Local businesses could be putting themselves at risk due to a lack of adequate software asset management tools and processes.
This is according to ITWeb's Software Asset Management (SAM) Survey, which was recently conducted in partnership with Deloitte and Snow Software.
The survey examined the state of SAM in local businesses and how some of the SAM challenges - ensuring compliance, controlling software and licensing costs, and reducing complexity - are being addressed.
While the majority (78%) of respondents have a defined IT strategy in place, more than a third (35%) admitted to be concerned about the restrictive or lack of software asset management tools deployed in their organisation.
A further 27% were concerned about software non-compliance, while 22% were concerned about limited visibility of software deployments.
Managing assets effectively is key to achieving production targets, controlling costs, and meeting corporate and organisational goals.
Only 14% of respondents said they do not have a clear IT strategy in place. When it comes to defined organisational structure, roles and responsibilities for SAM, 91% say they do have these, with 7% saying they do not.
Not having an effective SAM strategy can result in a higher liability with vendor software licensing compliance; therefore a dedicated SAM team that fully understands the risks and benefits of having an efficient SAM system in place is essential.
While many organisations see a move to the cloud as a key component to their digital transformation strategy, 27% of professionals surveyed admitted to not yet making the move to cloud, while 63% had migrated. Another 83% said they are adequately prepared for the risks associated with moving to cloud, and 14% were not sure of their ability to mitigate risks.
Furthermore, a third of respondents said their organisation had not been audited by a software vendor in the past three years. Out of the 46% organisations that have been audited by a software vendor, 29% said they had identified license deficiencies.
According to industry research, companies who do not manage their software effectively tend to unknowingly over-purchase software licenses or inadvertently be out of compliance. They also fail to negotiate their software license agreements.
SAM policy
Without putting a SAM policy in place ensuring staff s know what is expected of them, the roll-out becomes disjointed, slowing down an organisation's SAM process.
The majority of respondents (63%) said they have a documented policy in place that defines the process for procurement of software that is easily accessible by all personnel.
In terms of using visibility technology to help companies view and manage the entire end-to-end processes, 45% said they are using automated reporting, while 7% were using internal audits with another 7% using other forms of visibility technology.
As for SAM governance risk and compliance programmes, 59% were using centralised contract repository, while 29% were reporting to the executive board on a quarterly basis.
Who responded?
33% of respondents were in middle management level, 29% were made up of staff in non-management IT positions, and 21% were in executive management positions - working across several different industries within local organisations.
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