be a very informative and interesting day for ITAM and SAM professionals. You can find out more about the event and a list of vendors attending here.
To book your place go to; varnitam.wpengine.com/events/now. Places are booking up fast, so make sure you secure your place today!
Martin Thompson presenting at the IBM and SAP seminar
On April 28th, 2015, we hosted an IBM and SAP seminar in London, with the aim of providing ITAM professionals a day full of IBM and SAP advice and knowledge. The event was well attended with over 50 delegates as well as a number of SAP and IBM Licensing experts who were on hand to provide expert advice. We would like to thank all of our delegates who attended the event, and we hope you found it useful. Furthermore, we’d also like to thank our sponsors Aspera, Flexera Software and Snow Software. We would also like to thank our expert guest speakers who provided valuable content to the delegates.
Before we progress with a report from the day, we’d like to mention that we are hosting a week of events in New York in May. These events are completely FREE, and we still have a few spaces left. To find out more about these events, and to register, please click here.
First to speak about IBM licensing and license management was Mathias Knops from Aspera. He highlighted a number of complicated licensing metrics within IBM software, including the complex PUV (Processor Value Unit) model. Mathias suggested that users need a tool to help manage and identify their IBM users and license metrics, and we second this piece of advice. SAM tools without additional functionality to support IBM will not add as much value, or provide as much data as a dedicated, specialist solution will.
We’re back!
“PVU’s are very expensive, complicated, special licenses that need attention” – @AsperaTech #ITAMRevents #IBM
— The ITAM Review (@itamreview) April 28, 2015
Mathias also mentioned that there are a lot of different data sources all feeding into a SAM tool to provide IBM information, and that all of these data sets need to be consolidated. Mathias believes that users get too confused by all of the different sets of IBM data, and that IBM customers and users need help in managing the complex world of IBM software.
“Get another opinion of the #IBM data provided by ILMT and consult your #SAM solution” – @AsperaTech #ITAMRevents — David Foxen (@SAMBeastDavid) April 28, 2015
Eric Chiu was the next IBM expert to speak to our delegates. He revealed that he has found over 31,000 different IBM applications that are categorized into 5 different pillars. This in turn means that there are 143 different IBM license metrics! Amazingly, Eric stated that only PVU could be tracked via SAM tools. That’s scary to think that SAM Managers cannot manage all IBM license types.
#ibm has 143 active license metrics – only 3 can be tracked electronically according to @mayaswellbe #ITAMREvents pic.twitter.com/e8VZldB8Ys
— Martin Thompson (@itammartin) April 28, 2015
Eric listed the three biggest risks that IBM licensing poses. Number One was IBM and virtualization, Number Two is ineffective user management and finally, the third biggest risk with IBM was listed as managing IBM within a multi platform environment. It is therefore vital that IBM customers read the Terms and Conditions of their license agreement to ensure they full understand their entitlement. A business purchases IBM licenses; therefore it is the business responsibility to manage those licenses correctly.
“YOU buy #IBM licenses, therefore it’s YOUR responsibility to manage and address problems” – @mayaswellbe #ITAMRevents — David Foxen (@SAMBeastDavid) April 28, 2015
There was a lot of conversation around sub capacity licenses, and how IBM moves the goal posts with regards to the license metrics. Eric was quick to state that IBM cannot and will not change the licensing metrics during an existing contract or agreement, however they are fully entitled to change the license metrics once an organisations enters into a new agreement.
Mark Bartrick from Forrester presented on ’50 Shades of Compliance’, which relates to how organisations can be compliant with SAP licenses, and how easy it is to fall out of compliance. The first thing an organisation can do, according to Mark, is to minimize bad SAP behaviour by doing the following three things:
It is important that SAP customers remove any ‘grey’ areas when negotiating their SAP contract. Mark was keen to make the point that the organisation needs to understand their SAP contract and entitlement inside out, to avoid any issues with compliance and auditors.
“Replace the standard #SAP license types with user metrics that work for your organisation” – Mark Bartrick #ITAMREvents
— The ITAM Review (@itamreview) April 28, 2015
Mark stated that he has seen over 70 different types of SAP user licenses, with a number of these license types unique to certain organisations. In order to get the most out of your SAP contract or SAP licenses, organisations need to replace the standard SAP license types with relevant license metrics for that organisation. These can be custom metrics, or they can be pre-existing ones that have been used before.
“Minimise your #SAP bad behaviour through education, a good #SAM tool and sub policing” – Mark Bartrick #ITAMREvents pic.twitter.com/0jqcnDSrGe
— David Foxen (@SAMBeastDavid) April 28, 2015
Indirect usage is the biggest challenge faced by SAP users, and is the biggest source of revenue for SAP through audits. We have always maintained that having a solution that can manage indirect usage is vital, and we recently release our SAP Tools Group Test results. Mark noted that SAP were 2% down in Q1, and that the method SAP will use to claw back this revenue is by auditing their customers.
