SOFTWARE LICENCE ASSET MANAGEMENT

Licence compliance is an area of growing concern for many organisations and governments worldwide – and rightly so. It’s a complex, demanding and costly activity that typically consumes several weeks of focused attention from IT and purchasing personnel every year.

Dimension Data’s Software Licence Asset Management solution offers an alternative that can dramatically reduce the substantial effort and costs incurred by organisations, in establishing and monitoring their desktop fleet’s software licence compliance status. This solution is a sub-set of Software Asset Management and focuses on addressing your specific software compliance needs.

If your organisation faces the following common challenges, our Software Licence Asset Management solution could provide the answers to your compliance problems:

• Under-licensing

The illegal use of corporately sanctioned (authorised) software from a trusted source due to the purchase of insufficient licences for the number of users of the software.  Organisations often do not have the ability to accurately measure their licence usage, or they may not have a clear understanding of their actual software needs and an accurate inventory of deployed software.

• Over-licensing:

Many organisations have more software licences than actually required. Industry analyst reports estimate that up to 75% of companies worldwide are overspending on their IT assets. By monitoring licences, companies will remain compliant without incurring unnecessary licence costs.

• Unauthorised Software:

The use of unsanctioned software that has the potential to introduce security vulnerabilities and / or destabilise desktops. Organisations need to identify and eliminate unauthorised software usage to increase desktop integrity and availability.

Business Benefits

Dimension Data’s Software Licence Asset Management solution has the potential to empower organisations with the following benefits:

Improve Efficiency and Reduce Costs:

• Reduce the effort and costs required to reconcile software deployed to licences procured
• Create compliance rules or associations initially that can be leveraged multiple times
• Simplify the process and reduce the effort required to view, sort and organise, and therefore analyse Microsoft’s® System Management Server inventory data
• Reduce the likelihood of acquiring too many licences in an attempt to become or stay compliant
• Improve the ability to analyse which licensing models will be most cost-effective for your organisation
• Minimise the costs by leveraging your existing Microsoft® System Management Server 2003 infrastructure and its inventory collection and reporting capabilities

Risk Reduction:

• Limit any legal liability stemming from inadequate licence management procedures
• Improve your relationship with vendors through a better awareness of software licensing needs and compliancy

Security and Reliability Improvements:

• More easily identify the use of unsanctioned / unauthorised applications that have the potential to impact desktop stability, security and end-user productivity

Dimension Data’s Software Licence Asset Management Solution is a professional services engagement that utilises a combination of consulting and licensing services, technology and processes to establish and monitor your software compliance status.