He questions the validity of the organisation’s latest figures, which claim that legal software delivers “significantly more economic benefits” than pirated software.

The BSA states that a one percent increase in the use of licensed software would generate an estimated £2 billion in national production, compared to £470 million from a similar increase in pirated software — meaning properly licensed software would deliver £1.6 billion in additional economic value.

“Using properly licensed software reduces risk and creates operating efficiencies that go direct to the bottom line for business,” said Julian Swan, director of compliance marketing, BSA EMEA.

Swan further comments in light of a recent piece of research, “This study confirms that licensed software is not just good for business — it is an important driver of national economic growth. Government, law enforcement and industry should take every opportunity to reap these potential gains by reducing piracy and promoting use of properly licensed software.”

BSA “failing to articulate”

Fisher on the other hand accuses the BSA of missing the target here “yet again”. He says that the organisation is “failing to articulate” a message that will actually cut piracy.

“Haven’t the BSA realised their messaging isn’t resonating yet? Making highfalutin claims as to the economic benefits of non-pirated software will do very little to cut piracy. It is firms, not abstract ‘economies’ that need to be shown the value of software since they’re the ones that actually use it,” said Fisher.

His argument extends to claim that the statistics themselves also warrant some heavy scrutiny.

“I think anyone would question the validity of a claim that licenced software offers more economic value than pirated – and frankly, who cares?  Economists might, but do software managers? Probably not.”

In summary, Fisher claims that this looks like “more of the same” from the BSA. He says that the organisation continues to miss opportunities to strike a chord with its target audience.

Meanwhile and despite this criticism, Eduardo Rodriguez-Montemayor, senior research fellow at INSEAD eLab has said that previous studies have shown that value-added services delivered with properly licensed software help firms to reduce costs and increase their productivity.

“This report goes one step further to ascertain the impact of software use on national production,” said Rodriguez-Montemayor. “The results make it clear that licensed software is beneficial for business and national economies — and that licensed software has a greater economic impact than pirated software across all countries included in the study. Governments and enterprises wanting to embrace the economic opportunity presented by licensed software use should take action.”

The BSA recommends action in the following areas:

• Establish strong and modern intellectual property laws that protect software and other copyrighted materials on PCs, mobile devices, and in the cloud.
• Step up enforcement of intellectual property rights with dedicated resources.
• Raise public awareness about the risks of software piracy.
• Lead by example by using only fully licensed software and implementing software asset management programs.

View a reprint here.

In case my link sets off the Gartner intellectual property fire alarm (as it appears to have done in previous years) you can also view a reprint via this blog post from Jon Hall at BMC).

The analysis is split into two parts: an industry synopsis followed by a broad-brush overview of Gartner’s opinion on the key tools in the space.

As with previous reports, Patricia does an excellent job of portraying current market trends, well worth a read.

I wish I could say the same about the tools overview, the words ‘Palaeontology’ and ‘Nostalgia’ spring to mind.

Watching the Watchmen?

I have, for my sins, been blogging on this site since 2008. In that time Gartner have released two previous editions of this report that I remember so I thought it might be useful to track scores over time.

Gartner assign a score from ‘Strong Negative’ to ‘Strong Positive’ for each vendor. I’ve applied a crude numerical score against each of these rating as follows:

KEY

• Strong Negative (-2)
• Caution (-1)
• Promising (1)
• Positive (2)
• Strong Positive (3)

I’ve applied these numbers to the three last Marketscopes in the image below. Note that there was no report in 2012 and ServiceNow and VMware first entered in 2011 (hence zeros).  Click on the image to enlarge it. 

Click to enlarge

Observations

From 2011 to 2013 only ServiceNow improved. The rest either held their ground or got worse.

Aggregate scores for all tools each year are contracting. 2010 = 15, 2011 = 10, 2013 = 8. So perhaps either a) tools are getting worse or b) the assessment criteria are improving. Jon Hall (BMC) argues that this is because ‘the bar is being raised’. I would argue it is because the big G is tracking the wrong tools and / or the wrong market.

