Licence & Software Asset Management

Taking the headache of compliance off your hands
Your Software represents a significant investment, but often controlling and accounting for these assets is ignored. Over time, the intangible, out of sight, out of mind nature of software licenses make them almost impossible to maintain or manage in any enterprise. And as time progresses and the technical implementation of the enterprise evolves, your investment in software assets becomes increasingly more complex.

With changes to both accountability and compliance, especially with increasing pressure from external auditors, organisations no longer can claim ignorance about compliance regulations. Ultimately, it falls to the executive sponsor within the organisation to prove that all licences used are accounted and paid for.

However, as time progresses and technical implementations within the enterprise evolve, software assets become increasingly complex and difficult to manage. Organisations are faced with either developing costly in-house expertise or out-tasking the problem to a Licence Management specialist such as DSP.

Why do you need to control your IT asset management?
IT Governance requires that companies control their investments in software assets – it is simply illegal to be under-licensed and is considered a form of software piracy. Organisations, more specifically, senior management are held responsible for not managing and controlling software assets within the company.

With licenses purchased for different functions and departments throughout the year, it is often quite difficult to keep track of exactly what licenses are held and when indeed they should be renewed. In most cases, the complexity is producing either waste and redundancy (direct costs) and lack of simplicity in management and maintenance (indirect costs).

Why organisations are constantly playing ‘licence catch-up’:

Internet access with the ability to download and install software by technical resources
Constant changes to licensing methodologies and metrics used by software providers
The evolution of technical architecture used within the enterprise
Project demands to go live ahead of time and within budget; software compliance is often and after thought
Internal/External Auditor demands increasing as compliance becomes an acute business driver

The problems of under-licensing…
With licences purchased for different functions and departments throughout the year, it’s difficult to keep track of exactly what licences are held and when they should be renewed. Plus, with software downloads being easily accessible with limited controls, coupled with the fact that much of the functionality is standard across the different versions of software, businesses regularly fall foul of misunderstanding what their technical teams have installed.

What’s more, with new rules and regulations such as Sarbanes Oxley and European Directives clamping down on illegal practices, auditing and compliance is a significant business-control mechanism, and correct licensing falls within the auditors remit.

This complexity in management and maintenance not only produces unnecessary waste and redundancy but, should under-licensing be identified by the software provider, organisations are at risk from potential legal proceedings if not rectified within a certain time-frame. Moreover, the accompanying negative PR as well as back-payments for un-licensed software usage are a further unwelcome price to be paid.

… and over-licensing
Failing to understand your licence estate can also mean you are paying for support on old licences that are no longer required!

DSP recommend on your license reconciliation when you need software moves, software adds, software deletions – DSP will maintain and manage your software changes processes in your organisation.

LICENCEdirect offers:

Bespoke report detailing a company-wide licence register
Systemic scripts to gather your current Oracle utilisation
Utilisation against actual licenses
Advice on how old metrics can be migrated to current metrics
Quarterly service to update your software assets
Recommendations on current and future licensing
Resolving support lapses or where any licenses have expired on your behalf

For further information please contact DSP to discuss any Licensing issues or questions that you may have.