@itamreview great session by Mark from Forrester, got some really good points across and very engaging #ITAMRevents
— Daniel Begg (@DMuseWhoSnoozed) April 28, 2015
Kim Chalmers was the other SAP expert on hand to offer advice, this time based on SAP audits. He stated that he finds it is a massive challenge finding the right questions to ask SAP during an audit, and that an organisation needs to approach a SAP audit with caution.
“#SAP audits are not a straight forward process. Identify risks to help your SAP defence” -Kim Chalmers #ITAMREvents pic.twitter.com/gIKP2n6TwB
— David Foxen (@SAMBeastDavid) April 28, 2015
Kim also said that SAP change their licensing metrics all the time, and that SAM tool is not the only resource required to manage SAP licenses, human interaction is also required. He has found people making mistakes managing SAP licenses within SAM tools, and he has also found that the technologies make mistakes with SAP licensing metrics. Governance and review is required to ensure that any SAM solution is showing valid, accurate data.
SAP’s most prolific auditor has a bigger sales quota than the top SAP sales person ~ Kim Chalmers, Azurious #ITAMREvents
— Martin Thompson (@itammartin) April 28, 2015
Finally, Kim made the very valid point that miss interpreting a SAP contract can end up costing an organisation millions of pounds. If certain usage allowances are not in the contract, then do not assume that that means you can use it in a certain way. SAP will state only what you can do, so assume anything else is off limits. Kim was of the belief that SAP is increasing their audit activity because it is easy money for them, and they do minimal work for that extra revenue.
The afternoon sessions were broken into two workshops; one for IBM and one for SAP. Delegates had the opportunity to grill our panel of experts about software licensing and to ask for advice on any issues that they had within their organisation.
Time for the #SAP & #IBM Workshops! #ITAMRevents pic.twitter.com/bguzKWztbJ
— Victoria Kealy (@VictoriaKealy) April 28, 2015
Within the IBM workshop, Eric Chiu provided the delegates with a mock-up case study for a pretend organisation that is being audited by IBM. Eric then set the delegates a number of questions and tasked them to come up with the correct answers, or the correct course of action to take. This was a great success and proved to provide a number of key talking points regarding people’s different methods for how they would handle an IBM audit.
If we actually read all of the detail in the mega vendors software contracts, would we ever buy it! Very interesting info #itamrevents
— Tomas O’Leary (@olearyto) April 28, 2015
The SAP workshop was more of a question and answer session with a panel of experts. Delegates fired a number of questions at our experts, and they provided valuable and relevant advice. This type of advice is critical to any SAM or Licensing Manager who is struggling with certain vendor’s software licensing, as it provides answers and advice without the need to go directly to the vendor and possibly trigger an audit.
Once again, thank you to everyone who attended. It was a brilliant day and we hope you gained a lot from it. We have recently released our updated IBM Licensing Quick Guide, and our SAP Licensing Quick Guide should you need any further information on these licensing metrics.
If you missed out on this event, but want to know more about future events, please subscribe to our mailing list to be the first to hear about future events. We have a number of events planned for the rest of this year in the UK and America that we hope is of interest to you.
This time next week we’ll be making our way to #NewYork for our week of events! Will we see you there? #ITAMREvents
— David Foxen (@SAMBeastDavid) May 4, 2015
“Software Vulnerability Management”
Flexera Software has acquired Secunia, a provider of software vulnerability management software.
Secunia highlights software vulnerabilities and highlights patching priorities based on discovery within an enterprise environment.
As both companies touch every piece of software on very large networks (for Risk, but for different purposes) this acquisition is a great strategic fit for Flexera and further validates the business case for proactive SAM.
As we mention on a recent podcast, security has long been ancillary support in the business case for SAM, but the rise of cyber security threats has emphasized the importance of this link.
Flexera stated in their acquisition news:
“Cybercriminals routinely use vulnerabilities in software as gateways to exploit corporate networks, using techniques like commercialized underground “exploit toolkits” to infect machines and perform malicious activities. A typical, documented cybersecurity breach costs organizations between $2.5 million to $5 million. However, massive breaches, such as the highly publicized Target, JPMorgan, Home Depot, Sony, and Best Buy cybercrimes, could cost hundreds of millions of dollars – not to mention damage to reputation and brand.”
