I am pleased to announce my report on SAM Managed Service Providers (MSP) is now available.

Download the full report here: (registration required)

http://download.itassetmanagement.net/sam-msp/

A competitive comparison of specialist SAM providers

An independent review of leading worldwide SAM Managed Service Providers

This group test looks at the capabilities of six leading SAM Managed Service Providers: Aspera, Computacenter, eTelligent, ITAM Solutions, SHI International and Softline Solutions.

There is considerable interest in ITAM managed services, although the market is very much in it’s infancy. The key difference when buying SAM Managed services rather than SAM tools and consulting is that organizations are buying an SLA or a business outcome rather than technology.

Service providers were rated based on the expertise, methodology and strength of customer references. General market observations during the study included the industry skills shortage, the use of underlying SAM technology, commercial independence and conflicts of interest, the scope of services, the duration of service relationships, key market drivers and using ISO as a reference model.

Contents Summary

• Introduction
• Assessment Criteria
• Market Observations
• Buyers Guide to Selecting a SAM MSP – General Advice
• Buyers Guide to Selecting a SAM MSP – Anecdotal Feedback
• Overall Best in Class
• Partner Summaries
• Anecdotal References for Providers

Download the full report here: (registration required)

http://download.itassetmanagement.net/sam-msp/

Martin Thompson

Martin is an independent software industry analyst, SAM consultant and founder of The ITAM Review and The ITSM Review. Learn more about him here and connect with him on Twitter or LinkedIn.

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Peer Reviews – ITAM Review readers sharing their opinions on ITAM tools, technology and services.

This product review has been written by three ITAM Review readers. Our thanks to R Josey, Stephen B and R Ogilvie for taking the time to share their views on JDisc Discovery. Our reviewers have been specially selected for their experience in the IT industry and in the interests of a fair and balanced review are new to Jdisc, i.e. our reviewers are not customers or in any way affiliated with Jdisc.

JDisc Discovery

The Review Panel

R Josey, Independent ITSM Solution Architect, London “A nicely made tool, which gathers quality data without requiring agents.” Strengths Quick to Deploy, easy to maintain, nice gui. Weaknesses Not suitable for large enterprises

Stephen B, IT Asset Management, USA, Manufacturing, 40,000 Assets “A simple, small, single interface auto-discovery tool that works, but isn’t at the Enterprise level yet.” Strengths The functionality is there for a decent discovery tool.  The tutorials online and the FAQ’s are very well maintained. Weaknesses I would have to go to the user interface.  The best tools now are the most accessible, specifically web based, or maybe app based.  This look needs a facelift.  With that facelift, I think there could be a great potential for growth with this product.

R Ogilvie, ITSM Specialist, Canada, Energy –Oil & Gas, IT Team of 100, company of 3500 “A discovery tool” Strengths Simplicity in that anyone could gain benefit from usage with limited technology skills Weaknesses Simplicity in that from an enterprise perspective this functionality may already exist in other products we use

Ratings

The Reviews

R Josey, ITSM Solution Architect, London, UK

R Josey: “This discovery product from the JDisc is a standard discovery tool aimed at the low to mid-market.

There are some interesting add-ons for relationship mapping, network topology mapping and tracking device history; however these were not included as a part of this review.

Initial Setup

My first impression of the tool was that it is very simple to setup and get started.

A few clicks and the installer has finished and the product client GUI is launched.  This process was painless and an initial scan goes off to find devices.  Although I have a rather limited network to allow this server access to, I found that it did not find all devices initially.

The accompanying documentation was helpful in explaining the relevant scenarios and some network range scanning is recommended by the tool.   This enabled higher device recognition on the network, although I was interested to find that it did not discover the smartphones connected.

The test network scanned included a printer, some independent laptops (not part of an AD domain), tablets and a router.

One thing I found very useful, at this stage was a report showing the effectiveness of device discovery.   As with any tool of this type, the correct credentials are required to get detailed information and other issues can prevent the discovery tool getting the information required.   This tool uses an agent-less and non-intrusive architecture and proved easily blocked by network devices for various reasons.   The report showed all my devices which had problems and suggested ways in which this configuration could be fixed.  I thought this was an excellent way to assist administrators, who may well not be experts in discovery tools and techniques, to find a way increase the quality of the discovery scans.  In spite of my efforts I was unable to gather in-depth information about the windows 7 laptops on the network.  My impression is that this would not be a significant issue in a windows AD environment.

Navigation and GUI

Once properly scanned, devices show a plethora of information in the device reports.   These are clearly laid out and easily and intuitively navigated using the client tool GUI.   I found the client to be quick and able to open multiple windows, for different reports, which could be used independently.  This meant I felt free to move back to previous positions without having to constantly navigate.   The exception to this appears to be when the help file is opened.  This locks the other client windows, which I found quite annoying when the help file is telling you how to configure something, but you cannot see both the help and the configuration screen at the same time.  However, this was the exception rather than the norm.

Overall, the navigation was simple and intuitive, the information was clearly and logically laid out and the icons and GUI design are uncomplicated and pleasant.

I would comment that this tool misses a web-based interface allowing exposure of the data to a wider audience.   The documentation shows that the client could be installed on multiple client machines, as required, but I feel this is not as simple to deploy.

Reports

The tool presents all of the data collected in a series of reports.   Mostly this focuses around details about devices, which has clearly had the main focus from the development effort.   These are quite useful and enable detailed device information to be clearly shown.   However, I feel that this may struggle to display large amounts of data in a useful and meaningful way.   This is due to a lack of grouping capability on the report itself.

Grouping however can be configured to create a tree structure for the whole dataset.  The documentation gives examples such as location based on subnet, but the tool has the capability to create custom conditions based on any available data attribute.

This seemed to be reasonably powerful and simple to configure and can then be used in all the other report screens.

All the data can be exported to Excel for further manipulation but I would expect more based on my experience with other toolsets in the marketplace.

Documentation

The tool comes with thorough and easy to read documentation.   All key concepts for discovery are explained, including mechanisms used by other tools in the market.   The descriptions as to the mechanisms the product uses were very useful and easy to absorb.

I found the information very accessible (i.e. I could find it quickly when I wanted to), clear and complete.

Architecture

The basic architecture consists of a single server, performing scans based according to a configured schedule.

The system documentation explains the system architecture well and how it acquires detailed device information with agentless / non-intrusive methods.  There is a well described list of methods for the various platforms supported.   In order to do this, there are a rather large number of ports which are required in order to do this.   Many of these would often be closed through firewalls due to security reasons.   Naturally, there are ways to create the correct rules to allow this application to perform.   My personal experience suggests that this would be difficult to achieve in a large multinational organization.   Discovery of data-centers is a typical challenge for these kinds of tools.   The documentation mentions a separate installation could be used, behind a firewall, if required.  However, there does not appear to be way to consolidate the databases and combine the data.  This appears to be more of a workaround than a viable solution.

Similarly, the requirement for a device to be connected at the moment of scanning may reduce the reliability of the data due to ever increasingly flexible working practices.

Integration

Typically, I have seen these tools deployed to achieve purposes such as gathering data for software asset management, client management (e.g. patch and software installation) and configuration management.   Alone, I do not see this product achieving any of these aims.   There is some collection of used license keys in the data, but there does not appear to be any further SAM capability.  The add-ons certainly address some of the aims of configuration management, although I have not looked further into these capabilities.

To achieve further value from the data collected I would expect to be able to integrate this with other systems.   There does not appear to be any capability, out-of-the-box, however with a postgreSQL backend, I am sure this could be developed, as required.

Summary

I feel this tool is a good match for a small or medium sized company, which is looking to quickly and easily gather detailed data about the devices or assets on their network.   The setup is simple does not require expertise to start getting quality data.   This data can be easily accessed and exported to excel for further processing.   This would enable simple asset management activities and provide useful information for IT operations teams.

I feel the platform is limited when looking at the enterprise level.”

Stephen B, IT Asset Management, USA, Manufacturing, 40,000 Assets

Stephen B :     JDisc Discovery is an agentless Windows-based auto-discovery toolset that keeps things simple.  This has its advantages as well as its shortcomings.

The first thing I noticed after installing JDisc Discovery on my personal Windows VM was that this tool is truly a thick-client single instance pane of glass type of product.  The interface works well, but being that one would have to log into the Windows server to launch the client in order to do anything with the toolset, including reporting, really limits the scope and size of deployment it would be useful for.   In today’s world of web portals and mobile applications, it was a strange feel for me to have to go back to the classic look of JDisc.

If there were improvements to the overall user interface, it would go a long way toward the acceptance and implementation in the field.  Most other tools are already in a web or portal style deployment mode along with many that have mobile apps to extend the functionality and accessibility to those on the go.

Scalability of the product is advertised as being capable of everything from small to large enterprise businesses.  Functionality-wise this may be true, but I did not have the ability to scan my entire estate with the toolset.  I suspect that if I did attempt the tens of thousands of servers and desktops I currently manage, it would slow JDisc down quite a bit.

The discovery piece works well for most every system I attempted to work with including Windows desktop, MacBook, Windows Server and Linux.  The depth of information gathered and correlated was acceptable as is the case with most discovery solutions on the market today.  The best part about discovery is that it is truly agentless, relying on authenticated users and system commands as the main source of data collection.

The reporting interface works, yet it is very archaic.  Reports are semi-customizable but lack the depth that most C-level decision makers would need in order to make educated decisions about their estates.

Pricing for JDisc Discovery is along the same lines as other discovery products in the market today.  There are three tiers of pricing that are easily accessible on the companies website.

Overall the JDisc toolset is functionally sound but screams for a facelift.  I would love to see this product with a more modern interface or even a complete rewrite to make it a web-based tool with the same functionality in the future.

In today’s rapidly growing IT market, I would only recommend JDisc Discovery for smaller businesses.  It will get the job done due to its simple to use interface, yet intuitive enough engine to satisfy the needs of customers in smaller businesses.   I think it would need a lot of work to be accepted in the larger IT environments with the user interface being at the top of the improvement list.  This is based on my limited scope of testing as well as the pricing for JDisc Discovery found on their website.

R Ogilvie, ITSM Specialist, Canada, Energy –Oil & Gas, IT Team of 100, company of 3500

R Ogilvie: “JDisc Discovery 3.0 is an automated discovery tool whose purpose is to identify your network inventory. The benefit for discovery tools of this nature are that they will allow your organization to take all its devices and identify them, which will enable you to make informed real time decisions based on actual data rather than assumptions or outdated information

Overall I found the JDisc Discovery 3.0 is fairly simple to use. The initial setup was easy and there was ample support from the JDisc website in the form of documentation or through chat if needed.

Pros

From an IT Service Management perspective I liked the idea of being able to discover the devices in my network which for most things this tool accomplishes however in one case I was not able to see detailed information for my router. The use of this for a CMDB would prove its value but it also allows you to manage documents in a similar way as the device which is a good feature as well.

In the event that your devices are in different geographic regions there is the ability to group devices as such which was relatively easy and be able to report on them as such. For me I always look to the reporting functionality for a product, while there are many canned reports with installation, there is also a good level of customization available. Viewing the reports I liked that I was able to click on the device in the list and see a current state for the device in question.

Cons

While JDisc Discovery 3.0 in its simplest form accomplishes what it sets out to (discover) it did seem to lack functionality which I would have liked to see.

These features would be accommodated by additional “add ons” such as

• Device History
• Networking
• Dependency Mapping

These add ons may incur additional costs.

Overall from a small business perspective I found that this would do the trick for a reasonable cost. From an enterprise perspective I wonder if leveraging already existing functionality in existing systems would do what JDisc does at no further costs.”

JDisc Responds:

Thomas Trenz – CEO of JDisc

“First, let me thank the reviewers for their efforts in testing JDisc Discovery and for their feedback. It was great for us to get direct feedback from users who had not seen our product before.

Users often ask us why we don’t offer a web-based interface. And, of course, the reviewers have been no exception in that respect. While web-based interfaces are easy to access because all you need is a browser, they tend to be significantly slower than native interfaces. Both usability and speed were the reasons why we chose a native user interface. Having a native interface does not mean that you cannot use the client remotely. Actually, it is very easy to install the client on a remote computer and connect to the discovery server. However, we understand that a web-based interface would make the integration with other tools or products much easier. Therefore, we are thinking about creating a browser-based user interface, at least for reporting.

People are also asking about consolidation options when using multiple discovery stations, license management functionality or even monitoring. The key business area of our company is the field of network discovery, and this is where we want to focus our expertise. License management is often much more complex than just counting installations, especially when it comes to enterprise software such as Oracle, IBM, or HP software. Our approach is to partner with other vendors who are specialists in their respective fields. We have partnerships with several CMDB, Helpdesk and license management solution providers who can directly import data from our database into their systems.”

Thomas Trenz – CEO of JDisc

Further information:

• JDisc Website
• JDisc Blog
• Thomas Trenz on LinkedIn

This review has been written by three ITAM Review readers. Thank you to R Josey, Stephen B and R Ogilvie for taking the time to share their views on JDisc Discovery. This is a paid review. Reviewers have been paid for their time. For full details please read our Disclosure Statements. To learn more about our Peer Reviews or to become a reviewer please contact us.

Martin Thompson

Martin is an independent software industry analyst, SAM consultant and founder of The ITAM Review and The ITSM Review. Learn more about him here and connect with him on Twitter or LinkedIn.

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This is an independent review of Lime Software for Oracle License Management.

Review Summary

• Product: Lime Discovery, Inventory and License Manager
• Version: Lime Discovery 3.1, Lime Inventory 4.6, Lime License Manager 2.6
• Version Released: January 2014
• Year Company Founded and Turnover: 2007, over £1M
• Total Number of Customers: 104

Lime Software Pricing Summary

• Community Edition (Up to five databases): Free
• SME Large Edition: $8,499
• Lime License Manager: $16,000
• More terms and further info here: http://www.lime-software.com/pricing.htm

Independent Review

Lime Software is an Oracle License Management offering, verified by Oracle, and dedicated exclusively to managing Oracle risk. Lime Software was the first to market in 2007.

Lime state their customers typically fall into one of two camps – either customers are looking for short-term tactical help to address an Oracle audit or are using Lime, perhaps with other tools, as part of their long term license management strategy.

Lime offers an intuitive and straightforward view of Oracle discovery and inventory and a pragmatic approach to verifying data and building an Oracle license compliance picture.

Lime introduced a free community edition for organizations to manage up to 5 Oracle databases and have begun to explore Oracle architecture as a route to efficient Oracle spend as well as license compliance.

In comparison to the other solutions in this review, reporting is an area for improvement.

We have awarded Lime Software Best in Class in this review for Oracle License Management because:

• Lime offers a good array of competitive features for managing Oracle compared to other technology in this review
• Lime has additional features focussed at the verification of data to support Oracle License Management
• Is very competitively priced

Strengths

• Competitively priced
• Good all round Oracle License Management tool with competitive features
• Data verification steps to ensure accuracy and avoid trips during Oracle audits
• Verified by Oracle

Weaknesses

• Reporting could be stronger

Further Reading:

• Lime Products Page: http://www.lime-software.com/products.htm
• Contact Lime http://www.lime-software.com/contact.htm
• Demonstration http://www.lime-software.com/demo.htm

References

• Aviva
• IBM
• IMS Health

In their own words:

• Lime Software Products and Services help customers reduce costs in their Oracle Licensing. It has been verified by Oracle’s License Management Services Team, as one of a handful of suppliers who meet Oracle’s stringent audit capabilities.
• For Oracle customers who need to reduce costs and maintain compliance in their licenses, the Lime Software Product family is a Software Asset Management tool-set that helps customers manage their risks and investments by delivering a comprehensive view of the contracts and inventory license position. Unlike our key competitors, our products are 100% focused on Oracle with product catalogue for over 2000 Oracle contract items, and Zero-foot print inventory and discovery.
• Lime Software has engaged with 100’s customers to assist in Oracle licensing since launch in 2007. Lime Inventory was the first commercially available Oracle inventory and discovery tool.
• In 2010 Lime License Manager was launched at the UK Oracle User Group, with over 2000 License rules built into the product to help customer with complex licensing issues.
• In 2011 Lime was accredited with the Oracle 3rd Party tool Vendor Status.
• In 2013 Lime Software launched the Open Program, delivering a SaaS License Management Platform for Oracle Partners.
• Lime Software does not resell Oracle Licenses, and is 100% independent/focused on helping customers reduce their costs in Oracle and mitigating compliance risks.

