Enabling Efficient, Effective Software License Management at Lane Construction
“SAManage gives us everything we need to manage our software applications from end-to-end. We have full visibility into what we have, where it is, and who is using it.“
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Background
Lane Construction specializes in transportation projects, providing expert construction of highways and bridges, locks and dams, mass transit systems, airport runways, aprons, and taxiways.
A complex IT infrastructure, made up of numerous geographically-dispersed PCs, as well as several expensive and highly sophisticated software packages, made it hard for the organization’s IT department to stay on top of software license management activities, and to keep track of assets and their locations at all times.
Challenges
To ensure efficient planning and execution of its projects, Lane maintains a complex technology environment that includes more than 1,000 PCs used by everyone from secretaries and engineers in multiple offices across seven US regions, to field personnel such as equipment operators and job site foremen. Each region connects to headquarters via Cisco routers and a secure VPN, while remote workers access regional offices using cellular cards, Internet connections, and a VPN. Installed on many of these computers are several specialized engineering software applications such as HeavyBid and AutoCAD, as well as packages for job estimating and project management.
Although the Lane IT team was mandated with optimizing technology performance to facilitate continuous communication flow across the business, the intricacy of the environment made it quite a challenge to do so. Additionally, many software purchases were handled by the individual offices, so volume discounts were not always leveraged. This lack of centralized control also made it difficult for the IT department to adequately support users and enforce corporate standards.
Solution
Unhappy with the support they were receiving for their existing IT asset management solution – Dell eSmart – as well as its limited end user functionality, Lane Construction began investigating other alternatives. For example, Lane staff members were unable to put information into the system themselves. Instead, they were forced to rely on eSmart representatives to enter the data for them – a process that often took longer than ideal.
“What we really needed was an effective and affordable way to keep track of our software licenses, and an improved ability to monitor our computers, which tend to move around frequently as our workers move from one location to another,” said Brian P. Morgan, Lane’s Software Asset Management Coordinator.
SAManage was selected to help centralize and streamline software license management and other IT activities. The powerful on-demand IT asset management service is helping Morgan and his team store important licensing information, such as purchase details and physical copies of contracts, so they can better track how those licenses are allocated and utilized across the business.
Benefits
Within just a few short weeks of using SAManage, the advantages became obvious. Benefits achieved so far include enhanced productivity and improved management of software assets through better coordination and centralization.
“The solution is so simple to use,” added Morgan. “In just 15 minutes, I was able to learn how to enter and track our software inventory.”
“We have so many more features at our disposal than we did with eSmart,” he continues. “This makes us so much more efficient when it comes to managing our software assets. For example, we have just completed our audit of Adobe Acrobat and AutoCAD licenses across the company. This would have been a hassle with eSmart, but with SAManage, it has been fast and easy. “
“SAManage gives us everything we need to manage our software applications from end-to-end. We have full visibility into what we have, where it is, and who is using it. All the capabilities we need to effectively control and track our software inventory are right at our fingertips. “
“The integrated Help Desk, which we will begin using soon, is a significant added bonus,” Morgan concludes. “Until now, we had no centralized system for supporting our end users, it was all done via email and phone calls. The SAManage Help Desk will allow us to provide better service, while increasing the productivity of our support staff.”