Gartner are hinting at this in the market synopsis:

“IT asset management tools are continuing to show modest growth, although the pressure from software license entitlement tools is taking away revenue”

Patricia Adams April 2013

As I mentioned after attending the Gartner EMEA conference back in October:

“Disconnect in ITAM Tools Coverage: I felt there was a bit of a disconnect in Gartner tool coverage. 90% of the content from the summit and exhibitors were focussed on SAM, yet Patricia Adams provided a 90′s view of Asset Repositories. She referred to SAM tools as an ‘emerging’ category which I felt was a bit of an insult to the tools and partners in the exhibitors hall and not an accurate reflection of the market. Gartner have no SAM tool analysis on the horizon and when asked, Patricia Adams stated some Gartner company spiel about category size. Big enough a category for two international conferences but not for tool analysis? An opportunity missed.”

My fear is that Gartner will, based on these spiralling scores, withdrawal their ‘MarketScope’ citing insufficient interest which would be inaccurate and send the wrong signals to the market. You could argue they did they same by taking their eye off the ball with the withdrawal of ITSM tools and subsequent ‘lipstick on a pig’ ITSSM rehash.

I also believe it is a case of misguided marketing. This is flagship promotional marketing content for Gartner which is sending the message they focus on big ole Asset Repositories when the focus of their events, clients enquiries and research focus on audit defence, contract negotiation and licensing.

As far as I can tell the Big G is the only analyst firm producing any decent content in this area (Forrester were threatening a SAM tools wave but just lost their talent to ServiceNow). They have the ear of large corporates making decisions and have a duty of care to inform their audience of what the broad market is doing rather than providing a ‘Big4 watch’. They are missing the most exciting and innovative part of the market.

(For a piercingly accurate view of mid-market innovation versus conglomerates stagnating I strongly  recommend reading this article.)

View a reprint of the 2013 MarketScope here.

What do you think? 

Your GPS won’t work with one satellite source; it typically needs four different satellite signals in order to provide a confident judgment of your location.

Each satellite in the sky transmits a message, which includes its current position and the time of transmission.

From this data the GPS can use its smart little onboard computer to crunch the navigation sums (How far away each satellite is and when the message was sent) and work out your location. Only when it has four data sources can it validate your location.

Trustworthy Data

How many signals are you listening to for your asset data? How do you verify that your data is in fact accurate?

Let’s say you have 20,000 assets under management and you are using SCCM for inventory and then utilize some form of license management system to harness SCCM data. Let’s say that through hard work and perseverance you’ve managed to reach a compliance position of 100% (give or take 5%) for your most important software publishers. How accurate is that 100%?

What if your SCCM data is only 80% accurate? After all, an SCCM specialist will tell you that 90% coverage whilst deploying a new package is a job well done (Agents fail, deployments fail, systems go missing or hide under desks). Based on our figure of 20,000 machines – we have potentially 4,000 devices unaccounted for, with inaccurate or out of date records. Your 100% compliance rate is suddenly looking less rosy. Not to mention all that hardware unaccounted for – are they encrypted?

I say this not to spread FUD or undermine your work. I say this because this is how auditor’s work and this is the level of verification you need in your ongoing SAM practice. Ultimately you need to deliver your compliance figure or asset metrics – with an accompanying confidence measure.

Multiple Verification Points

What other satellites can you collect data from to verify your results? “We’re compliant based on what we can see right now” might not be good enough.

ITAM tools and CMDB’s store a lot of this data already and should be doing more to help you. I think it would really add to the business value of an ITAM tool if it could calculate the health of your data sources by passing it past other sources.

For example:

• 30% of your Altiris data is over 6 months old
• 40% of your accounts in AD are dormant
• SCCM is only working on 80% of your estate
• There are 20% more inventory records than exist within AD
• And so on

A hole existing in your asset data is a fact of life. I’m not saying, as an Asset Manager, you need to solve them all. But knowing they exist will increase your awareness of risk and strengthen the value of your information and strengthen your arguments for change.

Image Credit

We’ve been busy building since then. I’m pleased to share with you that since January we have:

• Created a legal entity (not-for-profit limited by guarantee)
• Written a manifesto (Thanks to Kylie Fowler, Rory Canavan and Martin Chalkley for their support with this)
• Built a website www.clearlicensing.org
• And perhaps most importantly – received the support of some significant software buyers to support us

This new regulator aims to add much-needed transparency to an overly complex and unfair market, levelling the playing field between giant software vendors and the end-user.