Secunia brings two core products to the Flexera family under the mission to “help IT security and operations teams proactively identify, assess and remediate software vulnerabilities” :
Mark Bishof, Flexera’s CEO, commenting on the acquisition said:
“As cybersecurity threats continue to grow, leading companies will not only proactively manage these threats but will also integrate Software Vulnerability Management into core software asset management processes,”
A very interesting milestone for the SAM market and further support for the business value of SAM.
Thursday 17th September 2015 saw the ITAM Review return to London for the last in the series of our popular data centre licensing events, this time focusing on the prolific vendor that is Microsoft.
50 end users attended the full day event in Tavistock Square, and the day began with registration, refreshments and an introduction to our event sponsors; Aspera, Flexera Software, Snow Software, Belarc and Concorde Solutions.
Delegates arrive at the London Microsoft Licensing Seminar
After ITAM Review’s Martin Thompson welcomed the delegates, Steve Warbrick from Platinum Sponsors Aspera presented the first plenary session: ‘How to optimize licensing for Windows server and SQL for virtual environments’.
Duncan Jones from Forrester Research
The second presentation came from Duncan Jones of Forrester Research Limited: ‘Rethink Your Microsoft Licensing Strategy’, followed by ‘Microsoft License Healthcheck’ from Piaras MacDonnell from Suredatum. Simona Millham from Licensing School presented the last plenary session, ‘How to Avoid The Top 10 Microsoft Licensing Gotchas’.
You can view the plenary presentation slides by clicking here. Please email Duncan Jones if you would like access to the presentation from Forrester Research.
After a hearty lunch, delegates reconvened for the interactive workshops.
Expert speaker Duncan Jones facilitated the first workshop, with support from our panel consisting of licensing specialists from sponsors Snow Software, Flexera Software and Concorde Solutions. Delegates were split into teams and asked to explore collaborating with partners using Microsoft technology. For example how to build solutions for sharing documents with external third parties a customers using SharePoint, when to buy licenses and when to use SPLA.
Workshop 1 underway
Workshop 2 was facilitated by Rich Gibbons from Licensing School, again supported by the panel and by using a case study, he discussed the challenges of managing a hybrid licensing environment.
Delegates found the interactive workshops particularly useful as it allowed them to interact with their peers and put their licensing knowledge to work. Throughout the workshops, the teams were awarded points and the winning team was congratulated with applause!
The winning workshop team!
The following key issues were raised by delegates during the day:
As per the event video – a big area of concern for our event attendees is cloud basics that Microsoft still appears not to have quashed (or communicated effectively with their customers). This includes things like data sovereignty, data security, cloud exit strategies were noted as blockers to hybrid adoption with more frequency that licensing issues.
We had some great feedback both on the day and after the event:
Great discussion about some external collaboration scenarios. Proved how complex #microsoft rules are for such use.
https://t.co/Uo8Ys1aPQc— Duncan Jones (@duncanwjones) September 17, 2015
Excellent day today. Insightful from all presenters and delegates https://t.co/k6LOe4eJyD
— David Coburn (@coburnda) September 17, 2015
thanks to everyone @itamreview for a great day, knowledge overload #ITAMREvents #itamtips
— Matt Smith (@WelshBlackLab) September 17, 2015
A big thank you to our event sponsors, speakers and delegates for being part of the event. We look forward to seeing you all again soon! For details of our next upcoming events click here.
Platinum Sponsor
Gold Sponsors
We’re back in New York on 21st October to deliver our free Microsoft Licensing Seminar to our US readers.
To register or find out more, click here, we’d love to see you there!
Our friends at the big G state that spending on public cloud is growing five times faster than other IT categories (Gartner, Public Cloud Services 2012-2018).
Our own research from December last year (How to beat Azure and AWS sprawl) suggests that ITAM Review readers are keen to explore the subject but are yet to fully get their arms around the issue. Cost control rather than compliance is the main driver, although cloud is not immune from compliance issues.
Spinning up new instances of Amazon or Azure is very similar to previous technology sprawls of the past, back in the day that might have been sharing a cool application via a CD, nowadays it is buying shiny new iPads or creating virtual machines. Our technical enthusiasm to play and innovate is a few steps ahead of our ability to control costs.
In a recent press release Flexera Software have announced the launch of FlexNet Manager for Cloud Infrastructure. The first IaaS provider FlexNet manages is Amazon AWS with a view to “ [giving] organizations centralized visibility into their cloud services use and [allowing] them to optimize utilization and control costs.”
(Side note: Most notable in the Flexera press release is that they refer to SAM as SAM, no sign of Software License Optimization, SLOE, or other Gartner acronyms. Hurrah!!).
It is good to see Flexera continuing to innovate and embrace these new challenges and I look forward to exploring their offering further. As is the Flexera way, this is an additional product at additional cost compared to Flexera’s Enterprise SAM Tool competitors who tend to bundle in new innovation within the maintenance cost.