Screenshots

See a summary of the results and other vendors in this review here:
http://www.itassetmanagement.net/2014/04/08/oracle-licensing/

Martin Thompson

Martin is owner and founder of the The ITAM Review and The ITSM Review. Martin is also founder and Chair, Campaign for Clear Licensing. A contributor to the British Computer Society (BCS) Configuration Management Group and contributor to the UK itSMF UK Service Transition SIG. Learn more about him here and connect with him on Twitter or LinkedIn.

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The post Review: Lime Software for Oracle License Management [BEST IN CLASS] appeared first on The ITAM Review.

This is an independent review of Miradore.

AT A GLANCE

Founded in 2006 with headquarters in Finland, Miradore is a provider of IT Asset Management (ITAM) solutions enabling organisations to manage their IT assets throughout their lifecycle.

This review takes a look at the core capabilities, the route to market, competitive strengths and weaknesses, product development roadmap and market reach of Miradore’s latest offering, which was released in July 2014.

Miradore offer both an on-premise solution and an online solution for its customers, with the on-premise offering only available through channel partners and managed service providers (MSP). The online offering, including its free mobile device management solution, can be found on the website.

SUMMARY OF KEY FINDINGS

Strengths	Weaknesses
Asset management data reporting	On-premise solution only purchasable through MSP’s
Built in approval processes	Day-to-day Software Asset Management (SAM)
Easy software deployment	Poor software metering
User Interface (UI) is customizable and easy to use
Strong Mobile Device Management (MDM) solution (Miradore Online)

PRIMARY MARKET FOCUS

Miradore’s market focus is primarily within the Nordic regions. It also has a number of customers in other regions, with the percentage of customers outlined below:

• Finland 69%
• Sweden 18%
• Denmark 5%
• UK 4%
• Brazil 3%
• Singapore 1%

The cost of a typical project ranges between €100,000 to €500, 000, with the total project cost normally consisting of 80% licence costs and 20% implementation services. Maintenance and support is included in this price.

ANALYSIS

There are not many ITAM tools currently on the market that claim to do as much as Miradore does. Usually tools primarily focus on specialising in one aspect, whether that’s IT asset management, SAM, configuration, deployment or MDM. However, Miradore appears to have torn up the rule book, and decided to provide a solution that does anything and everything you could possibly need to manage your assets throughout their lifecycle. It’s a big challenge, but we think Miradore may have just pulled it off.

Miradore offers a clean, fresh UI for its customers, with a lot of customization options. A user can specify what information they want to see on their homepage to best suit their own requirements. Furthermore, Miradore users can chose from over 70 Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) when customizing the tool, which we believe gives a unique feel to each user.

Click to Enlarge

In The ITAM Review’s opinion, Miradore really excels in the hardware asset management (HAM) and hardware discovery aspect. The sheer amount of hardware information available to the end user is superb; it provides all the hardware information that an organisation could possibly need to effectively manage its hardware assets throughout its lifecycle. Miradore can track any form of asset, from laptop to printer to mobile device, and it presents the data it has recorded in a comprehensive format.

What we really liked about the HAM aspect of Miradore was the way that hardware information is presented, and the facts and figures it provides. From a default menu within Miradore you can see who last used the hardware device, what location they were in, and when it was last used. In addition, the end user is able to set up alerts for any devices that have been moved from their ‘home’ location and also for those devices that haven’t been seen on the network for a set period of time.

In our view, the sheer amount of data and management options for hardware will make the life of any IT Manager or Asset Managers a lot easier. Miradore provides more that enough data to help with any form of asset management project. We believe that the data will also be extremely useful for forecasting hardware budgets, so it could save an organisation a lot of money.

SAM tools are becoming more and more important to an organisation in the current financial climate. Organisations want to get the most out of their software, and ensure that money isn’t being overspent or wasted. One of Miradore’s many tricks is the fact it is a SAM solution. It provides the usual SAM aspects of a tool, such as license management, assigning licenses, and monitoring installs. Miradore does what you’d expect any SAM tool to do, and in our opinion it does it well.

However, one flaw that we did identify within the SAM feature is the weakness of its software metering and general usage stats. Whilst Miradore claims it can provide real-time data, we feel that the software metering and usage aspect is a little weak compared to other similar solutions in the market. We can’t stress enough how important software metering is for a tool where licenses and software assets are managed, as it gives the user an understanding of what is actually being used within their estate. This results in organisations not being able to fully utilize their software licenses, thus money saved on software will not be as much as it could be. Server and datacentre software management also appears to be lacking.

Furthermore, the actual act of adding and reviewing licenses seemed to be lacking sophistication. It didn’t present itself well and looked far more complicated than it should. In our opinion, the act of actually managing existing licenses and seeing the compliancy figures could be improved upon to make it more user friendly.

There are plenty of established service management tools available to organisations, but what about a tool that also provides sophisticated software and hardware asset management capabilities? Step forward Miradore who appear to have succeeded where other tools have failed. It has managed to integrate service management capabilities, into the very same tool that provides software, hardware, configuration management and also software deployment.

In our opinion the service management aspect looks strong, with users able to raise their own ticket request and track the progress of said request throughout the approval process. However, whether or not an organisation would give up its existing sophisticated IT service management (ITSM) solution to use Miradore instead is another matter. It is important to note that Miradore isn’t an ITSM tool, so its service management features should simply be considered a bonus.

Miradore has integrated a self-service approval process for software within the tool. This feature is very important for SAM as it only allows users or service desk personnel to install authorized and approved software onto the estate. In our view, Miradore has successfully made license optimization and SAM a whole lot easier, and more effective. Miradore state that approving users have the ability to deny the deployment or purchase of unauthorized applications without the software being installed without them knowing, which we believe will ease the headache of users installing their own software.

One aspect of the Miradore solution that we really liked is its ability to push software and updates directly from the tool. Whilst this may not be particularly unique, coupled with the approval process it provides a controlling and powerful method for managing and updating an organisations software estate. With the aforementioned approval process and the ability to actually deploy software from the tool, in our opinion this makes Miradore a very strong solution. This reduces the need for different solutions for software deployment or software updates, which helps the IT staff that have to use multiple tools for different actions.

Click to Enlarge

The reporting functionality within Miradore is again, top notch. The amount of data you can pull from the tool itself is second to none, and you can then modify the data in different file types. Whilst reporting is commonplace with tools, the fact that Miradore provides so much information within its tool results in reports with a high level of detail. This is especially true on the hardware side of things as Miradore is able to inventory a large variety of hardware assets. This is really useful for any hardware refresh or update projects that an organisation may encounter.

In the ITAM Review’s opinion, Miradore should be very high on your consideration list when looking for an ITAM solution. It excels in so many areas, such as HAM, its built in approval and deployment features, and its SAM capabilities. While it may have a few minor flaws such as weak software metering, we believe that the rest of the tool is very strong against other solutions in the market. In our opinion it is a shame that you can only purchase Miradore through partner channels or MSP’s as we feel that selling and promoting the tool in that method doesn’t provide the exposure that such a brilliant tool deserves.

KEY CAPABILITIES

The table below highlights the key capabilities of Miradore.

GO-TO-MARKET STRATEGY

Potential customers wanting to purchase Miradore On-Premise can only do so through MSP’s. Miradore use channel partners and local partners as they have the right connections and experience in their own regional markets.

Business Partner Summary

Key Business Partners

• APAC: Dimension Data
• Europe: Fujitsu, Tieto, Efecte
• South America: Scopus

Market Penetration

Implementation

Typical installation

• Miradore state: “fastest implementations have been done during one week. If there were no external delays (network connectivity issues, company internal politics etc.), a realistic calendar time for a big scale implementation would be eight weeks. For a small-scale implementation two weeks would be a realistic time”. This form of implementation includes all aspects of implementation and installation. The actual installation of Miradore can be done within one to two days for smaller scale implementations.

Furthermore, Miradore also has a cloud-based ‘out-of-the-box’ solution. It states that this can be implemented within “2-10 days from our certified partners to set up a production environment. But naturally this depends on the case”.

For system requirements, you are advised to contact Miradore or a Miradore approved MSP.

Time to value

In our opinion, the implementation time is quite lengthy, with the fastest implementation taking around one week. Based on our experiences, customers may want their new solution implemented in shorter timeframe.

Resources Required

A number of resources are required through the MSP’s such as:

• A Project Manager
• Solutions Architect
• Specialist Trainer
• Overall Technical Specialist

These are the resources required for implementing Miradore. For smaller organisations these roles can usually be combined into a single person, however for larger enterprises they would be better served as individual roles.

Scalability

Miradore’s technology architecture and tool offers are modern and relevant, such that they enable scalability for all of their customers.

PRODUCT ROADMAP

Based on the information provided, the next major functional enhancement from Miradore, is heading towards a hybrid cloud model with support to provide best in class inventory and automation functionality. Bring your own device (BYOD) and MDM are key focus areas in upcoming releases.

• 2014 H2, BYOD support
• 2015 H1, Hybrid cloud support for Miradore, Patch management
• 2015 H2, Focus in data availability and further automation of WS management

PRODUCT PORTFOLIO

Miradore’s standard offering consists of the following features:

• Asset Management
• Supports Win, Linux, OS X Symbian, Android, iOS, WP8
• SNMP scan for printers, switches, routers
• Asset discovery
• Connectors to third-party systems
• REST based Web service API
• Hardware and software inventory
• Power management and reporting
• Monitoring and Alerts, including automated actions based on event occurrences
• Quality Index reporting
• MDM policies

Customers also have the option of additional extras:

Software Asset Management

• Normalized software inventory
• Software usage measuring
• License management
• Software compliancy management
• Software catalogue

Configuration Management

• For Windows, Linux, OS X
• Desktop Configuration management
• Software deployment
• Initial installation
• Self-service

Endpoint Backup

• Backup to USB, file share, or network storage
• Centralized management
• User specific backup jobs
• Shared backup jobs
• Data restore
• Self-service

Remote Control

• Screen sharing with multi-monitor support
• Control mouse and keyboard
• Two-way file transfer
• Drawing tools
• Voice chat
• Diagnostics

FURTHER RESOURCES

• Website – http://www.miradore.com/all-in-one-solution/
• Downloads – http://www.miradore.com/downloads/

Company Information

Founded in 2006, with headquarters in Finland, Miradore is a provider of ITAM solutions enabling organisations to manage their IT assets throughout their lifecycle. Miradore offer a number of offerings including:

• Miradore On-Premise
• Miradore Online (free MDM)

Miradore has a number of features to help customers manage their asset estate. These features include:

• Asset and Configuration Management – maintain comprehensive information on all IT and mobile devices, their configurations, and relationships with other configuration items.
• Operating System and software deployment – Deploy operating systems, drivers, and software for computers, and applications or configuration settings for mobile devices.
• Remote control – troubleshoot end-user problems and administer computers remotely as if you were sitting next to the end-user.
• Software asset management – ensure software license compliance and minimize licensing costs with accurate software inventory and usage information.
• End Point backup – implement centralized backup management for company devices, and allow end-users to backup their personal files.
• Mobile Device Management – Track and manage all mobile devices across the organization through a single intuitive console, regardless of the device’s operating system.

VENDOR PROFILE

In their own words:

“Miradore was born when three IT specialists working for a global paper giant UPM needed a better way to manage their own IT infrastructure. Since none of the existing configuration management solutions did not address the challenges they faced in a company with 20,000 workstations in over 30 countries, they decided to create their own. The pilot project and full-scale roll out was a success, and so in 2006 they left UPM to found Miradore Ltd. And naturally, UPM became Miradore’s first customer.

Today Miradore provides a mature and feature-rich product for managing different types of IT devices throughout their entire lifecycles. This is done by collecting accurate and up-to-date information from devices, automating device management activities, and integrating Miradore easily to overall ITSM toolset.

Miradore is committed to continuous improvement and thereby strives to further improve the product, focusing especially on utilization of cloud technologies, easiness of implementation and use, and mobility.”

CONTACT DETAILS

SUMMARY

Strengths	Weaknesses
Asset management data reporting	On-premise solution only purchasable through MSP’s
Built in approval processes	Day-to-day Software Asset Management (SAM)
Easy software deployment	Poor software metering
User Interface (UI) is customizable and easy to use
Strong Mobile Device Management (MDM) solution (Miradore Online)

Disclaimer, Scope and Limitations

The information contained in this review is based on sources and information believed to be accurate as of the time it was created. Therefore, the completeness and current accuracy of the information provided cannot be guaranteed. Readers should therefore use the contents of this review as a general guideline, and not as the ultimate source of truth.

Similarly, this review is not based on rigorous and exhaustive technical study. The ITSM Review recommends that readers complete a thorough live evaluation before investing in technology.

This is a paid review, that is, the vendors included in this review paid to participate in exchange for all results and analysis being published free of charge, without registration.
For further information, please read our Disclosure page.

David Foxen

David Foxen CSAM is a Research Analyst at ITAM Review, with a mission to save the world of SAM and software licensing.

Known as the “SAM Beast” he is a self proclaimed ITAM geek. He was recently “paged” (over the tannoy) in a supermarket by his girlfriend and friends after they were separated for a whopping 5 minutes!

Previously a Software Asset Manager, covering the EMEA regions, despite his relatively short time in the industry, he has already implemented a successful software asset management structure in a number of organisations. He has also saved hundreds of thousands of pounds via internal audits and optimizing existing licenses.

Self-taught, he has acquired a number of SAM related qualifications and is also studying part-time towards a Business Studies degree. While always looking to learn, he is very enthusiastic and passionate about SAM and software licensing.

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The post Technology Review: Miradore appeared first on The ITAM Review.

This is an independent review of technology for managing Microsoft licensing and agreements.

Also participating in this review:

• IE
• Brainware / Spider
• Snow Software

A full comparison and Group Test results can be found here: http://www.itassetmanagement.net/2014/10/02/microsoft-license-management/

Executive Summary

Commercial Summary

Rating

 Key to Ratings

Independent Review

Aspera has SKU catalogue-centric license management offering called SmartTrack.

Aspera SmartTrack has extensive capabilities for managing Microsoft license models, agreements types and managing the nuances and complexity of Microsoft Licensing across desktop, datacentre and virtual environments.

We liked the fact that Aspera simply charge per qualified desktop. Some other suppliers competing in the license management for large enterprises charge per publisher blade or vendor. Software Asset Managers are investing in License Management tooling to help them with some of the heavy lifting and make things easier – not further complicate things!

The heart of SmartTrack is the ‘Master Catalog’, a SKU catalogue and license intelligence database which takes the raw inventory feeds and varied enterprise data sources and combines installation data with procurement history. SmartTrack uses SKUs as the unique identifier and best way to marry the diverse languages of configuration and procurement. Aspera was a pioneer in the use of SKUs for maintaining SAM accuracy and now has a strong catalogue updated by the Aspera team. Learn more about SKUs here: “How SKU catalogues save time and money”.