Our mandate is to promote adherence to a new code of conduct and highlight foul play publicly.

Mission:

The Campaign for Clear Licensing will work with software publishers, end users and the reseller community to reduce the indirect costs of using commercial software by improving the clarity and usability of software license terms and conditions and developing a code of conduct for use by the industry when resolving disputes, including during audits.

The ‘Campaign for Clear Licensing’ website is here:

http://www.clearlicensing.org

We would really appreciate your feedback. This is an industry effort and requires your support to succeed. Please download the manifesto and provide your critique (Publicly, privately or anonymously).

Thanks, Martin

Cloud or bust?

At this week’s MAX conference – Adobe revealed more information about their plans to move their products, and their customers, to the cloud.

They started their journey last year with their Creative Cloud for Individuals and took the next step in early 2013, with the introduction of Creative Cloud for Teams (CCfT) on VIP licensing. The announcements this week have moved Adobe, their users and the industry, at least a couple of steps further:

Creative Suite is no more.

There will be no CS7. The “CS” (Creative Suite) suffix has been replaced by “CC” (Creative Cloud) giving us PhotoShop CC, InDesign CC etc. & new editions of Adobe products will not be made available outside of the Creative Cloud.

For now, the current CS6 products will still be available for purchase via TLP and CLP licensing for the foreseeable future but, from Adobe’s blog:

“there are no plans for future releases of Creative Suite or other CS products”

So anyone wanting the new editions, which are expected to be available from June 15th 2013, will need to make the leap to the cloud & VIP licensing.

What is Creative Cloud?

Creative Cloud is a new way to obtain & license Adobe software as well as the introduction of new cloud based applications and services. It’s content is similar to Master Collection and includes:

• Photoshop
• Illustrator
• InDesign
• Dreamweaver
• After Effects
• Premier Pro
• Muse
• Acrobat XI Pro
• Audition
• Bridge
• Encore
• Fireworks
• Flash Builder Premium
• Flash Pro
• InCopy
• Lightroom
• Media Encoder
• Prelude
• SpeedGrade

It also includes a range of “Edge Tools” which are aimed at creating mobile ready content and apps. These include:

• Edge Animate
• Edge Inspect
• Edge Web Fonts
• PhoneGap Build
• Edge Code
• Edge Reflow
• Typekit

Some of these apps, such as Muse, are exclusive to Creative Cloud and around 15 new cloud exclusive apps are expected to be introduced with the new release.

There are also a range of additional features and services available – one of the most interesting being cloud storage:

• Creative Cloud for Individuals = 20GB per user
• Creative Cloud for Teams = 100GB per user

This makes it much easier for remote teams to work together, as it gives a central point for them store, review and comment on files.

Additionally, each user gets 2 “Adobe Expert Calls” each year. This gives them 2 one-on-one sessions with an Adobe expert to help them learn new skills, uncover new features within existing apps or even start to learn a completely new application.

A full breakdown of the included apps and benefits can be found here:

http://www.adobe.com/uk/products/creativecloud/tools-and-services.html

Creative Cloud Evolution

Adobe have not finished their move to the Cloud and as such, the 2^nd half of 2013 will see a number of additions to their Creative Cloud strategy including:

Point Products

Currently only the Creative Cloud suite is available but later this year will see the introduction of point products such as PhotoShop CC, InDesign CC etc. They will be priced between 50% – 66% of the current offering, making the bundle a more cost effective option for anyone looking at 2 or more products.

Creative Cloud for Enterprise

2 common concerns for corporate customers around CCfT (Creative Cloud for Teams) are:

1. Each CCfT user requires an Adobe ID
2. The cloud storage element is hosted by Adobe and doesn’t necessarily comply with data regulations for certain companies/industries.

Both of these are expected to be resolved with a new addition to the Creative Cloud family “Creative Cloud for Enterprise” – again, this is expected in the 2^nd half of 2013.

Deployment

One of the first things that comes to the mind of an IT admin/SAM professional when they hear about Creative Cloud is:

“Can I deploy it centrally?”

And the answer is

“Yes”.

