An effective SAM program should provide you with two essential deliverables:
- A reliable methodology of usage discovery for the relevant vendors
- An undisputable statement of compliance
When you need to cut cost, IT directors tend to first cut programs that are internal and do not directly effect the business. Like in a recession, or due to the current US sequester, SAM might get to the short list of cost cutting. The unfortunate thing is that during such times vendors also get hits to their revenue targets that will remind them of driving sales from audits.
So, what to do then?
Depending on the state of your SAM project, you need to look for options of automating or outsourcing the SAM job. If you do nothing, you might end up with a charge as described in the latest blog of The ITAM Review: IT Asset Manager Fired for License Shortfall
Here are the steps to automate your SAM deliverables:
- Digitalize your contracts to get a consolidation of all license entitlements
- Use existing field mapping to map your discovery tools’ software IDs with the license products names from the downloaded inventory
- Report the discrepancies and fix the causes where applicable
All that is supported by the cloud service License12. You can check out the workflows on their Youtube channel.