The use of the Master Catalog within SmartTrack allows organizations to identify the product use rights and licensing rules that are applicable for every single Microsoft line item in their estate such as second use or parallel usage rights, Affinity or virtualization rules, user based licensing such as MSDN, upgrade and downgrade rights, client access licenses, software assurance and so on.

The immediate business benefits of this are two fold:

• Ensuring organizations are operating within the terms of their agreements with Microsoft and
• Ensuring they are squeezing every last drop of value out of every product use right and entitlement they own.

SmartTrack includes a ‘Price Assistant’ that provides an average price for line items depending on purchase history – particularly useful for forecasting future demand and negotiating Microsoft agreements.

The ITAM Review particularly liked the ‘Optimization and Simulation Module’ (OSM) within SmartTrack that allows Software Asset Management and IT Procurement professionals to identify potential strategic changes in Microsoft licensing. For example organizations can explore changing the license metric used for Microsoft SQL in the datacentre and simulate both the financial consequences and impact on product use rights. This is particularly useful for those organizations that have reached sufficient maturity in their SAM function to converse with the likes of Enterprise Architects and IT planners to identify optimal long-term strategies for licensing with Microsoft.

SmartTrack also has a Contracts Management Module (CMM) that is ideally suited for managing the multi-tier, multi-country nature of Microsoft contracts, enrolments and agreements. The CMM module includes a number of important Financial Management features such as budgeting, forecasting and internal cost allocation of Microsoft spend – very useful during a Microsoft true up.  Software Asset Managers and Procurement professionals can also be notified via email of major milestones of software contracts e.g. expiration, notice periods, auto-renewals and so on.

License Management is never a point and click exercise, for this reason Aspera offer a variety of managed services to support implementation and efficient spend with Microsoft. Aspera Managed Services were reviewed as part of our SAM Managed Service providers review back in January 2014: “SAM MSP Group Test – The Results”.

It should be noted that Aspera has no in-house inventory sources but instead uses an exhaustive list connections to existing inventory sources and configuration data necessary to satisfy audit requirements with Microsoft. Whilst Aspera can highlight to organizations where their inventory sources may have holes using SmartTrack, ultimately a SAM tool is only as good as the data you put in it. So whilst Aspera is a strong offering for Microsoft license management organizations will need to ensure they have inventory of sufficient quality to support use of the solution. There is no point putting a Ferrari engine on a scooter.

Overall The ITAM Review considers Aspera a leader in the field of license management.  SmartTrack is a strong solution for management of Microsoft licensing for large organizations with no significant shortcomings. One weakness to mention is not a technological one but related to implementation partners; competitors to Aspera typically have a broader partner channel and global presence. Aspera are addressing this with the opening of a US office to further expansion in the Americas.

Screenshots

In their own words

“SmartTrack is designed to manage all types of software licenses based on clients, as well as server-, virtual- and cluster-environments including (but not limited to) Microsoft products. A vital part is taking contracts into consideration as product usage and commercial article data alone are not enough to calculate the effective license situation e.g. regarding true-ups, secondary copy rights CALs, Microsoft Enterprise- or Select Agreements etc. in combination with possible organizational / geographical constraints. SmartTrack enables your company to manage all of these situations – and even optimize them on top of the actual situation.”

Further Reading

• Aspera Products: http://www.aspera.com/en/tool/smarttrack/
• Aspera Services: http://www.aspera.com/en/services/managed-services/
• Aspera Whitepapers: http://www.aspera.com/en/footer/resources/white-papers/

Martin Thompson

Martin is owner and founder of the The ITAM Review and The ITSM Review. Martin is also founder and Chair, Campaign for Clear Licensing. A contributor to the British Computer Society (BCS) Configuration Management Group and contributor to the UK itSMF UK Service Transition SIG. Learn more about him here and connect with him on Twitter or LinkedIn.

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The post Aspera SmartTrack for Microsoft License Management appeared first on The ITAM Review.

This is an independent review of technology for managing Microsoft licensing and agreements.

Also participating in this review:

• Aspera
• Brainware / Spider
• Snow Software

A full comparison and Group Test results can be found here: http://www.itassetmanagement.net/2014/10/02/microsoft-license-management/

Executive Summary

Commercial Summary

Rating

Key to Ratings

Independent Review

1E has a solution for management of Microsoft licensing called AppClarity.

AppClarity’s primary source of inventory is data from Microsoft configuration manager via integration. We reviewed 1E’s SCCM integration back in 2012 see “Microsoft SCCM (ConfigMgr) Plug-Ins Group Test”.

AppClarity offers a good, intuitive interface allowing Software Asset Managers to focus in on licensable Microsoft titles and ignore all other configuration noise.

Historically 1e has focussed on desktop volume titles such as Microsoft and Adobe but has begun to develop features to address datacentre software publishers such as VMware. AppClarity can manage per processor and per core based licensing for Microsoft server based products as well as tracking software installed within App-V applications.

However AppClarity only offers partial coverage of license types typically found in the estates of large Microsoft customers. AppClarity does not support Client Access Licenses, user or subscription licensing. Managing users in particular is a significant hole as the vast majority of newly signed Microsoft agreements are likely to be user centric.

AppClarity also has no SKU catalogue and only limited license records management and contracts management. AppClarity’s primary focus is the reclaim of unused software and could easily be used to compliment another SAM tool including those featured in this review, although there may be areas of overlap.

1E is a pioneer in the proactive reclaim of unused licensing. Using software usage information from SCCM, 1E can claw-back unused software in an automated fashion via a customer friendly user interface, providing the opportunity for users to control and manage the whole experience.

This is a great utility for proactively removing unused Microsoft titles from your estate whilst maintaining a positive experience for end users.

The ITAM Review likes the way that AppClarity is action oriented and allows organizations to automate the cleansing of unused software from the estate but it needs some more in-depth licensing features to compete with the main SAM market.

AppClarity can be connected to a sister product called ‘Shopping’ which provides an App store experience and software deployment mechanism to ensure that once and estate is cleansed of unused software – only authorized Microsoft titles with a business requirements get installed.

In summary, AppClarity is not quite the fully rounded solution for managing your Microsoft estate but is certainly a powerful utility for removing waste and allowing organizations to enter true-ups and negotiations from the leanest point possible.

Screenshots

In their own words

“AppClarity is a Software License Optimisation tool that allows rapid reduction in software license costs across organizations. AppClarity is very simple to setup and use, and presents a single console for the Software Asset Manager.

AppClarity gives clear and simple visibility of an entire software estate, across servers and PCs, enabling users to make immediate reductions in software costs, also providing the information software asset managers need to prepare for a software audit. AppClarity financially quantifies all unused software and, for PCs, it can initiate automatic user-centric software reclaims.

AppClarity leverages Microsoft Configuration Manager and other inventory systems to instantly obtain an accurate picture of all applications deployed across an IT estate. Every software install is instantly analysed by using data from Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager to determine if it is used, occasionally used or unused. This powerful information is available at your fingertips for every software product in your PC environment.

Unused applications can be harvested from PCs using a policy-based approach. When a software installation is unused it can be reclaimed automatically or with user consultation using an intelligent opt-out process. Savings achieved through this software license optimization initiative are tracked and reported via AppClarity’s single console.

AppClarity’s extensive reporting capabilities allow the immediate production of vendor compliance reports for Adobe as well as other vendors. This saves software asset managers significant effort in the collection and reconciliation of data.”

Further Reading

• General page on AppClarity: http://www.1e.com/it-efficiency/software/appclarity-software-asset-management/
• Direct link to AppClarity Datasheet (this link can be found on the AppClarity Page): http://www.1e.com/it-efficiency/wp-content/plugins/1E-Resources/includes/viewdoc.php?id=54775008&key=key-qz1qj252qjd44o4hbb5
• General page on Software License Optimization: http://www.1e.com/it-efficiency/solutions/software-license-optimization/
  
  

Video

http://vimeo.com/61184766

Martin Thompson

Martin is owner and founder of the The ITAM Review and The ITSM Review. Martin is also founder and Chair, Campaign for Clear Licensing. A contributor to the British Computer Society (BCS) Configuration Management Group and contributor to the UK itSMF UK Service Transition SIG. Learn more about him here and connect with him on Twitter or LinkedIn.

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The post 1E AppClarity for Microsoft License Management appeared first on The ITAM Review.

This is an independent review of technology for managing Microsoft licensing and agreements.

Also participating in this review:

• IE
• Aspera
• Snow Software

A full comparison and Group Test results can be found here: http://www.itassetmanagement.net/2014/10/02/microsoft-license-management/

Executive Summary

Commercial Summary

Rating

 Key to Ratings

Independent Review

Brainware group offers a solution for managing Microsoft licensing called Spider Licence.

The Spider technology has been developed since 1999; originally as a standalone licence management tool which then merged with the Brainware Solutions AG in 2010 and became part of brainwaregroup. brainwaregroup include systems management tools under the “Columbus” brand such as inventory, deployment and remote control. Spider is also available as a SaaS offering known as “SAM Cloud”.

It has been a while since The ITAM Review reviewed Spider Licence, our last review was for our Tools Intelligence assessment back in 2010 when the solution was rated second out of six leading enterprise licence management tool sets (see ‘Market Synopsis: Enterprise SAM Tools’).

Back in 2010 our assessment concluded that Spider was a strong competitive licence management solution, but with a rather clumsy interface. In the intervening years Spider has come along in leaps and bounds and is still a competitive offering for licence management for complex enterprises. The interface has also improved dramatically over the last years, although may still not be on a par with others in this review. In our opinion aesthetics are not a showstopper in tool choice, but can be quite important in adoption and everyday use.

Spider Licence claim their technology recognises over 98% of Microsoft titles and offer comprehensive coverage of Microsoft licence types, devices and platforms.

Features for managing Microsoft licensing and agreements includes Microsoft suite detection, parallel or secondary usage product use rights, tracking of usage within virtual environments, management of client access licences and calculation of upgrade, downgrade and software assurance rights.

Spider use a SKU based approach to licence management with a logical methodology for balancing licensing procurement history and installation or configuration data. It is an open system rather than a black box approach – so Software Asset Managers can see and if necessary override any system settings in case they have negotiated special terms with software publishers.

Spider has the ability to interface with VMware, Hyper-V, and Citrix and can track Office 365 usage via the use of their External Data Collector (EDC) technology and can calculate the appropriate virtual Microsoft product use rights that apply.  We also liked the way it is easy to display all the licences assigned to either a device or an employee or any other organizational dimension. Spider licence also includes features for managing the complexities of Microsoft contracts, agreements and enrolments including email alerting around major contract dates, licence pooling for maximum advantage, collating points and managing Microsoft software assurance entitlement.

The ITAM Review believes Spider is a strong competitor for organizations looking for licence management solutions, the company would benefit from more participation in the industry outside central Europe to make sure organizations shortlisting tools are fully aware of their capabilities.

Screenshots

In their own words

“Spider Licence has strong functionality to support the management of Microsoft licences. As with any good licence management product, the key to a good result begins with quality data. Our EDC technology allows for the standardised collection methods of software installation data from Windows devices across multiple different networks and can be scheduled to ensure a bandwidth friendly delivery of that data back. Our Advanced Discovery scanning capabilities allow us to collect key information related to licence management such as CPU and core counts from a hardware perspective, as well as edition information for SQL and embedded OS information for Windows.

In addition to our own scanning capabilities, we have product interfaces to SCCM, Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit (MAP), LANDESK and many others. After the software detection, the Spider Recognition Module identifies the licence relevant products out of the huge amount of files and registry keys. We achieve a recognition rate of more than 98% for Microsoft products. The recognition maps the detected software to a product version in our catalogue, which contains over 320.000 unique articles. For each product version, we leverage Licence Metric Procedures (LMPs), which evolve to cope with the licensing changes of the vendors we manage. These rules allow for the detection and leverage of rights related to:

• Microsoft suite detection
• Multiple installations on virtualised OSEs via the host’s licence
• Secondary usage rights
• Usage in virtual environments
• Automatic version upgrade with SA
• Converting the cores/processors figure to the correct licence demand for each product (e.g. minimum core commitments for SQL; two processors requiring one licence for Windows Server)

Entitlements can be imported from MVLS reports, lists from resellers or by importing a Microsoft Licence Statement (MLS). All Microsoft contracts, their relationships and all accompanying documents can be managed with Spider Licence.

The resulting benefits include:

• Extensive reporting on Microsoft product usage, e.g. Effective Licence Position or True-up
• Full transparency about software usage, purchase history and upgrade paths
• Quick access to all licence documents (SLT, contracts, side agreements) and proof of licences (invoices, COAs etc.)”
• The ability to assign licences and keys to individual devices or users
• The granularity to approve installations of applications individually and report on estate changes so cross charging and licence assignation becomes a transparent part of licence management.

Further Reading

• Spider Licence Product Page: https://www.brainwaregroup.com/en-ch/products/spider-licence.html

Case Studies

• Itergo, Düsseldorf, Germany.
• Swisscom, Bern, Switzerland
• SBB, Bern, Switzerland
• Vodafone
• Linde Group, München, Germany

Martin Thompson

Martin is owner and founder of the The ITAM Review and The ITSM Review. Martin is also founder and Chair, Campaign for Clear Licensing. A contributor to the British Computer Society (BCS) Configuration Management Group and contributor to the UK itSMF UK Service Transition SIG. Learn more about him here and connect with him on Twitter or LinkedIn.

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The post Brainware Spider for Microsoft License Management appeared first on The ITAM Review.

This is an independent review of technology for managing Microsoft licensing and agreements.

Also participating in this review:

• IE
• Aspera
• Brainware / Spider

A full comparison and Group Test results can be found here: http://www.itassetmanagement.net/2014/10/02/microsoft-license-management/

Executive Summary

Commercial Summary

Rating

 Key to Ratings

Independent Review

Snow Software has a popular solution for managing Microsoft licensing and agreements called License Manager.

The ITAM Review considers Snow Software a key player in the Software Asset Management market. It has good market share in the desktop SAM space and has made significant inroads into datacentre SAM. We reviewed Snow Software in depth here:

http://www.itassetmanagement.net/2014/05/26/snow-sap/

There is a convergence in the market between the fields of Hardware Asset Management and Software Asset Management. So much hardware and configuration detail is required to satisfy the requirements of modern SAM that organizations can’t do SAM without HAM.

License Manager aggregates an exhaustive list of hardware and configuration detail on operating systems, devices and virtualization either via it’s own inventory client or via integration with other systems.  By using the Snow Software inventory client as well as License Manager for managing Microsoft licensing estates organizations can also benefit from detailed software usage metering, the ability to monitor Terminal Service environments, the Datacentre, Virtual machines and HyperV (if not already covered by their in-house inventory systems).

Such is the level of detail collected by Snow to satisfy the audit requirements of publishers such as Microsoft – that it is only a skip, hop and a jump from being a fully blown ITAM tool. However we found the contracts and financial management capabilities typically found in Asset Registers to be lacking and weaker than competitors in this review. Reporting and presentation of data could also be more action oriented compared to competitors in this review; rather than simply being presented data it would be good to receive recommendations on what actions to take.

The key competitive differentiator for Snow License Manager is the Software Recognition Service. The recognition capabilities include:

• Identifying whether software discovered needs a license
• The software publisher Stock Keeping Unit (SKU)
• Product Use Rights such as Upgrade and Downgrade Rights
• Product family and product suite recognition

We were particularly impressed by the automatic calculation of primary user of devices in order to calculate second use rights out of the box.

