SOFTWARE ASSET MANAGEMENT (SAM)

JEREMY BOERGER – THE ITAM COACH​
CREATOR OF THE PRAGMATIC ITAM METHOD​

IT DIRECTORS & ITAM LEADS:

Software Asset Management:
Maximize Utility - Minimize Cost

As IT director, ITAM team lead, or SAM manager you

need to maximize all assets purchased, consumed

and utilized by your department. And minimize the

total cost of ownership across the lifecycle. ​

 ​

But software is infinitely duplicatable and easily

abused. Leaving you vulnerable to disruptions that

can cripple your enterprise. ​

My Pragmatic ITAM Method shows you how to catch

bad actors and prevent audit risks before they

become costly penalties.​

So you can stop worrying about unintended piracy

and intellectual property theft.​

IT DIRECTORS & ITAM LEADS:

Software Asset Management:
Maximize Utility - Minimize Cost

As IT director, ITAM team lead, or SAM manager you need to maximize all assets purchased, consumed and utilized by your department. And minimize the total cost of ownership across the lifecycle.

But software is infinitely duplicatable and easily abused. Leaving you vulnerable to disruptions that can cripple your enterprise. ​ ​

My Pragmatic ITAM Method shows you how to catch bad actors and prevent audit risks before they become costly penalties.​

So you can stop worrying about unintended piracy and intellectual property theft.​

SOFTWARE ASSET MANAGEMENT – RISK MITIGATION

Software Asset Management & Software License Audits

To keep you honest, publishers routinely audit your 

purchase and installation records. These audits are 

onerous, time-consuming, overly broad, and can be 

enormously costly. Especially if unlicensed installations 

are discovered in your environment.

Best practice is to routinely self-audit. But who has time 

for that?

The Pragmatic ITAM Method allows you to use the tools 

you already have to immediately and reliably self-audit. 

With no further cost to your existing ITAM team.

So you can be confident the auditors are not going to 

find anything. And it they do, you can push back. 

SOFTWARE ASSET MANAGEMENT – RISK MITIGATION

Software Asset Management & Software License Audits

To keep you honest, publishers routinely audit your purchase and installation records. These audits are onerous, time-consuming, overly broad, and can be enormously costly. Especially if unlicensed installations are discovered in your environment.

Best practice is to routinely self-audit. But who has time for that?

The Pragmatic ITAM Method allows you to use the tools you already have to immediately and reliably self-audit. With no further cost to your existing ITAM team.

So you can be confident the auditors are not going to find anything. And it they do, you can push back.

“Jeremy Boerger is the only man I ever met who actually got

blood from the Microsoft stone.”

– COO, Major Hospital Group​

CONTACT THE ITAM COACH

Schedule a call with me and find out if you could be managing your assets more efficiently with the tools you already have. There is no pressure or obligation.
(You may not even need me!)

Submit the form or:

AUTHOR JEREMY BOERGER

My New Book:
Rethinking Technology
Asset Management​

In this book, I review my Pragmatic ITAM method, which companies use to slash their ITAM spend by setting baselines for proper measures of success and ensuring both business leadership and the ITAM team are speaking the same language.

 

If you are a business leader or an IT executive who is tired of the
excuse: “This is just the way ITAM is,” then this book is for you.

 

Available here:

AUTHOR JEREMY BOERGER

My New Book:
Rethinking Technology
Asset Management​

In this book, I review my Pragmatic ITAM method, which companies use to slash their ITAM spend by setting baselines for proper measures of success and ensuring both business leadership and the ITAM team are speaking the same language.

If you are a business leader or an IT executive who is tired of the excuse: “This is just the way ITAM is,” then this book is for you.

Available here:

JEREMY BOERGER’S
PRAGMATIC ITAM METHOD: ​

Software Asset Management, Software Asset Management Tools & SAM Solutions

Software Asset Management, part of a SAM Solutions practice, is a subset of the Information Technology Asset Management (ITAM) discipline. While ITAM is considered the broader descriptor, encompassing all assets purchased, consumed, and utilized by an organization’s IT department, Software Asset Management deals specifically with the software itself, the programs installed on physical and virtual devices, and the use-rights granted by the software publishers.

 

If you are an IT director or ITAM lead, you’re under tremendous pressure to optimize your spend and keep your data safe. You must have a Software Asset Management practice because many stakeholders are involved in all aspects of software – from purchasing, installation, and deployment to maintenance, utilization and disposal. It’s a monumentally complex system made even more problematic due to the dizzying speed of consistently changing technologies.

 

Moreover, you may not have either the right team, competencies or budget to put a robust program in place. Unfortunately, it’s not uncommon that IT entirely depends on a SAM tool that hasn’t been implemented or appropriately deployed. You hope you can depend on your reporting. Still, often you’re left vulnerable to issues that can cause embarrassing and costly long term consequences for both you and your company or organization, such as:

 

  • Crippling software license vendor penalties due to audits
  • The temptation to purchase more licenses and tools that you need
  • Cybersecurity threats

 

The Goals Of Software Asset Management


The goal of the SAM Solutions manager or team is the same as for ITAM, just focused on software: to maximize the utility and use of any particular piece of software while minimizing the total cost of ownership across the software’s lifecycle. Unfortunately, that is not as easy as it sounds…

 

To begin, software can be duplicated, and therefore it is often abused. You cannot just take one PC and magically turn it into two PCs as you can with software. To prevent unintended piracy and intellectual property theft, software publishers put up barriers such as keys, logins, registrations, etc. But those same software publishers will hand over master keys, logins, registrations, etc., as part of a volume license agreement (VLA).

 

That leads to the second problem for IT directors and teams: the software license audit. To “keep you honest’” software publishers routinely check the purchase and installation records of their VLA customers to ensure only software that has been duly purchased is in use in the customer’s environment. These audits can be onerous, time-consuming, overly broad, and costly (primarily if unlicensed installations are found!).

 

What Are Software Asset Management Tools?


Software asset management tools are used in SAM solutions to automate and maintain various tasks necessary to comply with software licenses. When deployed and appropriately used, asset management tools can have a positive impact on software spend.


As part of SAM solutions, software asset management tools enable ITAM managers and teams to keep on top of software assets. Before they were available, asset management was primarily kept on manual spreadsheets. The practice was arduous, time-consuming and unreliable.


Today, instead of having to rely on spreadsheets (a practice that complexity has made virtually unmanageable), IT and ITAM directors can turn to tools that automate Software Asset Management because they:

 

  • Automatically collect software use data
  • Establish independent software vendor (ISV) effective license positions (ELP)
  • Allow optimization of software value delivery and information sharing
  • Handle entitlements from enterprise purchases, license agreements, and other records

 

Jeremy Boerger’s Pragmatic ITAM Method helps you optimize your spend using the software asset management tools you already have. So you don’t have to buy more software. Pragmatic ITAM has been proven to be among the most logical and intuitive SAM solutions available. The six foundations of the Pragmatic ITAM Method are:

 

  1. Knowledge of the problem inherently changes the nature of the problem
  2. The best documentation wins
  3. Work smarter, not harder
  4. Trust, but verify
  5. Asset lifecycle management requires rigor
  6. Process is a means to an end and is not an end itself

To find out if Pragmatic ITAM can help you optimize your software spend, up-level your team, and secure your data against cyberattacks, contact The ITAM Coach, Jeremy Boerger, at 513-394-6317 or jeremy@boergerconsulting.com

 

Source: Gartner

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