Licensing Tips from ITAM Review Conference

Back a week back from the ITAM Review Conference in London, an educational and fun couple of days.  Made lots of new contacts, saw the latest functionality from the tool vendors and collected lots of useful licensing tips from the speakers.

I took lots of notes and I thought, as I needed to tidy them up for sharing with the SureDatum team, I’d share some of the tips I collected over the two days.  Of course not all of these tips were picked up in the sessions, some cropped up in the many conversations I had while there. The quality of the information shared is another advantage of attending industry conferences

In no particular order here are a few tips I picked up:

Software Asset Manager

1. Know the fiscal calendar of your software vendors to better manage audits and negotiating strategy.
2. There is always a budget for security, this might help in getting a project approved.
3. You (SAM) have a lot of data, use it to garner support and win friends.
4. SAM for the Cloud will not be about compliance (although that still remains part of the job) but about cost analysis and budget management.
5. Be a cost expert, know how to build scenarios.
6. SAM needs to align with CIO’s agenda.

Audits

1. Is there a conflict of interest with the vendor audit.
2. The tone of the audit is set from the first meeting, don’t make it more difficult than it needs to be
3. Does your organisation have a protocol in the event of an audit letter being received.
4. Keep control of the audit process through a Single Point of Contact.
5. Get an audit cost clause added to your contract at time of purchase (<5% vendor pays).
6. Draft an audit plan.
7. Do you have a policy when a vendor calls an audit? Share the “pain”.
8. Insist on a letter at the end of the audit confirming your position going forward.
9. You always spend something as a result of an audit, agree a budget at the start of the project.
10. Have a quarterly or bi-annual meeting with top vendors to control the information flow.

Negotiations

1. Have a negotiation strategy in place and agreed with Senior Management in advance.
2. Establish your BATNA and WATNA if your audit defence fails, modify your strategy accordingly.
3. Establish timelines for audit early in the negotiations.

Mediation

1. No one ever wants it to go to litigation except the lawyers.
2. Detailed documents not required at negotiation stage, Heads of Agreement are fine.
3. Leave your ego out of negotiations.
4. Establish what is important to both sides, you might be surprised.
5. Once you get a deal, try to improve it for both parties.

There was so much more but that will have to wait for another post.

I didn’t make all the sessions however the slides from the event are available from ITAM Review slideshare although the notes on some of the slides are a little sparse.