Other SAM tools in the market offer software recognition, but Snow offers it against a service level policy, aiming to identify commercial products discovered in customer environments within 30 days. This is in stark contract to the industry norm, which places the onus on the customer to manually administer any unidentified applications or wait for the next update from the SAM tool manufacturer that is usually provided on a ‘best endeavour’ basis.

Snow Software’s License Manager also includes automated MLS import and the ability to pinpoint unused Microsoft software for re-harvesting.

Overall The ITAM Review considers License Manager to be a solid offering for Software Asset Managers and is ideal for organizations struggling with run of the mill inventory systems that are not fit for purpose for SAM such as Microsoft SCCM, Altiris and LANDesk.

Screenshots

In their own words

“Snow License Manager is designed out-of-the-box to help organizations optimize their Microsoft licensing position, from desktop applications, through to enterprise server software and virtualized assets.  Snow License Manager 7 features the ability to single-click import an entire Microsoft License Statement (MLS), automatically checking all transaction data against Snow’s unique Software Recognition Service, which associates the appropriate usage terms with all Microsoft software purchased by the organization.

For difficult-to-manage licenses schemes such as secondary use rights and Virtual Desktop Access (VDA), Snow License Manager makes it easy for organizations to determine the actual software usage and corresponding license requirement.  This can then be instantly compared against the entitlements in the intelligent repository.

The Snow Recognition Service not only automatically recognizes the vast majority of Microsoft applications (including the ability to accurately identify the specific ‘editions’ of server software such as SQL and Exchange), it also provides intelligence such as upgrade and downgrade rights.  Value-add information such as product release dates make it simple to calculate whether installed versions of applications and suites are covered by existing or past volume license agreements such as Software Assurance (SA).

A simple one-page management overview ‘Snowboard’ allows authorized users from across the organization to instantly check the Microsoft licensing situation, identify opportunities to optimize licensing as well as spot potential compliance issues.”

Further Reading

• Snow License Manager overview page: http://www.snowsoftware.com/int/products/snow-license-manager
• SLM product datasheet: http://www.snowsoftware.com/sites/default/files/documents/us-slm7.pdf
• SAM in an imperfect world white paper: http://www.snowsoftware.com/int/campaign/white-paper-sam-imperfect-world-0

Customers

• Arup
• Betfair
• Endsleigh Insurance
• Kingifsher plc

Martin Thompson

Martin is owner and founder of the The ITAM Review and The ITSM Review. Martin is also founder and Chair, Campaign for Clear Licensing. A contributor to the British Computer Society (BCS) Configuration Management Group and contributor to the UK itSMF UK Service Transition SIG. Learn more about him here and connect with him on Twitter or LinkedIn.

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The post Snow Software License Manager for Microsoft License Management appeared first on The ITAM Review.

Overview – Microsoft License Management Group Test

It is sometimes said by Software Asset Management (SAM) experts that Microsoft is an ideal software publisher to tackle first when reconciling your software estate. The breadth of devices and systems Microsoft touches and depth of data required; from desktop to server, mobile device to virtual machine, means that any organization performing a good reconciliation of Microsoft stands in good stead for tackling other publishers.

With this in mind we set out to review some leading SAM tools to see what they brought to the table in terms of technology for managing Microsoft.

Tools Assessed:

• 1E – AppClarity
• Aspera – SmartTrack
• Brainware – Spider License
• Snow Software – License Manager

A high level overview of our assessment criteria is as follows:

Criteria – High Level Overview

• How are instances of Microsoft products discovered or inventoried? (I.e. do you provide inventory, what sources do you work with etc.?)
• How do you filter Microsoft configuration detail to arrive at information useful for license management?
• Describe or list any features that aid Microsoft product family recognition or identification of Microsoft suite components
• What Microsoft licensing types can your solution manage?
• How does your solution work with statements of entitlement provided by Microsoft?
• Describe any features relevant to managing Microsoft in virtual environments (Virtual machine, streaming, terminal services etc.)
• What features aid customers ensure they are spending the least possible with Microsoft whilst maintaining compliance and avoiding shelf ware?
• Describe features that allow customers to manage Microsoft contracts and agreements and prepare for true ups?

We were looking for tools that took away some of the heavy lifting and Spreadsheet crunching when managing Microsoft:

• Taking multiple data feeds from different inventory sources and enterprise systems to gather a single version of the truth
• Sifting through the enormous amount of configuration detail generated by systems such as SCCM to focus on the details that matter – The Microsoft titles that require a license and the product use rights for that particular install
• Grouping Microsoft titles into logical suites and product families to aid the reconciliation process
• Helping identify redundancy and overlap so organizations can reduce waste
• Expose license shortfalls so organizations can remove risk
• Deal with the myriad of Microsoft license types
• Deal with the myriad of devices and systems where Microsoft technology resides
• Working with statements generated by Microsoft
• Working with Microsoft Contracts and Agreements

Comparing Apples with Apples

• Aspera, Brainware and Snow Software offer a broad set of license management features for Microsoft license management. The ITAM Review considers these providers as leading SAM tools and recommends shortlisting these technologies when selecting a SAM tool.
• 1E is focussed on license reclamation and is not considered a full SAM tool

Best in Class – Aspera SmartTrack

• We selected Aspera’s SmartTrack as Best in Class for managing Microsoft licensing. SmartTrack has best in class features for reducing risk and supporting efficient spend in large Microsoft estates. SmartTrack also has extensive capabilities for managing Microsoft license models, agreement types and the nuances of Microsoft licensing on the desktop, datacentre and virtual environments.
• Brainware and Snow Software also have strong offerings for managing Microsoft software with impressive features for getting to grips with Microsoft. 1E, whilst not a fully rounded SAM tool, is a pioneer in removal of unused desktop software.

Key

Strengths and Weaknesses Summary

Tools Assessed:

• 1E – AppClarity
• Aspera – SmartTrack
• Brainware – Spider License
• Snow Software – License Manager

Disclaimer, Scope and Limitations

The information contained in this review is based on sources and information believed to be accurate as of the time it was created. Therefore, the completeness and current accuracy of the information provided cannot be guaranteed. Readers should therefore use the contents of this review as a general guideline, and not as the ultimate source of truth.

Similarly, this review is not based on rigorous and exhaustive technical study. The ITAM Review recommends that readers complete a thorough live evaluation before investing in technology.

This is a paid review, that is, the vendors included in this review paid to participate in exchange for all results and analysis being published free of charge, without registration.

For further information, please read our Disclosure page.

Martin Thompson

Martin is owner and founder of the The ITAM Review and The ITSM Review. Martin is also founder and Chair, Campaign for Clear Licensing. A contributor to the British Computer Society (BCS) Configuration Management Group and contributor to the UK itSMF UK Service Transition SIG. Learn more about him here and connect with him on Twitter or LinkedIn.

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The post Microsoft License Management Group Test – The Results appeared first on The ITAM Review.

This is an independent review of Snow Software for managing Oracle Licensing. This review is part of our Oracle License Management Group Test.

Snow License Manager for Oracle License Management

• Product: Snow License Manager + Oracle Management Option (OMO)
• Version Released: OMO released September 2013 / Snow License Manager 7 released March 2014
• Year Founded / Turnover: 1997/30M Euros
• Total number of customers: “3,200 Snow License Manager customers with around 20 currently using the OMO”

Oracle Management Option Pricing Summary:

1. Oracle Licensing is a core capability of Snow License Manager (no extra charge)
2. OMO adds ability to collect important audit data from Oracle servers on multiple platforms (chargeable option)
3. OMO pricing starts at Euro 53 per server (physical or virtual)
4. SLM pricing starts at Euro 9.60 per device

Independent Review

Snow Software Oracle Management Option (OMO) is a relatively new addition to the Snow License Management platform.

Snow have built a good reputation for desktop SAM and have recently developed a number of features for managing complex licensing programs and datacentre based software publishers, including Oracle.

Snow Software believes that an organization should take a proactive stance towards managing their Oracle software estate and not wait until they are audited to discover their compliance position.

Snow were pragmatic in their positioning of this new Oracle license management solution, suggesting that organizations would probably still need to refer to the skills of an Oracle licensing specialist – but that OMO would speed up and reduce the expense of collecting and interpreting the appropriate data.

Customers can use the Snow Software agent to collect Oracle data from multiple operating systems platforms including AIX, Solaris, Linux, SUSE, Red hat, Windows and HPUX.

Software Asset Managers can use OMO to:

• Identify Oracle database instances, editions and versions
• Manage their Oracle agreements and Oracle orders
• Manage Oracle at a level suitable for their environment (At the Virtual machine level, hypervisor, datacentre, cluster and so on)

Strengths

• Auto-populate the Oracle Server Worksheet with data required for Oracle License Management Services (LMS)
• Well organized, easy to understand and use interface
• Root cause analysis (Not just is a packed switched on but what triggered it to be switched on)
• Competitively priced

Weaknesses 

• At the time of writing – not verified by Oracle
• Current focus is population of the Oracle Server Worksheet, missing overall compliance summary and optimization steps of competitors
• Snow have done very well to come so far with their Oracle Management Option so quickly, already outstripping some incumbents. A great validation of their offering in the market would be the all-important verification from Oracle.

Further Reading:

• Web page: http://www.snowsoftware.com/int/products/oracle-management-option
• Snow OMO fact sheet: http://www.snowsoftware.com/int/documents/data-sheet-snow-oracle-management-option-english
• Snow License Manager fact sheet: http://www.snowsoftware.com/int/documents/data-sheet-snow-license-manager-english

In their own words:

“Snow OMO gives organizations control of their Oracle estate thanks to the ability to collect data and report on all server hardware and configuration, database products and editions, database Options and associated usage, Management Packs and associated usage, feature usage and named users.

Proactive license management reduces costs:

• Manage Oracle Agreements and Orders in Snow License Manager and receive alerts when an agreement is about to expire, avoiding the risk of having to re-purchase licenses. Connect all Oracle Orders to specific Oracle servers to get an instant overview of your Oracle license coverage.
• Connect you oracle orders (oracle licenses) to your oracle servers to see what licenses covers what oracle servers.
• Identify oracle servers that are not covered by an oracle license.
• Identify oracle servers that have been discovered but not yet inventoried.
• Avoid overspend on Options and Management Packs
• View at-a-glance reports on precise data on all the metrics that affect Oracle licensing, including database Options, Management Packs, feature usage and database settings. Reduce cost by removing unused database options and management packs.
• Minimize the risk of over-installation in cluster environments
• Virtualization makes the deployment of servers easy and fast, without considering the cost implications for Oracle licensing. Snow OMO automatically reports and visualizes when an Oracle Server is added to a cluster. This gives the SAM owner the ability to manage changes and avoid costs associated with their Out-of-the-box functionality.
• Save time and resources with automated OSW reporting tool

Get an accurate and transparent view of an organization’s investment in Oracle databases without complicated and time consuming work. The Oracle Server Worksheet (OSW) Report is automatically populated with the required information, including hardware details, partitioning technology, database products, options, management packs and users.”

Martin Thompson

Martin is owner and founder of the The ITAM Review and The ITSM Review. Martin is also founder and Chair, Campaign for Clear Licensing. A contributor to the British Computer Society (BCS) Configuration Management Group and contributor to the UK itSMF UK Service Transition SIG. Learn more about him here and connect with him on Twitter or LinkedIn.

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The post Snow Software for Oracle License Management appeared first on The ITAM Review.

This is an independent review of HP Asset Manager for managing Oracle Licensing. This review is part of our Oracle License Management Group Test.

HP Asset Manager for Oracle License Management

• Product: HP Software Asset Management solution (SAM) consisting of HP Asset Manager (AM) and HP Universal Discovery (UD)
• Version: 9.40 (AM), 10.10 (UD)
• Version Released: June 2013
• Year Founded / Turnover:  Founded 1939, Turnover for AM group not disclosed.
• Total number of customers: AM: 1100+; Universal Discovery for Oracle LMS: 100+; UD: 200;

HP Asset Manager Pricing Summary:

• Pricing not disclosed

Independent Review

HP’s enterprise inventory and discovery offering ‘Universal Discovery’ (UD) is verified by Oracle’s License Management Services (LMS) organization, which means Oracle LMS will accept data provided by HP UD during a review. HP customers can also feed UD data into HP Asset Manager for reconciliation with Oracle contracts and purchase history. This should shorten the duration of an Oracle audit, and when combined with HP Asset Manager, allow customers some autonomy from Oracle and independent visibility into their own audit risk.

We reviewed HP Asset Manager for SAM last year: see “Strong Enterprise SAM Contender with dated interface”

“Reconciling the disparate worlds of technical configuration data and financial procurement history is based on the principle of ‘Software Counters’; this is a real strength of HP Asset Manager.  Software counters allow Software Asset Managers to build the logic to interpret any conceivable metric.”

http://www.itassetmanagement.net/2013/07/31/review-hp-asset-manager-sam/

I like the versatile ‘Software Counters’ approach adopted by HP, allowing customers to manage a wide variety of license types, but I found the Oracle License Management capabilities weak compared to other solutions in this review.

HP has released SAM Best Practice content package that contains Oracle SAM best practices in early 2013.  This package is updated multiple times per year and is free for HP Asset Manager SAM customers (downloadable from HP LiveNetwork).

This package contains

• Software compliance counters and Dashboards for the CPU license that use the Oracle core factors (Oracle DB, Oracle Options, management packs and other applications, such as  WebLogic…)
• Workflows and scripts that pre-allocate the appropriate number of points to the server according to the Oracle Core Factor table. The pre-calculation scripts are regularly updated by HP to reflect the last rules.
• Crystal Reports on license expenses
• Oracle Contract samples
• Demo data, so that you understand how it works

Reporting on Oracle database options and packs, a major source of risk and potential unplanned cost, is not as clear and intuitive compared to competitors in this review.

Organizations need clear visibility into how each Oracle database instance is configured to understand licensing impact and optimize their Oracle spend.

As mentioned in my previous review of HP for SAM, whilst HP Asset Manager is very versatile, the flexibility comes at the price of having the resource and expertise to operate it. This seems especially true for managing Oracle. However, HP provides assistance by their expert teams, such as Professional Services and HP Software License Management services.

Strengths

• HP Universal Discovery Oracle Verified
• HP is the only large IT asset management vendor which is Oracle LMS verified (ServiceNow, BMC, CA, IBM and ServiceNow are not verified)
• Versatile ‘Counters’ methodology allows customers to tailor license compliance calculations in line with specific negotiated terms.

Weaknesses

• Reporting on Options and Packs weak compared to competitors
• No root cause analysis as to why Oracle DB options and packs were installed
• No initial install date for Oracle DB options and packs
• Oracle License optimization weak compared to competitors

3 Minute Video

Further Reading:

• 3 ways to save software costs: Software Asset Management

https://ssl.www8.hp.com/ww/en/secure/pdf/4aa4-6339enw.pdf

• Right-size licenses

http://h20195.www2.hp.com/V2/GetDocument.aspx?docname=4AA5-0009ENW&cc=us&lc=en

• Managing Oracle database entitlements using HP Asset Manager

https://ssl.www8.hp.com/ww/en/secure/pdf/4aa3-3865enw.pdf

• HP UD for Oracle Licensing Data Sheet

http://h20195.www2.hp.com/V2/GetDocument.aspx?docname=4AA4-4155ENW&cc=us&lc=en

In their own words:

“HP Software Asset Management (SAM) for Oracle allows customers to optimize the license usage and total cost of their Oracle software assets, reduce the burden of reporting, and mitigate compliance risk.  First, the HP SAM for Oracle solution includes “native discovery” to discover all Oracle software assets in customer’s physical and virtual environment and inventory application installations.

