When you fail an audit, you buy just enough licenses to close the gap, and often vendors demand you pay back-maintenance for the licenses too.

It may not hurt at first, but over time being over-licensed costs more than failing an audit. So, while they aren’t losing a ton of money at once for failing an audit, they are losing it slowly. They prefer to over-pay upfront to outsmart the audit risk. Often businesses are over-compliant simply because they have more licenses than they need. Optimization: strategies for lean licensing An audit also disrupts your business and can take months to complete without license management technology to support the process. Non-compliance can result in unexpected fees, which, if you’re not careful, can cost you big. There are two possible outcomes of an audit: either you’re compliant, or you’re not. To check whether you are compliant, vendors will perform software compliance audits to see how their software is being used, how it’s configured, and whether your licenses cover all of it.

And it’s the first goal for most companies when starting SAM. Even though SAM is much bigger than compliance, compliance is where license management becomes an essential part of your business strategy. Software vendors don’t want you to use more software than you licensed. As a user, your job is to make sure your company is compliant with the terms and conditions of the license agreement.Ĭompliance is the bedrock of SAM. Each license contains specific conditions for how the software product can be installed and used. Licenses are assets that need to be managed. Cloud Cost Management & Resource Optimizationģ Key Areas to Succeed at SAM 1.Server & Application Monitoring inclusive Capacity Management.Knowledge Management for Enterprise Services.Knowledge Management for Customer Service.

Centralized asset management systems