Participating in a recent webinar with industry CIO's presented an opportunity to evaluate what has - or hasn't - changed in terms of SAM in the technology space today. Perhaps most interesting - and reassuring - is that CIO's still recognise compliance as the major driver for a SAM function in their organisations, closely followed by the incentive of cost optimisation and savings as represented in the poll below:

Why reassuring? Well we believe that gaining a robust compliance discipline should be front and foremost in implementing SAM in any organisation - the benefits of properly managing your software assets results in two significant outcomes to your business:

1. When vendors recognise that you have your software space under control their desire to review and audit is outweighed by the probable lack of return, meaning you save valuable time and resources not having to respond to an exercise that can potentially take months to complete; and
2. Having tangible oversight of important assets and clear record keeping enhances your business reputation overall - if you can't manage these basic fundamentals for your own purposes how confident can your customers be that you can deliver for them?

When asked to consider the landscape three years from now the supplier risk element was significantly superseded by cyber-risk, and cost and productivity elevated to the major returns:

For these results we'd point back to the present - dealing with compliance should be the priority and the returns will follow. Cost optimisation and productivity gains should quite simply be a by-product of properly managing your software domain rather than the core driver - there is an inherent danger in  putting finances ahead of compliance just as in the case of regulatory requirements ... 

And of course the investment and value aspects are always front of mind:

Deloittes rightly call out additional measures that organizations should factor into the value equation:

• Cost savings achieved by the organizational IT asset management program year-on-year (33%)
  
• Results of license compliance audits year-on-year (33%)
  
• Timeliness and accuracy of IT asset management reporting (30%)
  
• Non-active IT assets repurposed (e.g., inactive IT assets/owner or location unassigned) (18%)

Given the challenges in collecting correct asset utilization data within the organization (29%) and recognition that a greater investment in ITAM tools and technology (25%) is required, it is not surprising that specialist third party support features in the report, in the main operating an on-premise ITAM tool (16%) or providing such as tool through a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform (14%).  Other key areas where external assistance is being sought includes software vendor-specific licensing expertise that is not often readily available in-house (27%), followed by ITAM tool maintenance (20%) or strategic advice to transform ITAM teams (20%) 

Lets not forget the ongoing bugbear that is audits ... what did respondents face in the past year:

And finally, we wholeheartedly agree with Deloittes prediction "that the more progressive and astute organizations will increasingly recognize ITAM as a longer-term strategic investment that creates ongoing value across the entire organization going far beyond just their IT team." 

They also go on to say "this would be in sharp contrast to the more traditional (and increasingly fading) mindset that perceives this as a tactical one-off short-term fix, primarily aimed at minimizing costs related to IT assets." ​