It also measures software usage and provides the critical information you need to control your entire environment. The HP discovery mechanism, called Universal Discovery, is Oracle-verified. Second, the HP SAM solution reconciles the data about purchased licenses from your POs and contracts and entitlements with installation data from the discovery phase. The solution provides the out-of-the-box best practices content for most common Oracle licensing models, such as processor core factor table for Oracle Enterprise Edition, socket based for Standard and Standard One, as well as Named User Plus. By having compliance status on Oracle software —on a global and departmental level—HP customers avoid purchasing software through audits, which is probably the most expensive and inefficient way to purchase and plan for software.

Third, HP offers multiple services to help customers optimize their Oracle licenses and do more with the licenses they already possess. HP Services can conduct a comprehensive evaluation of customer’s SAM practices to identify short, medium and long-term steps towards implementing better SAM practices. Afterwards, HP can assist customers to develop and implement processes based on the finding of the SAM review and based on customers’ internal governance policies. Our customers are enabled   to negotiate more favourable terms on their maintenance and support contracts. They can significantly improve their planning and purchase only the licenses they need, avoiding unnecessary license and maintenance expenses for shelf-ware.”

Martin Thompson

Martin is owner and founder of the The ITAM Review and The ITSM Review. Martin is also founder and Chair, Campaign for Clear Licensing. A contributor to the British Computer Society (BCS) Configuration Management Group and contributor to the UK itSMF UK Service Transition SIG. Learn more about him here and connect with him on Twitter or LinkedIn.

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The time has come for your organisation to get a SAM tool. You’ve decided to buy into the idea of software asset management and you want to manage and utilise your software licenses better. You’ve received the backing from senior management, and you’ve been given a nice healthy budget to get the best solution for your organisation.

There are a large number of SAM tools on the market today, so how do you decide which is the right one for you? It’s not an easy decision to make, and rushing into purchasing a tool just because the salesman gave a good pitch could lead you into a world of pain. Picking the right tool for your organisations environment is key to your SAM programs successes. It’s no easy task, and can end up being a lengthy project in itself.

Identifying what you actually want out of a SAM tool

This sounds like a silly question, but it is a valid one. What do you want from the tool? There are a number of different offerings on the market, including inventory and discovery tools, metering tools, or a tool that does it all (within reason, no silver bullet tools!). There are a number of solutions out there, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. Organisations need to establish what it is they expect from a SAM tool;

• Sophisticated License Management (for Oracle, SAP, IBM etc)
• Inventory and discovery
• Metering (passive or active)
• Usage stats (run times, use times etc)
• Datacentre management
• Virtual environments management (VMWare, Hyper-V etc)
• Mobile devices management (MDM)
• Custom objects management

Along with those points, also for consideration are;

• Data that can be reported. How are reports generated?
• Agent or Agentless technology?
• Do you have web-based applications? An increasingly important factor when picking a tool
• Do you require cloud based application and license management?
• How many licenses do you require? What are the IT plans for the next few years?

What do you want from the tool?

Options currently on the market

As mentioned previously there are already a number of solutions on the market some that specialise in certain areas of ITAM. Dependant on your requirements, you may need something that falls into a category other than a general SAM tool. e.g. If you already have some sort of management system for your server environment, hardware assets or mobile devices.

If you are purely looking at managing mobile devices, then I would suggest that a SAM tool isn’t for your organisation. You’ll need a dedicated and sophisticated MDM solution rather than an overall SAM tool. With that said, some SAM tools do actually have MDM integration, so it might be worth looking at which ones do as they may fit the organisations environment easier.

In part two of this series in SAM tools we’ll look at the further issues organisations need to consider when implementing a SAM tool, especially around capability issues and what to look out for when picking a tool

The ITAM Review is hosting a unique ‘Tools Event Day’ in London on the 18^th November 2014 in London, UK. This is a great opportunity for ITAM Review readers and end-users to come see ITAM Tools in action, and speak to the tool vendors. You can book your place here. It’s free!

Photo Credit

David Foxen

David Foxen CSAM is a Research Analyst at ITAM Review, with a mission to save the world of SAM and software licensing.

Known as the “SAM Beast” he is a self proclaimed ITAM geek. He was recently “paged” (over the tannoy) in a supermarket by his girlfriend and friends after they were separated for a whopping 5 minutes!

Previously a Software Asset Manager, covering the EMEA regions, despite his relatively short time in the industry, he has already implemented a successful software asset management structure in a number of organisations. He has also saved hundreds of thousands of pounds via internal audits and optimizing existing licenses.

Self-taught, he has acquired a number of SAM related qualifications and is also studying part-time towards a Business Studies degree. While always looking to learn, he is very enthusiastic and passionate about SAM and software licensing.

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The post Picking the right Software Asset Management tool (Part 1 of 2) appeared first on The ITAM Review.

Ensure your SAM tool can dig deep and get all of the data you need.

Read Part 1 in our series of articles on SAM tools here.

What to look for in a good SAM Tool

This is a tough call to make, as everyone’s needs are different. Let’s assume an organisation wants a solid ‘all-round’ SAM tool that has both desktop, sever, virtual capabilities. Whilst they may not specialise on one single aspect of software asset management, it may tick all the boxes you need in some form (in no particular order);

• Strong inventory and discovery capabilities – You want to know exactly what assets are in your IT environment
• Strong software metering – As part of your SAM program you’re going to want to optimize your software licenses and usage (software license optimization, SLO)
• Easy to use – SAM tools are complex as it is, you don’t want to further complicate issues by having a tool that is challenging and time consuming to use. A nice user interface (UI) helps with every-day use
• License Management – With changes in licensing models, and complex licensing the backbone of software, organisations need a tool that can manage all the different license types. This includes cloud based and web based licensing
• Specialist license management – Do you have a large Oracle, IBM or SAP estate for example? If so, there are a number of SAM tools that provide specialist support for those vendors and their complex license management processes
• Good support network – As part of the implementation phase, and then with general support and education you want to look for a SAM tool vendor that provides expert support. If the tool vendor can’t provide support, are there any managed service providers who you could turn to?
• Server/Datacentre management – 99.9% of organisations have some sort of server or datacentre environment. You still need to manage the software on these so look for a tool that provides these capabilities
• Virtual software management – VMWare, Hyper-V or another form of virtual software/environment needs to be managed like other software assets. Ensure that the tool you chose provides you with enough information for successful management.

Will the tool fit your environment?

You may already have a number of solutions already in place, like a Service Management tool, Mobile Device Management solution or a separate Asset Management tool. Will adding a SAM tool into that mix fit within your environment, or will there be compatibility issues? They are important factors to consider as the organisation will already have invested money in the existing solutions, so will want all tools to work with, or at least in parallel with each other.

If the SAM tool in question has an agent, you also need to consider changing the image that is loaded onto machines so that all new machines automatically have the SAM tool agent installed from the moment they are built. It’s a small change to make, but it will impact on your new build process.

 Another thing to consider when thinking about the impacts on the IT environment is how the SAM tool will be displayed on local machines. If an agent is involved, then sometimes this can be viewed via the program features or add/remove programs on Windows machines. Consideration must be taking for those with admin rights, as they may have the ability to remove the agent from the machine, thus effectively removing him or herself from the SAM program.

Checklist of things to consider

There are a number of key points to remember when picking a tool;

• Compatibility with other systems/solutions/tools within your environment
• Support you’ll get from the tool vendor. You’ll certainly need it!
• Impact implementation will have on users
• How easy it is to deploy the agent within your particular environment?
• Do you have the resources to manage the tool on a daily basis?
• Do you have the server infrastructure to host such a powerful tool?
• Licensing models are changing. Does the tool manage cloud software or web-based software?
• How often does the tool vendor release patches or new features? Will not updating impact on your existing solutions performance?
• How is the data gathered? Is there ‘down time’ whilst the data is being updated? Will this impact on certain users? (time zone based issue).

There are hundreds of points that could be in the checklist above, but we’ve picked out the most important points to consider. Procuring and implementing a SAM tool is a unique experience for each organisation. The principles of the implementation processes are the same, but the environment in which the tool is being integrated into differs every time. Organisations typically want the same outcome from a SAM tool, to be compliant, manage their software licenses better and also to save money. However, the methods and approaches used to achieve those goals vary due to the difference in personnel, IT environment and also the IT Asset Management (ITAM) estate.

It’s great you have a tool, but remember…

The tool is worthless without the people and processes to manage it.

The ITAM Review is hosting a ‘Tools Event Day’ in New York on Wednesday 28^th January 2015. This is a great opportunity for ITAM Review readers and end-users to come see ITAM Tools in action, and speak to the tool vendors. You can find out more information about this and the rest of our New York event lineup here! 

Image credit

David Foxen

David Foxen CSAM is a Research Analyst at ITAM Review, with a mission to save the world of SAM and software licensing.

Known as the “SAM Beast” he is a self proclaimed ITAM geek. He was recently “paged” (over the tannoy) in a supermarket by his girlfriend and friends after they were separated for a whopping 5 minutes!

Previously a Software Asset Manager, covering the EMEA regions, despite his relatively short time in the industry, he has already implemented a successful software asset management structure in a number of organisations. He has also saved hundreds of thousands of pounds via internal audits and optimizing existing licenses.

Self-taught, he has acquired a number of SAM related qualifications and is also studying part-time towards a Business Studies degree. While always looking to learn, he is very enthusiastic and passionate about SAM and software licensing.

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The post Picking the right SAM tool (Part 2 of 2) appeared first on The ITAM Review.

In December we asked ITAM Review readers to rate their SAM tools for customer satisfaction.

In order to qualify for a rating on the table below each vendor had to receive a minimum of five verified end user customer reviews.

Thank you to everyone that contributed. Qualifying entries will receive an Amazon voucher as promised before the end of January.

There were a number of vendors who received less than five reviews, it would be great to add these to the table when we have sufficient entries.

Vendors with less than five reviews:

Symantec Altiris, 1E AppClarity, BMC Remedy, CA Technologies SAM, Certero, Marimba, Miss Marple, Novell Zenworks, IBM Tivoli, FrontRange, LANDesk, Dell Asset Manager, Express Metrix, Aspera, OpenLM, License Dashboard

ITAM Tools Day – New York 28th January

The table below provides some preliminary results, the full details and feedback for all tools will be presented at our ITAM Tools Day in New York on the 28th January.

Do you agree with these scores? Why not submit a review and help your industry peers make better purchasing decisions in the future?

Write a review: https://itamreview.wufoo.com/forms/sam-tool-satisfaction-survey/

Preliminary Results – Ranking SAM Tools by Customer Satisfaction

Ranking by Customer Service / Responsiveness

1. Softwaremanagement.org
2. Snow Software
3. Flexera Software
4. ServiceNow
5. HP

Ranking by Value for Money

1. ServiceNow
2. Snow Software
3. Softwaremanagement.org
4. Flexera Software
5. HP

Ranking by Ease of Use

1. Snow Software
2. Flexera Software
3. Softwaremanagement.org
4. ServiceNow
5. HP

Ranking by overall satisfaction

1. ServiceNow
2. Snow Software
3. Softwaremanagement.org
4. Flexera Software
5. HP

Net Promoter Score

1. Snow Software
2. ServiceNow
3. Flexera Software
4. Softwaremanagement.org
5. HP

Do you agree with these scores? Why not submit your own review: https://itamreview.wufoo.com/forms/sam-tool-satisfaction-survey/

See all the results and further details at our ITAM Tools Day, 28th January, Baruch College, New York: http://www.itassetmanagement.net/2014/12/02/event-listing-itam-tools-day-28th-january-2015-york/ 

Martin Thompson

Martin is owner and founder of the The ITAM Review and The ITSM Review. Martin is also founder and Chair, Campaign for Clear Licensing. A contributor to the British Computer Society (BCS) Configuration Management Group and contributor to the UK itSMF UK Service Transition SIG. Learn more about him here and connect with him on Twitter or LinkedIn.

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This SAM Tool Buyers Guide highlights some of the key requirements and competitive differentiators to consider when selecting and buying Software Asset Management (SAM) tools.

This guide is available in PDF format, subscribe to our newsletter to download it. 

I have also included a section on the trends that are driving interest in SAM and some general implementation advice – since this should be integral to your selection choices.

This is version 3 of our SAM tool buyer’s guide. This version combines the advice from the previous six years and updates it with current technology trends.

See the previous versions below:

• http://www.itassetmanagement.net/2011/05/05/sam-tool-checklistv2/ (2011)
• http://www.itassetmanagement.net/2009/05/14/article-new-sam-tool-checklist/ (2009)

This guide is intended as a reference guide to prompt you with things to think about when building your selection criteria. Not all points will be applicable to your SAM selection project so you can pick and choose to meet your requirements.

If you have any comments or you think I’ve missed anything please give me a shout.

• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Email

Seven Key Ingredients for Successful SAM

Before we begin, I think it is useful to highlight what you need above and beyond a SAM tool to implement a successful and lasting SAM practice within your organisation. Below are what we consider to be seven basic ingredients required for SAM. As you can see, some of these elements go far beyond technology, but are something you should be aware of when selecting tools:

1. Authority – Do we have someone in the business that buys into SAM as a practice at a high level, ‘gets it’ and has sufficient impetus to get things done and make changes?
2. Internal resource – Do we have resource internally to own and manage our entire SAM practice (and the Tools, Process, People, Partners involved)? Even if you outsource your entire SAM function to a specialist or service provider, you’ll still need internal resource to manage that partner.
3. Good trustworthy data – Where is our inventory data coming from? Will the SAM tool provide this or will it come from other sources? How will we verify it is accurate? If you have a $500 application on each of your 5,000 desktops and your inventory is only 70% accurate, that’s a $750,000 potential risk.
4. Good trustworthy license records – where will new and historical license records come from? How will we update them as new software is purchased? How will we verify they are accurate? How do we know we won’t be embarrassed with inaccurate records if a software publisher comes knocking for an audit?
5. Reconciliation process – Once upon a time SAM involved matching your five licenses against your five machines. Nowadays complex license programs with sophisticated product use rights or measurement mechanisms means most of the large software publishers in your environment will need a unique reconciliation process collecting many data points above and beyond your SAM tool capabilities. The reconciliation process will also be dependent on a broad team of stakeholders within the business to collect the right data.
6. Licensing savvy – I believe it is unrealistic for an experienced SAM professional to have expert current knowledge about every single license program in their estate. Which experts, internally and externally, can we lean upon to ensure we have sufficient knowledge to manage our license programs and make informed decisions?
7. Executive group to oversee change – SAM is not a point in time project but should be an on going continual service improvement process. It needs an executive group that will sign off on the SAM business plan, set realistic scope, monitor progress over time and have sufficient oomph within the business to make things happen.

How can the SAM tool you select help you with these ingredients?

Business Demands and Trends Driving Interest in SAM

It is important to consider the trends that are driving interest in SAM, since the tool you select needs to be able to cope with these pressures. A good SAM tool manufacturer will anticipate trends in the market and steer its product development roadmap accordingly.

Interest in SAM is being driven by four key industry trends:

Common Implementation Failures

Finally, be aware of the three biggest failures we witness when organisations attempt to implement SAM. Again, your SAM tool, implementation partner and extended SAM ecosystem should help you manage these issues.

The ITAM Review SAM Tool Assessment Model

Bearing in mind what we’ve just discussed in terms of SAM implementation; what can modern SAM tools do to help us?