Others SAM tool providers have suggested that they work with IaaS APIs to provide visibility but elegant solutions are limited. More will be revealed throughout the course of our review of Enterprise SAM tools.
At this stage I’m not sure how FlexNet Manager for Cloud Infrastructure compares to dedicated Cloud cost management systems (e.g. Rightscale, Cloudability, Cloudcheckr, Cloudcruiser, Cloudranger, Cloudyn, Netflix Ice, or Amazon’s own Trusted Advisor). Moreover, I’m not sure if the market wants cloud cost control within ITAM, logic says it makes sense to sit it within ITAM in the longer term.
SaaS apps are another grey area for SAM tools with only a handful of ITAM tools offering coverage in this area. SAM tools have begun management in this area by offering the ability to track specific URLs. This is a bit clumsy and is like offering IT inventory when you already know what you have. It would be good to see ITAM tools offering SaaS Discovery first, i.e. show me who is using SaaS applications, I can then determine what I want to track.
Tracking SaaS URL’s also points towards traditional old-school SAM, I can’t help but think, in an era of self-service and app stores, the way to crack SaaS SAM is with single sign-on and integrating with tools such as OneLogin or Okta. i.e. SaaS is provisioned and reclaimed securely via the service desk and non-active users licenses are automatically re-harvested. (See the SAML standard on how to tell whether a user is still active and reclaim their SaaS subscription) Why track the usage of SaaS URL’s when single sign-on and identity management are already doing it?
What is your view? Have you seen or built an elegant solution to managing public cloud or SaaS costs?
A quick round-up of ITAM industry news:
UK SAM Services company Livingstone Technologies acquires USA SAM Services company Siwel. A great move – I’ve spoken to a number of Fortune 500 companies seeking the services of an independent provider (No commercial bias from selling SAM tools or Licensing profit / incentives) – yet unable to find one with enough clout. I plan to review SAM Managed Service providers again in 2019, it will be interesting to see how the market has evolved.
Similarly, having run the ITSM Review for five years, we saw a similar trajectory of ITSM service partners holding onto the coat tails of ServiceNow’s growth, with subsequent growth and consolidation of their partner base. I foresee similar growth and consolidation in the ITAM industry as we see partners on both sides of the pond armouring themselves to deliver SAM services for ServiceNow. If SAM follows the same growth path as ITSM, then not only will you see growth and consolidation of partners, but you will also see SAM partners with vertical specialisation and building their own IP around the ServiceNow platform.
Derive Logic, a UK SAM services company notable for selling services to other partners, receives backing from the Carlisle Group, the same company bank rolling Livingstone’s growth. A straightforward exit for Carlisle Group to get their money back would be to build an international SAM service provider (built of the likes of Derive, Siwel, Livingstone) and flip it to a larger integrator or big4 consulting firm, who wants to buy a “bench” of expertise at delivering SAM. Owners of small growing SAM services companies, form an orderly queue!
The brand “Comparex” disappears as competition authorities bless the acquisition by SoftwareOne and it merges with the Swiss licensing and software services giant.
Mixed messages from Flexera Software, as on the one hand they report being the “Tech Unicorn of Chicago” whilst also reportedly laying off the entire APAC team (notably Japan and Australia). Flexera PR declined to comment on either news. I was particularly interested to know of Flexera’s underlying growth excluding the Rightscale and Installshield business i.e. The traditional SAM business. Luckily Flexera staff seem to have found homes in Crayon, SoftwareOne and others across APAC.
SAM industry veteran Sean Robinson returns to License Dashboard after a four-year break as Sales Director.
Left to Right: Netum Oy CEO Matti Mujunen, Martin Thompson ITAM Review, Ville Lappalainen Dux Product Manager, Kauko Ollila Freelance Journalist
Finally, I was fortunate to be invited to Netum’s product launch of Dux, in Helsinki this week. A “self-updating” asset register with cool location tracking offering that aims to address the much-underserved asset lifecycle tracking market (Once covered by Gartner with its own quadrant, now taking a back seat to SAM tools).
I remember evangelising about the business value of location in the early 2000’s – great for support and security, being able to locate a device to a building or even a country. If a Switch was located in New York, it figures that all the ports must be located in New York and therefore devices hanging off those ports must be New York, and so on. This message kind of lost its way a little with the advent of Laptop/Wifi centric networks.
Netum’s offering of using Wifi to identify device location within one metre within an office will have great use for some specific use cases, perhaps for IoT too. Just this month I spoke with someone regarding a hospital spending millions on replacement kit they simply couldn’t find.
Any other industry news to share – please shout. Thanks, Martin
