Your Top 5 Concerns for Software License Optimization
It’s no surprise. The big vendors, cloud and general software spend are topics of interest when looking at Software Asset Management. Here’s the list of the top five most read blogs of the past 18 months:
- An Introduction to SAP Licensing 2
- Oracle Database Standard Edition 2 Raises Licensing Questions
- Simplification: The Great Lie of the Cloud Era
- Top Five Factors Impacting Software Spend
- Microsoft Review v. Audit
An Introduction to SAP Licensing
Fiendishly complex at the best of times, SAP licensing stands on its own with an approach different than other big vendors like Oracle, Microsoft, and Adobe. This blog is a straightforward, no-nonsense guide of how to manage your SAP licenses. SAP licensing is user-based and optimizing the number of licenses is critical. Your spend can easily run into millions as can the fines if you are not correctly licensed as we have seen in recent high profile cases where SAP pursued license charges based on Indirect Access. The bottom line is take control, reduce your financial exposure and compliance risk.
Oracle Database Standard Edition 2 Raises Licensing Questions
This popular blog comments on the impact of Oracle Database 12c Standard Edition 2 (SE2) licensing for existing Oracle Standard Edition (SE) and Standard Edition 1 (SE1) customers. The licensing changes included in SE2 have significant implications so we take a look at six different configuration that you may have and the actions you need to take – some require no additional cost, some require greater investment and others require hardware changes. Ensure you have a clear view of your estate to make the right decisions as you don’t want to be caught out when it comes to audit time.
Simplification: The Great Lie of the Cloud Era
Business transformation and Cloud investment go hand-in-hand these days – it’s a growing portion of an organization’s spend. Beware, just because it’s easier to access and invest in SaaS, IaaS, PaaS and any other aaS without the need for the IT department, you still need accountability and, importantly, visibility into that spend. The trend of business units sourcing their own Cloud services is creating a gulf – the Disruption Gap – between what the central IT function (the CIO) thinks they know about what is happening in the enterprise and what is really true..
Top Five Factors Impacting Software Spend
Peter Bjorkman, Snow’s CTO gathers five insights which will impact IT Spend in 2018. From GDPR compliance , IoT and AI technologies, Cloud transformation continuing to create disruption and complexity, to data-driven innovation and openness which fuels decentralization. Ultimately it all boils down to one thing: actionable intelligence. Visibility into the Software estate with data and analytics can help address risk whether it’s about compliance, cost of procurement, overspend, or audit fines.
Audit requests shouldn’t be ignored. This blog gives practical advice on how to approach Microsoft audits, both formal ones and the less formal “request for reviews.”. To properly respond you need accurate information at your disposal including the effective license position for applications and operating systems in use across your IT estate. Earlier in the year we ran a webinar on the Microsoft Licensing Rules and ran an answers blog from the questions raised – take a listen or read the answers here.
Looking forwards to 2018
Another common search term has been “Gartner Magic Quadrant.” This year, for the first time, Gartner will publish a Software Asset Management Magic Quadrant, due to be published in April, 2018. In the meantime you can see what it is about Snow Software that our customers rate so highly via the independently verified customer reviews on Gartner Peer Insights.
For 2018 we shall publish regular blogs – at a minimum of once a week – with insights, predictions and practical advice around SAM, SLO and more besides. We often have links to other great resources such as eBooks, videos, webinars and analyst reports so do check back regularly, we can help you optimize your IT estate and only pay for the software you use.
If you would like to test drive how Snow Software can help you gain visibility over technology consumption across your organization and drive optimization, why not ask for a briefing with one of our experts?