Our assessment model for SAM tools is split into six major categories as follows:

1. Visibility
2. Identification
3. Risk
4. Efficiency
5. Agility
6. CSI

The diagram below provides a high level summary of the six major areas. The traffic light colour coding on the right hand side of each box refers to our opinion of current industry maturity in each area.

• Green –Good, most tools are addressing this area well
• Amber – Room for Improvement – most tools could do better in this area
• Red – Weak – most tools are lacking key functionality in this area

Assessment Model Weightings

We have applied a weighting for each functional area to highlight the relative importance of each area. As mentioned before, consider this a starting point which can be adjusted based on your individual preferences and requirements.

1. Visibility

• Industry Score: Amber (Good inventory and discovery tools exist in the market, very few of them put enough importance on verifying the accuracy of data. Cloud and mobile discovery and risk analysis is emerging).
• Weighting: 20%
• Key competencies in this area: Audit assets, collect inventory, discover devices that have not been audited, verify the accuracy of inventory to build trustworthy inventory.

Questions to ask prospective SAM tools:

• What features does your product include to help clients maintain an accurate and up to date view of their IT assets? See – Total Number of IT Assets – the most basic of metrics
• How can your clients tell if they are getting adequate coverage and regular auditing of their estate? What operating coverage is available? What types of devices?
• How do I communicate with assets? With Agents, Agentless? Zero Footprint? See also Agent vs Agentless
• How can a client identify duplicates, retired machines or machines that have gone missing? There is nothing worse than a bloated out of date database which nobody trusts
• How can clients tell when new machines are added to the environment? Your team adds 50 new devices for new starters – how do they appear in terms of SAM, you need an accurate view of current assets in case the new starter business process slips.
• What is the process for discovering new machines / platforms on the network? How do I classify and manage them? This might not appear very important when looking at a demo with 50 machines – but how do I manage 5000 dynamic machines in a real environment?

Does your technology track and manage the existence and usage of virtual platforms, virtual operating systems or web based applications? Can the tool tell a) Where the VMs are and b) how they relate to users, locations and physical machines. See also Licensing in Virtual Environments – Six Steps to Containing Costs and Managing Virtual License Boundaries.

2. Identification

• Industry Score: Green (Recognising assets, assigning them to product families and suites, comparing technical data with procurement artefacts and identifying licensable status is a core competence for most modern SAM tools)
• Weighting: 25%
• Key competencies in this area: Recognise software titles from raw technical data, identify the product use rights for each software title, manage entitlement statements from software publishers and integrate with procurement systems. Manage complex license types and bespoke negotiated clauses.

Questions to ask prospective SAM tools:

• Describe how your technology recognises software (Header Information = Weak, Add / Remove Programs = Weak, Software Recognition Database = Better – but test it’s accuracy) See also – Software Recognition – What’s the big deal? Does your software identify whether an application installed requires a license?
• How does your technology allow users to prioritise risk and sort software? In intellectual property terms Winzip is equal to Oracle. When looking how much you spend on each vendor each year you need to be a little bit more pragmatic. How do I filter out the noise? See – What License Managers can Learn from the Railways
• How is the usage of applications managed within your technology? Is it actual usage or just open? How are applications linked to devices and/or platforms?
• Does your technology supplement software discovered with any additional intelligence? (SKU, Price, Category, Risk etc.)
• What features are included to automate the recognition process whilst maintaining accuracy? Does it learn? Does it offer recognition suggestions? Does it offer guidance on what needs recognising?
• How does a client reconcile their entitlements against discovered software?
• What features are included to automate the reconciliation process? (if I have 20,000 users do I have to manually link up each license?)
• How are different license types usage rights managed within the reconciliation process? Think about your license agreements in place – per user, per processor, per core, per use, per year etc.
• Product Use Rights – Does your technology provide license intelligence based on what is discovered? If I find an application installed does it suggest how that application might be licensed and how I can use it? E.g. I found an application, it is usually licensed per named user, that named user can also use it on a mobile device as well as their main machine.
• How and where is documentation and / or meta data associated with licensing stored?
• How does your technology handle Global Agreements, Local Agreements and Nested or Parent / Child Agreements or other contracts with dependencies?

3. Risk

• Industry Score: Green (Compliance statements are the meat and potatoes of most SAM tools. More sophisticated tools will prioritise risk and suggest remedial action)
• Weighting: 25%
• Key competencies in this area: Management reporting on compliance risk. Prioritising risks to the business. Suggesting remedial action or most pressing issues to address.

Questions to ask prospective SAM tools:

• What intelligence is provided to clients to assess their compliance position, negotiate contracts and remove risk?

• How does your technology cater for multiple user types, roles and responsibilities? Your multi-million dollar compliance position or contract negotiation is not necessarily something you want shared with the whole company.
• How does your technology support the optimal usage of software and minimise the risk of non-compliance across multiple cost centres? Is there an internal costing view and external auditor view? Can I auto allocate licenses automatically according to rules?
• Can clients be alerted or sent scheduled reports?
• What information and support is provided to customers to build their compliance position and maintain it on an on-going basis?

4. Efficiency

• Industry Score: Amber (Software usage is common among those SAM that offer inventory but software efficiency is under utilised. There is significant further opportunity for organising to optimise.)
• Weighting: 15%
• Key competencies in this area: Reporting on what applications are not being used, initiating work flows to remove software based on usage, identifying suite or functional overlap, suggesting cheaper alternatives, helping customers make smarter decisions on maintenance or subscription renewals, benchmarking spend against peers.

Questions to ask prospective SAM tools:

• How does your offering monitor the usage of applications or work with systems that track usage?
• What does your solution offer to support the removal of unused software?
• What intelligence does your offering provide to highlight inappropriate product suite usage e.g. customer has professional edition installed but based on usage analytics standard edition would suffice
• What intelligence does your offering provide to help customers consolidate their software portfolio and remove redundant or duplicate applications? E.g. Removing expensive PDF creators when they are built into other tools, or if a client has 15 different image editing applications – helping them consolidate.
• How does your technology support maintenance renewals, contract negotiations or ensuring I’m getting best value from subscriptions?
• What information does your offering provide to assess if I have architected my environment in the optimal way to ensure the most efficient spend whilst meeting my technology goals? i.e. could my architecture be changed to reduce spend whilst meeting license terms?
• What information does your solution provide to allow me to benchmark spend and negotiated terms against my industry peers?

5. Agility

• Industry Score: Amber (Traditionally SAM has been based on reacting to change, there is great opportunity for tools to help with anticipating and helping the business navigate change with SAM data before decisions are made)
• Weighting: 10%
• Key competencies in this area: Service request automation, approved software catalogues, automated approval and removal processes, change management integration and awareness, ITSM lifecycle integrations, Asset register, management of full lifecycle, scenario modelling, advanced reporting, internal markets, charge back / show back features.

To be agile, we need to shift from SAM being a reactive process (counting up the mess after it has happened, performing true-ups) to be Proactive. We need to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the architects and project managers making technology choices to support them and help the business make smarter decisions.

The table below highlights the six most likely sources of change within your IT environment. By embracing and working with these sources of change, we can help the business make quicker and smarter decisions.

ITAM can be an enabler and source of business intelligence – addressing change at a strategic level rather than in a reactive fire-fighting capacity.

The diagram below shows a typical cradle-to-grave lifecycle of an asset and where the opportunities exist for providing more agile SAM and integrating with ITSM.

What does your prospective SAM tool bring to the table to help with these integration opportunities?

Questions to ask prospective SAM tools:

• How does your offering support the architectural decision-making process and deployment of new projects? (Scenario modelling, what-if analysis)
• Does your offering provide a service catalogue, automated approvals process or online shopping cart facility?
• Does your offering integrate or compliment service desk or ITSM offerings? (Especially change management and incidents involving software changes)
• How does your solution integrate with joiner, mover and leaver process within my organisation? How does it track the live status of users and customers of IT within the system?
• How does the solution track the lifecycle of assets through the whole lifecycle (hardware and software) from request to retirement, destruction or removal?

6. Continual Service Improvement (CSI)

• Industry Score: Red (Missing from the majority of SAM tools, lots of scope for improvement in this area)
• Weighting: 5%
• Key competencies in this area: Monitoring process performance and governance, root cause analysis, business plan performance, KPI dashboards and management reporting.

Your SAM tool should help you on a maturity journey: providing good data and showing the risks, helping you satisfy then maintain compliance, cut unnecessary costs, improve efficiencies and ultimately provide agility through quicker and smarter decisions. This is a long road and requires a gradual continual service improvement approach – what does your SAM tool bring to the table to support this CSI process?

Questions to ask prospective SAM tools:

• How does your solution provide exception reporting?
• What features does your solution provide to support customers monitor their performance against the SAM plan?
• How do customers develop and monitor performance against key performance indicators?
• What intelligence is provided to help customers identify root causes underlying compliance issues (if compliance reporting and exception reporting is incident management, what does the SAM tool provide to help with problem management – identifying root causes)
• What intelligence does your SAM tool provide to highlight your current SAM maturity and make progress?
• How can customers tell if their SAM processes are working and whether leaks are occurring?

Summary

In summary, we recommend that you consider the following feature areas when building your selection criteria and short list for SAM tools.

Let me know what you think, is there anything missing?

If you have any comments or you think I’ve missed anything please comment below.

Martin Thompson

Martin is owner and founder of the The ITAM Review and The ITSM Review. Martin is also founder and Chair, Campaign for Clear Licensing. A contributor to the British Computer Society (BCS) Configuration Management Group and contributor to the UK itSMF UK Service Transition SIG. Learn more about him here and connect with him on Twitter or LinkedIn.

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The post SAM Tool Buyers Guide appeared first on The ITAM Review.

I am pleased to publish an updated list of customer satisfaction scores. This follows our previous table back in January.

Please Note: This is not a one-off exercise. We will continually collect satisfaction scores. So please help your ITAM industry peers make smarter tool buying decisions by taking a few minutes to submit your own review.

If you are interested in ITAM tool selection – you might want to check out our upcoming Tools Days – New York on the 12th May or London in November:

www.itassetmanagement.net/events

Frequently Asked Questions

• Q. Our company does not allow this – can it be anonymous? [Yes, we need to validate your identity to ensure we don’t publish spoof reviews, but the actual results published can be completely anonymous]
• Q. I don’t want any kick-back from my tool vendor – Are my details shared with the tool vendor? [No, never]

Customer Satisfaction Scores – Spring 2015 Update

CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE

Spring ’15 Update Notes

• A total of 86 end user reviews have been validated. 66 were used to build the table above, 20 were not suitable for not meeting the minimum number of reviews per tool manufacturer – see list below.
• * – All Sassafras references came from customers in the education sector. For balance it would be good to see a mixture of public and private sector customers submitting reviews in the future.

Tool vendors with less than five reviews (the minimum for a table listing): 

• 1E AppClarity 1
• BMC Remedy 1
• CA SAM 1
• Certero Asset Studio 1
• Dell Asset Manager 2
• eTelligent 1
• Cherwell / Express Metrix 2
• FrontRange 1
• IBM Tivoli 1
• LANDESK 1
• License Dashboard 4
• Marimba 1
• Miss Marple 1
• Novell Zenworks 1
• Symantec Altiris 1

SUBMIT YOUR OWN REVIEW

Introducing TOOLS ADVISOR

As mentioned above, this is not a one-off exercise. We will continually collect customer satisfaction scores. We are building a permanent home for customer satisfaction scores which will be launched later in the year. TOOLS ADVISOR will be a blend of analyst reviews, customer satisfaction scores and lab tests. Think TripAdvisor (TM) meets Enterprise Software.

Preview Screenshots of TOOLS ADVISOR: 

A dedicated directory for Tool Selection. Blending Analyst scores, customer satisfaction ratings and in-depth lab tests.

Everything you need for Tool Selection at your fingertips.

Browse validated customer satisfaction scores from real customers.

Analyst opinion alongside customer satisfaction ratings including strengths and weaknesses.

SUBMIT YOUR OWN REVIEW

To learn more about ITAM tooling why not join us for one of our tools days? (London & New York) http://www.itassetmanagement.net/events/

Martin Thompson

Martin is owner and founder of the The ITAM Review and The ITSM Review. Martin is also founder and Chair, Campaign for Clear Licensing. A contributor to the British Computer Society (BCS) Configuration Management Group and contributor to the UK itSMF UK Service Transition SIG. Learn more about him here and connect with him on Twitter or LinkedIn.

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Independent Review

brainwaregroup is a provider of systems management and IT Lifecycle Management tools and services who have over 400 clients worldwide. With more than 1.5m managed clients, brainwaregroup’s software has been implemented in a number of organisations over the past 25 years.

This review takes a look at the core capabilities, the route to market, competitive strengths and weaknesses, product development roadmap and market reach of brainwaregroup’s Spider Licence Enterprise offering.

Customers have the option of implementing Spider Licence Enterprise as a SaaS (software as a service) solution, or on-premise.

Summary of key findings 

PRIMARY MARKET FOCUS

brainwaregroup have two markets they focus on:

Small and Medium Customers who are looking for an integrated solution of Systems management, Asset-, Licence-, and Contract management – all in one solution.

• Management of all company IT & non-IT assets
• Full Contract management; not just limited to licence contracts

Enterprise Customers: Global Licence management with key points on recharging of licences in a global operating company.

Business partners are typically local and global Licence Solution Providers such as SoftwareONE, Insight, Comparex, etc. brainwaregroup has historically been based on a hybrid business model with a significant amount of direct business in Germany and Switzerland. The UK subsidiary has a channel only focus and is currently recruiting more local partners.

Analysis

The SAM Administration Tasks feature provides the SAM practitioner with a set of standardised tasks that need to be followed to work towards generating a true compliance view in the system. brainwaregroup claims that Spider Licence can help you through the process of entering licences in the system and processing them accordingly so that you can follow a tried and tested process driven approach to SAM. For example, importing your Microsoft licence information will be assisted by the SAM Administration Tasks feature to ensure that you are entering the correct licence types and licence terms.

We feel as though this is a key positive feature within Spider Licence Enterprise. We liked the fact that the solution can help guide its users through the correct processes to ensure that they utilise all of the tool’s features. This will help ensure Spider Licence Enterprise is a valuable asset to the organisation and the user; and will help towards the overall tasks and goals of an ITAM project.

brainwaregroup maintains that Spider Licence has the ability to override the recognition of applications on devices, the number of licences required or the type of licence required according to what the SAM consultant needs to show. Furthermore, brainwaregroup claims this feature has the ability to help the end user rectify any incorrect licence types or data that has been fed into the solution from external discovery sources.

The ITAM Review believes that this feature can be a positive aspect to Spider Licence Enterprise, but a note of caution. Having the ability to manually override data could be useful when licence metrics change, but it could also be damaging if the user making the changes has inaccurate information. We believe this feature to be useful for any bespoke contracts or unique deals that may have different licence metrics or terms from the norm.
brainwaregroup states Spider Licence can connect to any number of data sources that are available in SQL databases, Excel spread sheets, XML forms or simple CSV. This facility means that if businesses have already invested in a tool to collect inventory data from all their systems, Spider Licence leverages this and gives them the facility to centralise and standardise this data in a tool designed for end to end licence, contract and asset management.

We believe that good, reliable data is the core foundation of any ITAM project. We liked the fact that Spider Licence has the ability to integrate with the data from other solutions, thus giving the end user the opportunity to have a centralised ITAM solution where they can manage their estate. Furthermore, out of the box connectors to LANDESK, SCCM, MAP and FrontRange Discovery further enhance the data and compatibility resources of Spider Licence.