From Adobe’s help site:

“Adobe Creative Cloud Packager makes it easy for you to create packages that contain Creative Cloud products and updates. These packages can then be deployed to the client machines of the members who are part of Creative Cloud for Teams in your organization.

Essentially, you log in as an administrator to the Creative Cloud portal and download Creative Cloud Packager. Using Creative Cloud Packager, you create Windows and/or Mac OS packages (MSI or PKG files)”

And this is the part that will elicit a sigh of relief from many:

“and then using any third-party deployment tool that supports the deployment of native installers (for instance Microsoft SCCM, Apple ARD, or JAMF Casper Suite) deploy them to client machines.”

The Creative Cloud Packager is available from the Creative Cloud portal as “CCPLauncher”.

Conclusion

Whether Creative Cloud works for you depends on your strategy around keeping current with new releases of Adobe products.

If you like to keep current, or perhaps have wanted to do so but been prohibited due to cost in the past, this will work very well for you & your organization. It gives you the new versions, the new applications, cloud storage and more – as well as giving lower initial payments, moving costs from Capex to Opex and a steady budget for creative software.

On the other hand, if your company tends to skip a few editions of Adobe CS, say CS3 to CS6, then this will be a big change. It will increase the cost of acquiring Adobe software but it will also increase the value and benefits available to the company.

Editor’s Note:

For small creative companies or departments who are ‘all in’ with Adobe tools this maybe a good way to access the full breadth of Adobe products. Although the price is less palatable and at least 10,000 have signed a petition to end this aggressive bundling as an attempt to raise prices.

“No offense, @Adobe, but this feels like the biggest money grab in the history of software” @strobist

For companies who only use Adobe for the odd tactical product or large enterprises with many users – the benefits seem difficult to justify.

Companies with Cumulative License or Enterprise Agreements need to seriously consider their use of Adobe in their estate and lifetime costs, as the final option at the end of the agreement appears to be Cloud or bust ~ Martin

Image Credit

David Foxen, Software Asset Manager

This article has been contributed by David Foxen, a Software Asset Manager in the UK

Note: For the relevance of the article it is important to note that David is aged 23. 

When a teacher asks their students what they want to be when they grow up, students will usually say footballer, movie star, race car driver. These expectations of what the future holds become more realistic as students get older, but the answer is never ‘I want to work in Software Asset Management’.

SAM and ITAM are currently overlooked within the GCSE/A-Level Business Studies or ICT curriculum in the UK, despite being an important area of a business. This begs the question: Without being made aware of SAM, where is the next breed of SAM Professionals going to come from?

Stumble upon SAM?

The current answer would have to be ‘by accident’.  Before I started working I had never heard of software asset management. I studied Business Studies and IT from the age of 14 at school, but the concept of a computer or the software being an ‘asset’ that needed to be ‘managed’ was never taught to us, let alone the fact you need license to use software! I’m sure the majority of the SAM professionals reading this now didn’t know what SAM was before they started working in a professional environment.

This needs to be addressed. SAM is a fantastic sector to be involved in, with a wide range of career choices available. It’s also an important area for organisations, so should be taught at school level. All I’m asking for is a chapter in a book or a module on the curriculum that is dedicated to ITAM and SAM, just so students interested in Business or IT are made aware that there is more to these subjects than motherboards, graphics cards, profit margins and the marketing mix!

The emergence of SAM is a recent one, I understand that. The importance of SAM is only going to increase over the few years and there are a number of changes afoot with how software will be licensed in the future.  Exam boards are constantly updating their course material to incorporate new business or IT methods, so why not add a section covering ITAM and SAM? A simple chapter in a text book may spark a student’s interest in the subject, and may result in them deciding that a career in SAM is the path they want to follow.

Time to be taken seriously

Another rather obvious point to make is that organisations need to promote SAM more. For an organisation to be in a position to promote SAM to young people they need to understand the importance of SAM and the benefits a solid SAM estate can bring them. The majority or organisations are not in a position to do this, as they don’t take SAM seriously themselves. We can see this is the case simply by looking at the latest software audit news. Organisations are still being found to have a very basic, or non-existent, SAM structure in place. Organisations that do take SAM seriously could look at promoting SAM both internally and externally. Work experience would be a good example of giving a student or young professional the chance to see how SAM works on a day-to-day basis, as well as getting an overall scope of what SAM entails.

