Maximise ROI through ensuring asset, software licence compliance, governance

With the release of the King III report, combined with the Companies Act 2008, corporate executives will be compelled to re-evaluate their governance, risk and compliance operations.

This legislation of governance and software licence compliance has mandated organisations to manage their assets and software licensing. There are now serious consequences for non-compliance, which have been implemented through the form of hefty fines, and in some instances, even imprisonment. This legislative requirement has seen enterprises institute more rigorous measures to meet the criteria and avoid unnecessary financial implications.

The move towards counting the software licences you have, controlling, using and optimising those licences, and ensuring that you buy only what you need, has never been so relevant.

Enterprise License Optimisation is the next generation software asset management solution capable of meeting today's business challenges. Enterprise License Optimisation helps organisations reduce the time and effort wasted manually managing licences. It more accurately helps plan and budget for future needs. And it minimises the risk and cost of non-compliance while allowing users to gain continuous control of their software licence estate. Flexera Software's FlexNet Manager Suite for Enterprises is leading the way in the revolution of software asset management and Blue Turtle Technologies (Blue Turtle), as a Flexera Software partner, is working closely to implement the solution.

A recent international survey conducted by Flexera Software in conjunction with IDC revealed that a large percentage of companies were in breach of their software licensing agreements and therefore non compliant. Blue Turtle can assist organisations in not only meeting the legislative requirements, but also effectively implementing a discovery and management solution to manage them.

FlexNet Manager Suite for Enterprises has the built in facility to manage complex licensing structures and environments with processes in place that can discover, identify and manage virtual and physical devices within the corporate estate.

Case studies have revealed that managing assets and software devices through the FlexNet Manager Suite for Enterprises tool drastically reduced the costs initially incurred. Because no unnecessary licensing or over subscription of licensing is implemented, companies avoid unnecessary over licensing and they reduce the risk of under licensing.

The software is deployed centrally within the corporate network. Through the setup of Enterprise Structures, the user is able to manage their estate using Locations, Groups and Cost Centres thereby allowing assets to be correctly reported. It further assists companies to manage not only the asset and licensing allocation but also the re-harvesting and re-allocation of deployed licences; this provides a major advantage to IT managers, financial managers and CIOs in terms of budgetary planning and ascertaining overhead costs versus expenses in asset inventory and management.

FlexNet Manager Suite for Enterprises does not need to replace existing discovery tools, but has been designed to complement them by using and enriching the data already obtained. It has built in connectors to collect information from systems such as SMS and SCCM, however, additional connectors can be developed to cater for any other discovery tool that might be deployed within the organisation. Additionally it ships with its own built in discovery tool to collect inventory information within the estate. The strength behind FlexNet Manager Suite for Enterprises is its ability to integrate, rationalise inventory evidence and apply the licensing agreements against this normally fragmented information within the organisation. Some additional benefits include the ability to see the last usage of the software, thus assessing whether the user requires full or part access; thereby cutting down the potential cost of ownership further.

Using a combination of the Application Recognition Library (ARL), Stock Keeping Unit (SKU) Library, and the Product Usage Rights Library (PURL), the system is able to identify the installed software and is able to reconcile this to the correct entitlements for the appropriate License Agreement. Furthermore, the solution has the ability to differentiate between various versions and usage and deployment rights within the Microsoft, Adobe, Oracle and SAP licence spaces.

Built-in reporting tools and dashboards drastically reduce compliance reporting time and ensure that management and reporting is accurate and detailed to effectively manage and adapt to changing organisational structures and requirements. Automated alerts enable organisations to proactively manage their licence compliance state in terms of agreements, payment schedules and other items that need to be ratified to avoid any negative financial implications that may occur, and reduce ongoing software licence and maintenance costs.

Trevor Davies, Blue Turtle, concludes that FlexNet Manager Suite for Enterprises adds value in aiding executive decision-makers to manage their assets and software licensing thus ensuring that their organisation is compliant and avoid penalties that negatively affect the bottom line.