With Spider Licence Enterprise’s unique database system, brainwaregroup claims there is no need for ‘downtime’ to update the information shown within the solution. Other ITAM tools require time each day to update various databases and the frontend tool, but with Spider Licence there is no need to do that.

We believe this is a massive bonus for global organisations, as downtime within an ITAM tool is always a difficult subject. Having to decide when to run the update jobs, which results in ‘downtime’, is always a difficult decision to make, as with global organisations someone somewhere in the world will be impacted and unable to use the solution.

brainwaregroup claims that Spider Licence provides all of the features required to successfully manage your software asset management estate. Along with all the features you’d expect within an ITAM tool, such as usage stats, licence allocation and general software information; Spider also provides the user with legal entity structure awareness and security allowing different users to be given different rights at each level. This in turn means that the user can set compliance and licence views, inventory and contracts views, and other sensitive information to only be seen by those with appropriate permissions. This means compliance, licence management and contract management can be managed on a global scale, or on a departmental/cost centre level.

The ITAM Review liked the parameters that can be set for viewing compliance and data at different levels within the organisation. This will allow department or cost centre heads to have complete visibility and transparency of their individual departments licence compliance, software costs and also financial risks.

Spider Licence Enterprise provides a large amount of hardware asset data. brainwaregroup maintains that Spider Licence has a unique feature in which you can physically see the relationships between servers, networks, virtual and physical machines in the form of a graphical topology. This diagram can then be exported to a file, or printed off for future use or reference. The ITAM Review really liked this unique feature, and feel that this will be useful for both SAM and IT professionals who want to see the relationships between their networks and hardware assets.

Along with IT asset management, Spider also gives users the ability to manage other assets that the organisation owns. This allows departments like facilities to manage their assets, such as company cars, printers, scanners or anything that the organisation defines as an asset. We think that the ability to manage other forms of assets provides extra value to the organisation, and allows them to have a centralised system for managing their assets.

We identified the fact that in order to fully utilise Spider Licence Enterprise, the user will need to purchase additional brainwaregroup modules in order to perform active management of their ITAM estate; for example software distribution, patching, remote control etc. There are a number of external connectors, a separate mobile device management module and a software management module. . These are part of the Columbus product line, which work in conjunction with Spider.

The ITAM Review thought the graphical user interface was undistinguished and complicated. Whilst a lot of the options and menu systems were interactive and ‘clickable’, the overall look and feel left us feeling underwhelmed. There were very few graphs for us to analyse data, the overall look was over complicated and far too word heavy. We believe that an ITAM tool needs to have some form of data analytics on its home pages, such as a graph highlighting compliance or inventory data.

Furthermore, we believe it is important for an ITAM tool to have a clean, tidy and appealing user interface to encourage use of the solution. Tools that have a smart layout, with interactive graphs and menus appear to be easier to use than the type of UI identified by Spider Licence Enterprise. Having an unappealing and complicated looking UI may end up putting users off using the solution, if they feel they can not get the information they need quickly and easily.

We feel as though the compliance reporting aspect of Spider Enterprise Licence is weak compared to competitors. When viewing compliance for various applications, the end user is shown either a red or green box, based on compliance figures. Whilst you can drill down further into this data, it is not as intuititive and easy to navigate as competitors.

With that said, Spider does allow you to see compliance figures for both the desktop and server estate. Compliance reports can be exported easily, and we really liked the fact that you can export a Microsoft Effective Licence Position (ELP) report in the same format that you would be expected to supply to Microsoft themselves.

Key Capabilities 

The table below highlights the key capabilities of Spider Licence Enterprise.

Go-To Market Strategy

Business Partner Summary

Market Penetration

brainwaregroup states the cost of Spider Licence Enterprise can range from £5000 – £400,000. Maintenance is 20% of the licence cost in the case of perpetual licences or otherwise included for subscription models. This includes the possibility to upgrade to the latest version of the software as well as support delivered according to support agreements via e-mail, web sessions, instant messaging and telephone.

Implementation

Typical installation

brainwaregroup’s claimed typical installation is between 0.5 – 1 day for cloud based solutions and 3 – 5 days for on-premise solutions (dependent on the number and type of data sources being used).

Time to value

Compared to its competitors, Spider Licence Enterprise has quite a lengthy installation period. Within IT, 3-5 days for implementation is a long time. We believe that this installation time needs to be improved upon if Spider Licence Enterprise is to compete with its competitors.

Resources Required

brainwaregroup states a Windows Server instance with SQL Server and IIS is required for installation.

Product Roadmap

Future releases of Spider Licence Enterprise include:

• 12/2014: Completed Integration of Software Recognition module data source extensions and multi mandator (customer ID) web service interface for Columbus.
• These features will allow brainwaregroup to release their new Managed Workplace offering for middle size customers on itm2go.com, which will allow mid –size corporations to link their client management environment with a Hosted SaaS environment with Asset-, Licence-, Contract-, Change and Incident Management by 2/2015.
• Q2/2015 will then bring a further extension of Inventory Connectors for 3^rd Party systems such as ADDM, iQuate and other datacentre players – extending ‘out-of the box’ abilities for datacentre-focused customers.
• Q4/2015 Releases will bring up extended open interfaces for OEMs and Integrators to use the Spider Core engine for backend processing while using customer centric UI integration services.

brainwaregroup maintains that the roadmap aims to combine the extreme configuration flexibility available today for individual on premise installations with standardized ‘out-of-the-box’ hosted offerings for mid-size and small customers which today simply can not afford a high quality Licence Management Solution due to complexity and project cost. Furthermore, brainwaregroup claims the new solutions will come with simplified UI as well as out of the box 3^rd party inventory connectors and will be available in easy to use hosted environments at reduced cost.

Product Portfolio

Brainwaregroup provide a number of different products and suites:

Columbus: Software Management

• Patch management
• Operating system and software management
• Inventory and observation
• Data backup and rescue/restoration

Columbus Mobile Management

• Mobile application management
• Security applications
• Email access control
• Mobile delivery options

Spider IT Management

• IT Asset Management
• Licence Management / Software asset management
• Portals / Process automations
• Incidents and helpdesk assistance

Spider Contract Management

• Transparency and compliance
• Risk management
• Contract consolidation
• Legal and commercial contracts management

Active Linkage with brainwaregroup’s other suites: Columbus Client Management –capable of delivering ‘End-To-End’ Client & Server Lifecycle Management as a single vendor solution

Further Resources

• Spider Licence: http://www.brainwaregroup.com/index.php?id=288&L=1
• Spider Asset: http://www.brainwaregroup.com/en/products/spider-asset.html
• Spider Contract: http://www.brainwaregroup.com/en/products/spider-contract.html
• Spider Licence KPMG Certification: http://www.brainwaregroup.com/en/campaigns/kpmg.html

Company Information

brainwaregroup is a leading provider of systems management and IT Lifecycle Management tools and services who have over 400 clients worldwide. With more than 1.5m managed clients, brainwaregroup’s software has been the tool of choice for many large organisations for over 25 years.

Customers split by region:

Germany, Austria, Switzerland: 90%
USA: 2%
UK: 4%
Japan: 1%
South Africa: 2%
Others: 1%

Vendor Profile

In their own words:

“Brainwaregroup is a leading provider of systems management and IT Lifecycle Management tools and services who have over 400 clients worldwide. With more than 1.5m managed clients, brainwaregroup’s software has been the tool of choice for many large organisations for over 25 years. Our suite of products comprises complete solutions to cover everything from systems management and deployment of desktops and servers, through to mobile device and remote support capabilities. All of these capabilities are underpinned by a set of asset, licence and contract management products designed for even the toughest demands in the industry to allow the benefits of a solid out of the box solution that can be tailored to fit the needs of any enterprise.

Our Spider suite of products offer web-delivered applications with a familiar easy to use interface that are tailored towards helping customers deliver business information quickly. Spider Asset, Licence & Contract have provided general asset, ITAM & contracts management to enterprise customers for over 15 years by delivering best of breed functionality through a highly extensible and customisable framework.

Our Columbus suite of products deliver device provisioning and management capabilities to give companies the control and optimised delivery of services and applications to their end users and service consumers quickly and efficiently. Whether a Linux server needs to be provisioned, a Windows client needs software to be deployed or an iPad needs to be managed; Columbus has the modules necessary to manage every eventuality”.

Contact details

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David Foxen

David Foxen CSAM is a Research Analyst at ITAM Review, with a mission to save the world of SAM and software licensing.

Known as the “SAM Beast” he is a self proclaimed ITAM geek. He was recently “paged” (over the tannoy) in a supermarket by his girlfriend and friends after they were separated for a whopping 5 minutes!

Previously a Software Asset Manager, covering the EMEA regions, despite his relatively short time in the industry, he has already implemented a successful software asset management structure in a number of organisations. He has also saved hundreds of thousands of pounds via internal audits and optimizing existing licenses.

Self-taught, he has acquired a number of SAM related qualifications and is also studying part-time towards a Business Studies degree. While always looking to learn, he is very enthusiastic and passionate about SAM and software licensing.

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The post Technology Review: Spider Licence Enterprise (brainwaregroup) appeared first on The ITAM Review.

Software asset management constantly has to prove its worth to organisations. Due to the fact that it is a relatively immature and emerging business function, a number of organisations still have the attitude of ‘we’ve gone this long without SAM; we don’t need to invest in it’. That’s fine, until the auditors come knocking…..

But what about those organisations who have invested in software asset management, and who are looking to take the next step to improve the SAM function and highlight its worth and integration into the business? One of the ways in which an organisation can do this is to streamline and enhance the experience that users have when requesting and receiving new software through self-service app portals.

What is a Self Service Portal?

A self-service portal usually relates to an ITSM function that allows end-users to be proactive and complete certain IT related actions through technology without having to go through the service desk. However, from a software and software asset management perspective it relates to a streamlined software request function that enables greater flexibility and a better experience for any user that wants to request a piece of software.

‘Amazon’ style Shopping

In our opinion, the best self service portals that relate to software are those that provide an ‘Amazon’ like experience. This is basically when the end-user has a software shopping experience; they are provided with a marketplace full of the software that they are eligible to use. There is usually a cost associated with the software that is then charged to the department, and a small textbox for the user to add why they need the software.

They then ‘add’ the software to the basket and send it off for approval. Their senior manager than either approves or declines the request. If it is approved the self-service portal (through SCCM) then pushes the deployment package out to the users machine (usually within 24 hours, machine must be connected to the network!) and is installed silently without disrupting the users work. The user is then provided with a notification of installation, and a service desk ticket can be logged as an audit trail for the installation of the software. Very cool software and really adds another dimension to software asset management and a superb, hassle free experience for the end user and service desk.

Packaging and Development

Within most organisations, there are a packaging and deployment team who package applications that need to be installed on a regular basis, or those applications that have been standardised and approved and therefore are readily available to users. The packaging and deployment team need to work closely with the SAM team to ensure that the packages are compatible with the self-service portal that is being implemented; and that the process works from a technical perspective.

Software that is ‘purchased’ from a self-service software portal is then usually deployed via Microsoft’s SCCM. This cuts out the need for manual installs from the service desk, which reduces the workload and drains on resources that service desk staff usually goes through on a daily basis. This means that they can then focus on providing support for more pressing matters and increase the experience for the end-users needing support.

Our sister site, The ITSM Review, recently conducted a group test on a number of self-service app portals. The results can be seen here.

Integration with SAM Technologies

Some of the self-service portals on the market today offer integration with existing SAM technologies; in fact some of the SAM technology vendors provide a software app portal option for customers (for additional costs). Others provide compatibility and integration with third party SAM solutions to help provide the following information:

Having the integration with SAM tools provides extra information and data that can help support the SAM function. Through a self-service portal and a SAM tool organisations can analyse the request patterns of users, the average software spend of departments and the type of software applications that are being requested per department. This means that when it comes to renewing software agreements or setting software budgets for departments for the next year, the SAM department is in prime position to be able to make educated suggestions to key stakeholders and provide accurate data to the business. This further emphasises the importance of SAM to the organisation.

SAM actions required

Software request process

First and foremost there needs to be a sophisticated and tested software request process that is mature and has been approved. It is then relatively easy to integrate a new portal into the process to ensure that software is requested and deployed in the correct way. Please bear in mind that this is only relevant for approved/standardised software that will be added to the software self-service portal. Unapproved, specialist or non-standard software may not be added into the ‘stock’ of the software portal, so the software request process needs to remain the same (more manual) than the automated process of using the software portal.

Standardised/approved Software lists & license understanding

Before an organisation can invest or implement a software self-service portal, they first must have a standardised software list. This is a list of all approved software that is readily available to end-users with minimal approval required. Standardised software is usually business critical software, or software that the organisation has a global, enterprise agreement for. This means that at the end of the agreement period, or at a certain date each year, they will simply ‘true-up’ any new instances of the software.

Along with standardising software, the organisation also needs to be fully aware of the license and product use rights that they have for the licenses they have procured. It is vital that the organisation does not put any software on the portal that they do not have licenses for, or that have usage restrictions. This can lead to a licensing mess and a large risk factor.

‘Coffee time’ with the Service Desk and Deployment Teams

When trying to implement a new technology or new process that involves other business functions, it is important that you are all singing from the same hymn sheet and that everyone knows what their roles and responsibilities are. Now would be a good time to sit down with the senior service desk people and the deployment teams to ensure that everyone is aware of what implementing a self-service portal would entail.

Having everyone focusing on the same goals and working together will help with the selection and deployment of a software self-service portal. It will also help spread the workload and shorten the time required, the amount of resources and will also help the organisation overcome any technical issues that may arise during the implementation and running of the technology.

Education

We talk an awful lot about educating the organisation on software asset management, its processes and technologies. However, they can also help educate users on new, business-wide processes and technologies. As a self-service portal has an impact on software and software asset management, SAM should be on the frontline educating users on why the organisation has invested in the new technology, how it can help the end user and what the new software request, deployment and license management processes.

Conclusion

It could be argued that this is part of the ITSM function, but we believe it to be a prime example of how SAM, ITSM and IT Architecture can work in perfect harmony to ensure the best software experience for the end user, and to improve the internal worth of a SAM function / software in general.

We are hosting a SAM Tool event over the next few months, which is the perfect opportunity for you to come and discuss the integration capabilities of the worlds leading SAM tools, and also identify how they may be able to automate the software request and deployment processes. Come and join us, it’s free! See more info here.

Do you have experience in using software self-service app portals to support or enhance the SAM function? How have you found the experience and what challenges have you faced? Get in touch with us and leave a comment below.

Image credit

David Foxen

David Foxen CSAM is a Research Analyst at ITAM Review, with a mission to save the world of SAM and software licensing.

Known as the “SAM Beast” he is a self proclaimed ITAM geek. He was recently “paged” (over the tannoy) in a supermarket by his girlfriend and friends after they were separated for a whopping 5 minutes!

Previously a Software Asset Manager, covering the EMEA regions, despite his relatively short time in the industry, he has already implemented a successful software asset management structure in a number of organisations. He has also saved hundreds of thousands of pounds via internal audits and optimizing existing licenses.

Self-taught, he has acquired a number of SAM related qualifications and is also studying part-time towards a Business Studies degree. While always looking to learn, he is very enthusiastic and passionate about SAM and software licensing.

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The post Self Service Portals can add a new dimension to the SAM offering appeared first on The ITAM Review.