It is hard to attract young professionals to SAM. Personally, I haven’t worked with anyone in SAM that is around my age. When I have told people what I do, they seem surprised to see someone my age in the sector. This article is not about me being ageist, it’s simply highlighting the fact that there doesn’t appear to be a new crop of SAM professionals coming through. Saying that, I don’t mind holding down the global fort for young SAM professionals!

A dedicated career path

In conclusion, I think SAM should be touched upon in schools. Young people and young professionals need to be aware that there is this career path to go down. There should be a focus on promoting SAM to young professionals to try and persuade them to consider SAM as the right career choice for them. I go back to my original question. Where will the next breed of SAM professionals come from if SAM is not promoted to young professionals, or taught in schools or colleges? I was lucky. I was told about SAM and found that it was the career path that I wanted to go down.

Once you get to know and understand the fundamentals of SAM, what you can achieve for an organisation and the career progression within the SAM sector, you start to understand that SAM is extremely interesting and cool! Ah, come on! It is! We just need to highlight this fact to the future generation.

This article has been contributed by David Foxen (aged 23) a Software Asset Manager in the UK. 

In this article I hope to demonstrate why organizations utilise SKU catalogues, the difference between SKU catalogues and software recognition and the business value to SAM practitioners.

Shopping for Coca-Cola

Browse any supermarket around the world and you are likely to find a section of the store dedicated to Coca-Cola and its fizzy drink competitors. Coca-Cola is produced in a myriad of flavours (Diet, regular, cherry, zero…) and a variety of sizes (cans, big bottles, little bottles, value packs…) suited to customer requirements. Each of these Coke variants has a SKU or Stock Keeping Unit assigned to it.

Stock Keeping Units allow the supermarket to manage their inventory and manage millions of different product lines. If the store is running low on Cherry Cola cans it has a unique identifier to isolate that product and manage fulfilment throughout the supply chain. The supermarket can order the SKU, the SKU is quoted on the purchase order, and the SKU is quoted on the invoice, printed on the box and so on. Without some form of unique identifier managing inventory at the supermarket would be a logistical nightmare.

Note: A SKU is different from a barcode. A barcode is used to electronically identify a product using an optical machine reader. Barcodes may contain SKU numbers and other data.

Shopping for Symantec Backup Exec

The vast majority software publishers also use a SKU to identify product variants.

If we were to go shopping online for Symantec Backup Exec we might stumble across SKU number ‘MLDZWZC1-EI1AS’ (Referred to in this instance as the manufacturers part number by CDW in image below).

It is important to note that MLDZWZC1-EI1AS refers to a very specific way of purchasing Symantec Backup Exec.

• It is for Windows
• It is an upgrade rather than a full license and therefore only valid if accompanied by the underlying base license
• It is an Academic license
• It is within a specific buying program – Level S
• It includes one-year support
• It relates to their V2012 V-Ray Edition
• It is in English
• It has technical licensing constraints (1 CPU 2-6 Cores)

These elements are known as product use rights (sometimes abbreviated to PUR). Some product use rights are made explicit by the manufacturer (this is for one CPU server with up to 6 cores), some product use rights are not made clear on purchase (can I use Backup Exec on VMware with VMotion enabled?). Worse still, some product use rights change on a monthly basis on the whims of the manufacturer.

As you can see the SKU has unique licensing characteristics associated with it. The license would be absolutely worthless if aligned to a French version of Backup Exec installed on a 2CPU server in a non-academic company.

Note: Good practice (and good business) from suppliers is to include the manufacturer’s part number for unique identification as well as the suppliers part number for easy re-ordering on all documentation and invoices (in this instance CDW 2616143). SKU numbers are also usually included in your software vendor license statements and online portals.

Hopefully you can see the business value of a unique identifier in managing an accurate inventory – but how does this apply to license management?

Enter the SKU Catalogue!

If your procurement process is tracking manufacturer part numbers for your software purchases you are, theoretically at least, already in a strong position in determining what software you are entitled to. We just need to marry up your procurement history with what is in use and installed within your environment. Unfortunately it is easier said than done.

