Software asset management- An essential metric to enhance the productivity of organization - The article illustrates the benefits of software inventory management to manage all IT resources and applications around a network to minimize IT costs and increase productivity. The article also recommends an effective tool that can manage all changes in an organization.
Software asset management- An essential metric to enhance the productivity of organization
By Patrick Goohan
Feb 1, 2012 - 2:57:16 AM
Software
Asset Management or SAM is a business practice that involves the
process of managing and optimizing the purchase, deployment,
maintenance, utilization and disposal of software applications within
an organization. The Information technology Infrastructure Library or
ITIL defines Software Asset Management as “…all of the
infrastructure and processes necessary for the effective management,
control and protection of the software assets…throughout all stages
of their lifecycle.”
The
fundamental concept of SAM is intended to be an essential part of
organization’s information technology business strategy. The
primary objective of SAM is to minimize IT costs and reduce the
probabilities of business as well as legal risks associated with the
ownership and use of software while enhancing IT responsiveness and
end- user productivity. It’s an important facet that covers both
network management as well as software inventory management.
Software
inventory methods or tools intelligently discover software installed
across the computer network and collect information about the
software files like title, product ID, size, date, path and version.
There are also some inventory tools that compare inventory data with
purchasing information to find out license deficit and ensure that
organizations comply with the licensing agreements and policies.
The
Software Inventory features of software asset management tool helps
in maintaining an inventory or records of software applications used
around a network. It scans computers and servers of a network at
regular intervals to collect details of inventory. It also can gather
information about the software applications installed in a network
and their usage information. The information collected by the
inventory controller further helps the administrators to easily
monitor the usage of the software applications in a network. Apart
from this, the software inventory feature also enables in addition of
license information to any commercial software application installed
in the network.
Software
Inventory Reports
In
order to collect the details of software inventory systems the asset
management software scans the Windows systems. After collection,
it stores them into the database which is usually presented in the
form of reports for ready reference. Generally, following reports are
produced by asset management tool:
Software
vendors by volume: It provides the volume of the software which have
been installed in the network.
Software
by volume: This metric provides the installed number of copies of
each software in the network. This information can further be
utilized to view the software of a specific vendor.
Recently
installed software: It enlists the software installed recently.
Software
license compliance report: Gives the details of the commercial
software with their software license compliance status as compliant
or non- compliant.
Software
licenses to be renewed: Enlists the software whose licenses have to
be renewed shortly.
In
recent days, IT deployments are getting more complicated regardless
of the scale and size of the organizations. Users face it as a
challenging role to manage all consecutive changes in an organization
in this era of virtual and mobile technologies. If a software
inventory management scheme is configured, long- standing burden of
the organization around a hybrid network could be minimized.
Lepide
Software Asset Management is an effective asset management software
presented by Lepide Software group. It’s an enterprise- wide
software which is designed to control organizational investments,
meet software license compliance, enhance productivity and increase
the satisfaction level of employees.
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