Quantifying the Value of Software Asset Management
Executive Summary
Over the past few decades, employees have come to rely more and more heavily on software solutions to automate and enhance a variety of core business activities – from sales order entry and inventory tracking to payroll processing and financial reporting. As a result, companies of all sizes and across all industries now find themselves struggling to control the growing number of software applications installed on their servers and desktops. Studies show that the average employee PC has close to 150 software titles installed, including fixes, drivers, and service packs.
Software Asset Management (“SAM”) systems combine processes and technologies to improve the way software applications are utilized, tracked, and managed throughout all phases of their lifecycle. There are many advantages that can be achieved through the use of SAM. Improved application performance and increased productivity of both IT staff and end users are chief among them.
Software Asset Management offers significant financial benefits, lowering the total cost of software ownership and accelerating the return on software investment. According to Christopher Germann, senior research analyst at Gartner Group, “organizations can realize cost savings of between 5 percent and 35 percent by implementing focused software asset management practices."
This paper provides an overview of software asset management and its key benefits. Additionally, it highlights the areas where a Software Asset Management solution can deliver the most tangible, quantifiable cost savings to an organization. Readers will also learn how to calculate the potential return on investment (ROI) on Software Asset Management in order to present senior management with a compelling business case for the solution.
What is Software Asset Management?
Software applications have become a vital asset for today’s businesses, providing the foundation for employee productivity and output, and supporting mission-critical processes that drive operational efficiency and profitability. Companies spend more today on software than ever before. In fact, while tough economic times are impacting most other industries, software vendors are actually seeing their markets increase. Forrester Research predicts that global spending on software will reach $341 billion in 2008, a 9 percent increase over 2007.
As more and more software is purchased, companies must find better ways to justify and optimize their investments. Additionally, software is unique from other technology solutions, like hardware, because it is intangible, making it much harder to monitor, control, and manage.
Software asset management is a crucial business practice that combines policies, processes, and supporting technologies to improve software budgeting, purchasing, utilization, management, control, and security across an entire enterprise. Software asset management is not a one-time project. Because technology environments change so rapidly, Software Asset Management must be viewed as an ongoing process in order to ensure continuous compliance, performance, and value.
Software Asset Management empowers businesses to improve all facets of software acquisition, use, administration and the practice of software license management. As a result, the value and impact of software solutions is dramatically improved throughout all phases of their lifecycle.
Today’s most popular Software Asset Management applications include fully integrated auditing and tracking tools, a centralized information repository, advanced monitoring and analysis, and other robust features to enhance the following software-related functions:
- Budgeting and acquisition
- Installation and deployment
- Software asset inventory management
- Logging and tracking of settings and configurations
- Usage measurement
- Monitoring of security solutions, such as anti-virus software
- Performance optimization