Common sense would say that, just like the supermarket, every product in the shop should have a bar code on it so everyone knows how to identify it. In an ideal world we would whizz around your network with a software bar code reader and tally up all of your installs.

Unfortunately, although software manufacturers use SKUs internally, on their packaging and within their supply chain it is commonly missing from the actual install.

The ISO standard for SAM is doing work to rectify this, by developing an XML software tag which installs alongside every software installation storing the SKU and other meta data in a universally recognised format like a barcode (See Steve Klos over at TagVault for more information on ISO/IEC 19770-2). Although the Standard is making good progress, including Microsoft adding tags to Windows 8, we are a few years away from widespread adoption.

Software Recognition vs. SKU Catalogues

Software recognition is not the same as a SKU Catalogue. A SKU Catalogue typically includes software recognition and normalisation.

Software recognition is the process of recognising and normalising technical configuration management technical jargon into recognisable product names and product families. SKU catalogues also perform software recognition but strengthen the license management process by also normalising procurement data and linking it with installed software data to ensure software is being used in accordance with the product use rights.

When you attempt to marry the worlds of technical configuration management and procurement the challenge is to find a common denominator between the two sets of data – the SKU is that unique identifier. Installed software has technical characteristics that can be aligned to a SKU and in turn the SKU can be married to the correct procurement record. The SKU catalogue is the lookup table, the meta data and the intelligence behind this process.

Maintaining Accuracy

So how does all of this help with license management accuracy?

The SKU catalogue provides a mechanism for filtering, double-checking and maintaining accuracy in SAM processes.

It forces good practice and accuracy – e.g. it is not possible for a Microsoft Select based SKU installed on your network to be aligned to a Microsoft Enterprise Agreement contract in your procurement system. The incompatibility prevents mistakes and ensures organizations are licensed correctly. The SKU catalogue is the lynchpin and translator between the different complex languages of configuration management, product terminology and procurement.

Justifying Investments in SKU Catalogues

The main business benefits of using a SKU catalogue are:

1. Less reliance on discovery tools – SKU catalogues also perform software recognition and can therefore work with more primitive inventory and multiple systems management sources. Broad network coverage is still required to ensure discovery and inventory data is exhaustive and you’ll need some way of mapping physical to virtual relationships.
2. Time and money saved on expensive license management resource i.e. man-hours
3. Data accuracy (less mistakes, better results, reliable data)

Buyers Guide / What to Look For

1. Organizations with years and years of procurement data might want to prioritize by contract, renewal or vendor to lighten the implementation process with SKU catalogues.
2. Not all vendors use SKUs
3. Some vendors have SKUs but it is not always possible to audit and collect inventory for them – especially for data centre vendors
4. Vendors with SKU catalogues include Aspera, BDNA and Flexera
5. Some SAM tool vendors say ‘We do SKUs’ which means they have field in their SAM tool for manual entry of a SKU number. Having a field for a SKU number in a license management tool is not the same as using a SKU catalogue. The true value of a SKU catalogue is referencing the Meta data associated with it not the storage of the SKU itself. You are using a reference table built from the intelligence of hundreds or thousands of other implementations.
6. Some SKU catalogues link SKU to product use rights but not software recognition – which is kind of like having a very intelligent bar code reader which won’t scan anything.
7. Some SKU catalogues only cover the big volume titles (Adobe, Microsoft, Symantec) and not every single software publisher. No solution on the market is perfect or 100% exhaustive.
8. The proof of the pudding is in the eating – SAM vendors with good SKU based offerings should be able to benchmark your raw procurement data (with SKUs) against raw inventory data to build a picture very quickly.
9. With fear of telling you how to suck eggs – Buy software and services based on a proven working model rather than PowerPoint and contrived demo. If you have not got the time or inclination to complete a robust proof of concept then only buy on a service basis with a concrete SLA.

If you have any questions or can share experiences of using SKU catalogues please leave a comment below. Thanks, Martin

Jens Rugseth, CEO of Inmeta Crayon

Norwegian licensing reseller and SAM specialist Inmeta Crayon has acquired FAST Limited.

