Yes. The disorder in this matter made the industry push for some normalization on this field. A group of experts have started development of the ISO/IEC 19770 series. Two first parts 19770-1 and  19770-2 are  already published. 19770-3 and 19770-4 are being developed. This week there is a meeting of SAM Standards Working Group (ISO/IEC JTC1 SC7 WG21) in Niigata in Japan. The group is responsible for the 19770 series development. 

Tags: SAM | Software Asset Management

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Actually it is a part of it. Software has specific requirements in context of Asset Management. The most difficult parts are software identification and software licensing. They are not similar to anything else. Every software vendor may define their own rules to indicate whether the software is installed or not. Usually we can say that existence of specific files indicates existence of the application, but very often it is not so easy. Software licensing is yet more difficult problem as the terms are understood in many different ways. Even the software usage term is not clear and common. Also many different types of licensing, like per user, per processor, per site, etc. make it difficult to control the licensed software in the organization.

Software Asset Management is the practice that requires specialized knowledge in this field. Being able to control the software installed in the organization allows avoiding risk of failed audits and costs of overlicensing. It also helps in many other matters related to the Software usage.

Tags: SAM | Software Asset Management

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I thought that requesting the software audit just to be done happens only in Dilbert’s life:

http://itmwisdombase.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=192:dilbert-i-want-you-to-audit-the-software&catid=36:it-management&Itemid=56

I was so surprised when I recently received very similar request.I had a conversation with very good licensing expert during the audit:

Tags: Software Asset Management | SAM | ITAM | audit

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Business Software Alliance has become more effective in its fight against software piracy. Thanks to its investigation more and more companies got caught and are to pay huge fines.  No matter whether they are running unlicensed software knowingly or not, law is law and the explanation that it is unintentional will not help.  Incompliance is very often the result of the licensing mess.  No established processes and no right tools to gain mastery over huge amount of licenses led the companies to the high cost of ignorance.

Tags: SAM | Software Asset Management

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There is a constant confusion in the licensing world about which licensing model means what. If we have a per-processor license, we do not know if a dual core processor is counted as one or two processors. If we have a user license we do not know from the name if the users can be changed. Many vendors interpret the same license model name differently. Many vendors use different names for the same license model.

Tags: software tags | ISO | SAM | ITAM | Software Asset Management | standards | 19770

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 Software Asset Management is usually seen  as limited to the software license compliance. This perspective put on SAM boundaries that reduce much of its value. SAM can provide many benefits if it is broad enough.

Tags: SAM | Software Asset Management | ITAM

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The ISO/IEC 19770-2 standard reached the final phase of ISO/IEC approving process. There is a high chance it will be published even this year.

Tags: SAM | ISO | Software Asset Management | standards | 19770 | software tags | ITAM

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