Beware focusing on the long-tail of software licensing

There’s a tendency in software asset management (SAM) to focus most resources on managing desktop software (e.g. MS Office, Adobe, Autodesk, etc.) which can lead to a false sense of security if these assets are being reported on regularly. I suspect this is because it’s relatively easy to collect and report on this information and because it has a high-profile given all staff might have an impact. The reality is that most large organizations spend over 80% of their budget on enterprise software i.e. runs on servers either in a data center or the cloud. The other reality is a compliance gap in enterprise software compared to desktop can be very serious, running into the millions. With most large organizations having virtualized environments it is extremely easy to create a server, add more cores or move it into a cluster. This ease of support has a serious downside, it is also very easy to create significant license compliance gaps as each core and server must be licensed also.

Conclusion

So the next time you’re preparing or reviewing the SAM reports for your CIO compare the level of detail reported between desktop and servers and if they are not both of a similar quality as yourself are we focusing on the long tail instead of the far more valuable head? If you need help collecting and reporting on the software on your servers or in the data centre contact us

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Piaras MacDonnell