Anyone within the ITAM or software licensing space are aware that SAM Tools provide a system for the management of software licenses throughout their lifecycle. You can add your license details manually into the SAM Tool from documentation like invoices, license agreements, financial data etc, or you can upload certain licenses directly into the SAM Tool (like Microsoft’s ELA).

That’s fantastic, and a real asset to any SAM function. But what about the contracts, maintenance agreements, software subscriptions, support or even contracts that have licenses attached to them? The answer is to manage them centrally through the SAM Tool, just like you would with software licenses.

The importance of Contract Management

Managing software licenses is one thing, managing contracts is another! A lot of the processes and methods used for managing licenses are transferable, but there are other elements that need to be included. One of the main elements that differ from managing software licenses is the creation and management of contract end dates and assigning a ‘date of action’. SAM Tools can provide a number of different alerts to make users aware that certain contracts are expiring in the next 6, 3 or 1 month which means that SAM or licensing professionals no longer have to rely on putting the dates in their diary.

‘Date of Action’ is a date decided by the organisation as to when they need to start addressing the agreement and gathering the relevant data. For large, enterprise organisations and EA’s this is usually 6 months before the expiry date as that gives organisations enough time to gather data and find out what the requirements are for the software vendor for the future. This also allows the organisation to be proactive and will help towards an increase in maturity of the SAM function.

It is common sense and best practice to manage contracts via a central system; it can be users from multiple locations or departments actually managing the contract, but the storage and data needs to be centralised. This relates to hardware and software vendors and you can attach the contract to certain hardware devices (for warranty information) or licenses/applications (subscription licenses). It provides more clarity and transparency and also helps with the overall management and strategic decision making of the business.

Managing Contracts through SAM Tools

Firstly, in order to manage contracts successfully through SAM Tools, the organisation needs to ensure that they have all relevant or active contracts to hand, or they know where they are stored. This may be a physical copy of software or hardware contract, or an electronic PDF. The physical copy needs to be added manually into the SAM Tool, with a scan of the original document attached to the electronic record.

It may be easier to import electronic documents into the SAM Tool (depending on it’s capabilities) or it may be another manual process. Either way, it is important that all of the information is entered correctly and that as much information is provided as possible. The PDF or electronic contract should then be stored somewhere as part of the disaster recovery process.

Software contracts should be stored for a business agreed time post expiry date, as this is best practice and provides an audit trail. Physical contracts should be stored in a safe and secure location; somewhere that is fire and waterproof. Thankfully, in this day in age software vendors will have an electronic copy of the most recent agreement, but they may not have a copy of older software contracts.

Decentralised Contract Management

Not managing software contracts centrally or via some sort of tool can lead to disaster. It can lead to software audits going badly, over or underspend on software agreements renewals and not having a transparent view of the organisations software assets.

As we have mentioned, there are a number of critical issues with the decentralised management of software contracts:

1. Miss key dates

This may mean that an organisation misses the expiry date of a large software agreement thus meaning that any licenses attached to the agreement may no longer be valid. This is a massive risk and could result in large amounts of non-compliancy.

2. Miss key pieces of information

If different departments or different locations manage various contracts, then it may be the case that license or software information is missed or not understood, and the wrong software purchased or there being an over-spend or under-spend on software licenses

3. Different people/departments managing contracts can result in bad software contracts (from a financial and compliancy perspective)

Can result in the miss-management of software contracts and software licenses.

4. Decentralised contract management does not mean the SAM function has full control over software assets

If the SAM function or the procurement function does not have all of the software contracts or have access to the information, then they do not have a transparent view of the software assets that belong to the organisation. This shows that the SAM function does not have full control and are not in the best position to offer relevant data to the business, as they do not have all of the information.

5. Missing contracts

Contracts with licenses could be misplaced or go missing if they are not managed correctly. This is a disaster and could result in a large investment in software being wasted.

Managing software contracts centrally through a SAM tool can help eliminate the issues mentioned above and helps mitigate the risks associated with software contract management. They are very sophisticated and SAM Tool vendors have invested a lot of time and money to improve the contract management elements of their solutions.

The Tool Vendors Perspective

‘Larger organizations might have a dedicated contract management system, but this tool does not focus on the same data that is contained in a SAM tool. The contract management system tracks the iterations of the contract as it is negotiated, while a SAM tool is concerned with the final outcome of the contract. Not only can it track key dates with event notification, but it can also track strategy used to negotiate the contract, such as negotiated at vendor year end or discount levels received, service level agreements, trainings days, purchase order number, and other terms and conditions associated with that software purchase.

#6. Maintenance or support might lapse on the software that is not having the contracts managed and the vendor charges a premium to renew it. Any chance of having negotiation leverage could be lost’. Patricia Adams, ITAM Evangelist, LANDESK

‘It’s quite often the case that a number of SAM tools have the foundation requirements to deliver contracts management both for software contracts but also general contracts. Notwithstanding this, it is still quite commonplace today to see clients relying on heavily architected spreadsheets, with no approval workflow or automatic alerting to provide the ‘go to place’ for contract records and management.  

Some common functionality found in most decent SAM systems include the basics of contract management. Like any solution; a SAM system’s capabilities may not provide everything required for effective contract management from day one as the requirements of the organisation are likely to evolve once the system sets a new functional baseline. However, they do provide a great starting point for organisation that has no contracts management solution.

SAM professionals should bear in mind that since finance departments control the company’s budget, trying to involve them in the discussions could spread the spend for a solution across multiple departments and get a wider buy in from other business stakeholders. When a multi-department solution is to be considered; stakeholders should ensure that department/legal entity separation is possible for the management of contracts and that appropriate privileges can be given to the right people in the business’. Barry Johnson, brainwaregroup

Want to learn more?

Then please come along to our Tools Day! It is in London in November 2015, so plenty of time to arrange your calendar accordingly. This is your opportunity to grill the leading SAM Tool vendors on how their solution can help your organisation manage software and hardware contracts and how it can be an asset to your organisation.

This event will enable you to make an informed decision when choosing your ITAM tool provider. With presentations delivered by leading ITAM technology vendors, each directly explaining their tool functionality, key differentiators, customer success stories and service; you’ll be provided with an exclusive opportunity to rank, compare and evaluate some of the top tools on the market.

For more information and to register for the event, please click here. We hope to see you there!

Image Credit

David Foxen

David Foxen CSAM is a Research Analyst at ITAM Review, with a mission to save the world of SAM and software licensing.

Known as the “SAM Beast” he is a self proclaimed ITAM geek. He was recently “paged” (over the tannoy) in a supermarket by his girlfriend and friends after they were separated for a whopping 5 minutes!

Previously a Software Asset Manager, covering the EMEA regions, despite his relatively short time in the industry, he has already implemented a successful software asset management structure in a number of organisations. He has also saved hundreds of thousands of pounds via internal audits and optimizing existing licenses.

Self-taught, he has acquired a number of SAM related qualifications and is also studying part-time towards a Business Studies degree. While always looking to learn, he is very enthusiastic and passionate about SAM and software licensing.

More Posts

Follow Me:

The post SAM Tools and Contract Management appeared first on The ITAM Review.

SAM Tools are now a basic must-have for any organisation

I remember when I first started in the SAM industry and was looking to implement a SAM tool that at the time a number of professionals and IT staff told me that they were ‘nice to have’ but not essential. At the time I could see the benefits to implementing such technologies, but also understood how people could (just about) manage their software assets through spread sheets or internal databases.

However, those days are firmly in the past. It is vital that organisations have some sort of SAM or licensing technology. These technologies have advanced and grown hugely over the past few years and are now more sophisticated and helpful as ever. The SAM technologies are now considered an asset to the organisation; such is the investment, importance and reliance an organisation places in a SAM tool.

Advances in Software Licensing Complexities

Software licensing has always been a complex matter; but in recent times software vendors have ramped up the complexities of some of their license metrics for their software. It is no longer possible to manage software licenses through excel spread sheets thanks to the license metrics and sheer value of the software asset.

The time has come whereby SAM tools are no longer just ‘nice to have’. If your organisation is serious about implementing a successful and mature SAM structure, then now is the time to invest in a sophisticated solution.

Ten to fifteen years ago, software licenses were pretty basic compared to what they are today. The main license metrics were user, device, concurrent usage and some server licenses. Most server software comes with their own license management function (as do concurrent licenses), and managing single user and device licenses was possible through excel or a homemade database.

You can certainly try and manage software assets through spread sheets, but we would be interested to know how you would optimize your licenses, monitor usage and have an understanding of the organisations compliancy levels. It’s simply not fit-for-purpose and does not allow an organisation to do SAM properly or follow best practice, which is a must in modern day IT.

Recent Strides in SAM Technologies

Hand-in-hand with the recent advancements in software licensing, SAM technologies have also made great strides over the past few years. They are now capable of providing more, sophisticated data, and they also have the ability to provide much more value-add to an organisation or SAM function.

Ability to track cloud based licenses. The leading SAM tools all have the functionality and capabilities to help organisations manage and track cloud based software licenses and applications. With software licensing moving towards the cloud based subscription model, this is now a vital component of any SAM tool and should be a must on any organisations SAM Tool shopping list!

Increased software recognition. There are millions of different applications and thousands upon thousands of software vendors currently on the market. Therefore, it is a massive challenge for SAM technology vendors to ensure that all of the organisations software is tracked through their SAM tool. However, all of the vendors are increasing the number of software titles recognised and license types associated to those applications everyday.

This means that organisations have more visibility on what is installed within their environment and helps them to manage niche and lesser known software titles.

Expert vendor license management. One of the key areas that SAM tools have improved in is the increase in the SAM tools knowledge of complex licensing metrics. The likes of Oracle, IBM, SAP and Microsoft are now manageable through a SAM tool, and not through the license server that comes with the software. This means that organisations can manage their Tier 1 vendors and biggest risks through the same technology, rather than having to use multiple systems and multiple data types.

The SAM Tools also have the software vendors licensing metrics created out of the box, so you can immediately see what your organisations compliancy is. In the past users have had to create their own license metrics for complicated structures, but SAM technology vendors have invested a lot of time and money in making sure the right license metrics for key vendors are created straight out of the box.

Tracking software that accesses web portals or Internet browsers. There are a number of applications that require licenses that don’t have an installer file or that are used through Internet browsers and web portals. It is still just as important to ensure that your organisation has enough licenses to access this software, and SAM tools can help monitor usage and users. This means that you can check and see if you licenses are being optimized and that the correct users have access to the software.

Mobile asset management capabilities. We are a big fan of mobile asset management and believe that it plays a big part in IT Asset Management. Therefore, it is important that you can manage the applications and data that the mobile device uses, and a number of leading SAM tools now provide MDM modules to allow you to manage your organisations mobile estate.

Finding the Right SAM Tool for You

There are a number of really strong SAM Technologies available on the market, with a few that could be considered market leader. If you are currently thinking about investing in a SAM Solution we have a number of resources that we feel could help you:

SAM Tools Buyers Guide 2015
Picking the right SAM Tool Part 1
Picking the right SAM Tool Part 2
SAM Tool Support
SAM Tool Implementation Success [Podcast]

It also may be the case that you want to implement a SAM technology, but you do not have the resources of infrastructure to manage or support such a tool. Never fear, for SAM Tools As A Service is here! This means that you can still have all of the benefits of having a SAM solution, but you host it in an external environment and have either the SAM technology vendor manage and input data on a day-to-day basis, or you use one of their trusted/verified partners.

This allows organisations greater flexibility and certainly encourages those organisations that do not have the SAM or software licensing resources internally, or the ability to manage SAM technologies. It is important to remember that SAM technologies should also be considered assets; they are expensive but they provide crucial data and information for you to successfully manage your SAM estate.

Also, it is important to point out that whilst you may find that you are spending an awful lot in up-front costs, the SAM technology will pay you back in software licensing savings, reduced software budget and license optimization. Therefore, you could argue that the technology pays for itself!

The Vendors Perspective

‘If history is any indicator, software licensing will continue to evolve as new technologies change the ways organizations use software, which in turn leads software publishers to find new ways to maximize their revenue. Using a SAM solution that can react quickly to these license model changes is key to maintaining a proactive, optimized license position. Given the current skill

s gap in the marketplace for knowledgeable licensing experts, having a tool that can provide automation and supplement the knowledge gap, can increase the payback timeframe which directly appeals to senior management’s focus on cost control.’ Patricia Adams, ITAM Evangelist. LANDESK

‘If we step back ten to fifteen years ago as the article suggests; I’m quite sure that laptops weren’t considered necessary for all business users and the same for mobiles! Times have changed and so have the requirements of what made up a SAM tool. Rudimentary solutions used to just simply give you a box where you could type a licences number into a discovery tool and this used to be called licence management. However, in the same period, virtualisation was reserved for niche areas and still considered relatively cutting edge so the licence complexities we’re now familiar with weren’t even a consideration.

I remember the debate when I worked at Microsoft in 2005 around whether they too should’ve made the ‘new SQL Server 2005’ based on core licence metrics or just stick with processor based. They held out for another three versions but since 2012, Microsoft too will now charge you by the core and not the processor. Ten years ago though, the processors only had one core per processor die in most x86 based servers and so the concept of a multi-core metric was a moot point. Like any industry, IT has evolved and will continue to mature but not in the same way as all other industries as development, innovation and dynamism is still at the heart of IT.

Doctors wouldn’t be able to give the proper diagnosis without the right equipment and construction companies wouldn’t be able to build skyscrapers without the correct lifting machinery and whilst it’s based on an intangible subject, the complexities of licensing have now meant that there is no business sensible way of delivering SAM in a business without the right tools for the job’. Barry Johnson, brainwaregroup

‘We concur that SAM technologies are a must for today’s enterprises. However they are only beneficial if they can collect the right and accurate data required for Software Asset Management across desktop and data center.

Unfortunately the benefits of SAM tools mentioned in the article don’t fully extend themselves into the data center. Today most data centers software titles are still managed by spreadsheet. Spreadsheets are problematic as they are inaccurate, hard to maintain and quickly become outdated. This practice can therefore leave companies open to major compliance issues.

Data Center SAM requires a greater level of accuracy than desktop SAM. The need for greater accuracy is based on the licensing costs of data center software titles. Over counting or under counting physical servers or server core counts can cause a dramatic fluctuation in licensing costs.

While most SAM tools excel on the desktop they lack the sophistication needed to gather the clustering and virtualization details that are necessary for data center software compliance. This is particularly true for titles like Oracle Database Enterprise Edition and Microsoft SQL Server whose licensing metrics are affected by virtualization, core counts and clustering.

Enterprise SAM requires a best of breed solution that covers both desktop and data center. This solution relies on complimentary technologies. One component must address the challenge of accurate discovery and inventory. The other must be capable of consuming the first components data and managing the complex software models that exist across both the desktop and data center’. Donnie Hamlett, iQuate.

Come along to our Event!

Not only do we provide great content, but we are also hosting our 3^rd Annual European Tools Day event in London on Friday 20^th November 2015.

This is the perfect opportunity for you to have a look at the world’s leading SAM tool providers, and ask the experts how they can help your organisation. Places are being snapped up fast, so please register your place now.

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David Foxen

David Foxen, aka #SAMBeast, is currently a Software Asset Manager for large retailer Marks & Spencer (you're probably wearing our pants right now!). He has previously worked as a Global SAM Manager for a large design and architecture firm, a world-wide bank and local government. He has successfully implemented SAM in a number of different environments and has implemented a number of SAM tools.

David is a massive ITAM geek, so uses any opportunity to talk about the subject to who-ever will listen. He previously worked for Enterprise Opinions as ITAM Director, but enjoyed writing and being part of the company and community so much that he is now a regular contributor as well as being an end user!"

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