InMeta Crayon, with headquarters in Oslo, has presence in Northern Europe, Germany, France and the Middle East. The team has over 600 employees, over 10% of which are said to be ‘SAM Experts’. The company provides licensing, SAM services and consulting and claim that ‘SAM is key to our go to market strategy’.

Jens Rugseth, CEO of Inmeta Crayon stated the acquisition of FAST Limited represented both an entrance to the UK market and access to a proprietary process framework which they hope to replicate across other European subsidiaries.

When asked about the role of independence with SAM partners, since Inmeta Crayon are a Microsoft LAR and provide license fulfilment. Jens argued that only those who know the day-to-day working practices of software publishers can know the intricacies of licensing and those companies with close working relationships with the publishers can provide the best advice.

I’m not entirely convinced by this argument. I agree that LARS and other licensing resellers usually have excellent and unrivalled licensing knowledge, but they also receive bonuses and rebates from the licensing providers they are supposed to be advising clients with. Whilst I respect the skills and palate of the fox, I don’t necessarily want him running the hen house.

(One way to address this potential conflict of interest is to offset one LAR against another, one or more to supply licensing and another LAR to provide SAM services.)

This acquisition represents a great step forward in the growth of the SAM market in Europe – but I believe there is still a place for a European wide truly independent SAM provider for those clients looking for global reach.

FAST Limited is a commercial operation providing ‘Support with software, education, consulting and managed services’ – not to be confused with The Federation Against Software Theft the not for profit. It was not definitive whether Inmeta Crayon will continue to use the FAST brand to promote their SAM services – my personal view is that it creates more grief than benefit.

In separate but related news; Alex Hilton, formerly of the Microsoft UK Anti-Piracy and FrontRange Solutions, has recently joined FAST (The Federation not for profit) as Chief Executive.

The bottom line

Every CIO has a bottom line of responsibility to their organisation. CIOs need to balance costs and maximise efficiency. Software licensing has always been a target for cost-cutting, but the shift to virtual and cloud hosting models means that the savings cannot be realised using the methods of the past.
Within IT organisations there are many misconceptions when it comes to how to save licensing costs and how to leverage new licensing models to maximum advantage.

IT organisations need to be aware of the most common misconceptions of software licensing that prevent significant savings in the datacentre.

I license each software instance so virtualisation doesn’t impact this. While the number of instances typically doesn’t decrease in the move to virtualisation, and in many cases can even increase, this misses the point.

Per-core or per host

Vendors now offer datacentre-class licenses that are structured on a per-core or per host basis, and licensing an entire host usually allows an unlimited number of instances to be run on that host. These new models, combined with management tools that are designed to optimise VM density, can provide big gains in manageability and cost.

I’m not near a renewal so there is no point in looking into it.

It is often possible to realise savings on maintenance independent of renewals, and this can be fairly significant. Also, being proactive can help to avoid license cost increases, and for organisations that have become used to continually increasing their spend, putting a freeze on this is a big win. Compliance also factors into these scenarios, and is it also better to be proactive in planning and tracking use, particularly in dynamic virtual and cloud environments.

A common misconception

I have to license the entire virtual cluster so it is difficult to cut costs through better workload placement. This is a common misconception – in most licensing contracts organisations have to license any system that the software will run on. So if there is no way to control workload placements then yes, the whole cluster must be licensed in order to be safe.  But there are ways of controlling placements that can contain software components to a subset of an environment, avoiding the need to license an entire virtual cluster.  Also, motioning across clusters is now possible, so using cluster boundaries to manage licensing is not nearly as effective as properly controlling placements.

I get such big discounts on software that optimising it won’t save very much.

This may be true for the initial purchase, but many vendors charge maintenance on list price.  For expensive infrastructure software components that charge maintenance this way there are some staggering savings to be had by decreasing the physical capacity they need to be hosted on.

Internal cloud simplifies licensing

Internal cloud simplifies licensing then… to the consumer, yes. To the infrastructure managers, no.  In fact, it can become quite complex as organisations shift to internal cloud models, where demands are unpredictable and the responsibility for software licensing becomes split between the new cloud teams and the traditional asset management groups.  It isn’t safe to assume that cloud models will automatically make software licensing costs go down.

Ask a CIO about their views on reducing licensing spend and they will agree that it’s imperative for their operation. In fact, according to Torsten Volk, senior Analyst, Enterprise Management Associates, “Over-spending on software licensing is rampant due to poor management controls and processes in most large enterprises.”

However, companies like CIRBA that have a software license control module, are positioned to help organisations reduce hardware and software licensing requirements and are well positioned to speak on these harmful misconceptions.

A looming deadline awaits…

In the IT world, there is a looming deadline that businesses of all sizes have to face up to. Windows XP is still installed across almost 40 per cent of all PCs in the world, according to statistics from Net Applications released in February 2013. The date on which support for Windows XP will end is 8^th April 2014, after which time there will be no further updates for the OS. For businesses of all sizes, moving away from this operating system (OS) is an important project.

So, within the wider sphere of IT Asset Management, how does this affect energy management? To start with, any major migration project represents an opportunity to make a fresh start when it comes to the desktop. Rather than just swapping out new desktops for old ones, companies can think about how they can use existing hardware and resources, while at the same time finding ways to reduce desktop power consumption as well.

When it comes to migrating your desktops, there are plenty of different options out there. However, as part of any implementation, power management approaches should be considered too. This not only provides a reduction in energy usage, it should also provide cost savings and management efficiencies that can make a project pay for part or all of itself in the longer term.

The potential for power savings

As companies consider their approach to Windows XP, understanding power management is an obvious next step. A total of 56 per cent of companies did not manage desktop power usage in any way according to a research report by Dimensional Research, so the potential for power savings remains high.

In terms of the migration cost overhead, this is the approach that will make the least impact on the IT set-up that currently exists, as it involves like-for-like replacement of existing machines with new machines.

From a power management perspective, new machines can be specified that are more energy efficient than existing desktops or laptops while also providing much more computing power. The main benefit of this is the low impact on IT management. It does involve creating new desktop builds, but these can be done separately. The actual implementation phase is also less impactful on the end-users, as they are simply moved from one machine to another.

The cost-efficiency conundrum

The main challenge with this is that it does involve more capital expenditure on machines. There may be hardware which has been purchased relatively recently and that has not been depreciated yet, but which will require a new OS install to be completed. For many organisations, replacing all their machines outright may not be cost-efficient.

This approach involves more work from the IT team, as they evaluate which existing machines can be re-imaged and run a new operating system such as Windows 7 or Windows 8. For those machines with enough power and functional life left in them, this can turn them into useful ‘new’ devices that can remain supported.

For machines that are too old or require more computing power, replacements can be chosen and implemented. As part of this, new desktop images will have to be created and then installed on the mix of new endpoints and older hardware. From a manpower perspective, this requires more attention as there may be a more heterogeneous mix of desktop hardware and IT assets in place.

However, it is possible to reduce costs and time to re-image and install applications through the automation of systems management processes. Having a limited number of desktop images will also make long-term support easier, and therefore present opportunities to save time.

The power of desktop power management

Whichever of these two approaches is taken, desktop power management can provide some useful cost savings as part of the move. By controlling use of power by desktop machines, organisations can achieve average power consumption savings of up to 40 per cent. That equates to annual savings of 380kWh and 586 pounds of CO2 per PC, saving the organisation around £25 per PC per year, according to research by Ovum in January 2012. Given price rises in energy of about 10 per cent over the following year, this energy saving figure can be even higher now.

The need to move away from Windows XP is forcing companies of all sizes to consider their approach to the future of the desktop.

These are large-scale projects that businesses have to implement well in order to minimise impact on their employees’ day-to-day activities. However, this should not obscure the opportunity that exists to improve energy efficiency and control over desktop power consumption. Desktop power management can provide a real cost saving back to the organisation over and above anything that can be achieved through just giving advice on switching machines off overnight.

This improvement in energy reduction need not come at the expense of other IT management tasks. One of the main reasons previously given for not implementing desktop power management was the requirement to leave machines on for IT to keep them up-to-date, but this is no longer valid. The ability to automatically power up machines, update them and then power them off again has been in place for years, while patch management and automatic update scanning on machines exists as well.

The opportunity is there to reduce costs as well as improve the level of service that can be provided.