January 2, 2021

Software Asset Management

Software asset management is an underappreciated business practice that revolves around the optimization of the purchase, deployment, maintenance, utilization, and disposal of software applications within an organization, and this article explains everything you need to know about it and introduces the best software asset management tool on the market, Network Inventory Advisor.
Editor’s choice 2019
Network Inventory Advisor
Automatically collect all relevant data on all network devices and get detailed OS and devices statistics.
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Network Inventory Advisor for Windows scans Windows, Mac OS X, Linux computers and SNMP devices, any of them will count as a node.

When an organization doesn’t know what software products and how many of them it’s using, bad things can happen.

What Is Software Asset Management?

The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) defines software asset management as the infrastructure and processes that are required for the effective purchase, deployment, maintenance, utilization, and disposal of software applications throughout all stages of their lifecycle.

Software asset management emphasizes the often-downplayed fact that software is the lifeblood of all companies. Modern organizations rely on a whole host of software products provided by many different vendors and keeping track of software licenses has never been more challenging.

“Software asset management helps organizations plan their software purchases strategically.”

When organizations don’t keep track of software licenses, they risk compliance issues and often spend a lot more money on software products than necessary. Software asset management additionally helps organizations plan their software purchases strategically and implement sweeping updates in the shortest amount of time possible.

Software Asset Management Best Practices

All successful software asset management takes into consideration the following three areas:

  1. Licenses: All organizations need to track their software licenses in a way that allows them to see at a glance how many of them they have purchased and from which vendors. Software vendors are never happy to see an organization using more licenses than it has purchased, and the consequences of doing so can be quite severe. Because the average organization uses many different software products from many different vendors, it’s important to choose a software asset management tool with multi-vendor support.
  2. Audits: However, it’s not enough for an organization to know that it has purchased enough software licenses. The organization also needs to know if it’s using the software licenses in compliance with the vendor’s terms of service otherwise it will have difficulties passing software compliance audits. Non-compliance fees can be downright devastating, especially for small and medium-sized organizations that don’t have enough financial resources to recover from them.
  3. Optimization: Compliance can be achieved simply by having more licenses than necessary and using them to just a fraction of their potential. The problem with this kind of compliance is that it’s not exactly efficient. In fact, the cost of failing an audit is often significantly lower than the cost of being over-licensed. Ideally, organizations should strive to pay only for what they really need and use what they have as much as possible.

Software Asset Management Tools

Even relatively small organization can’t get by without many different software products from multiple vendors. As such, achieving compliance and optimizing the utilization of software assets is a real challenge that can realistically be overcome only with the help of a capable software asset management tool.

Software asset management tools are designed to gather information about all software assets on a network, along with a whole host of useful information, including license keys, prices, expiration dates, EULAs, and so on.

Most software asset management tools feature extensive reporting capabilities, which make it possible for their users to quickly and easily turn the gathered information into actionable reports that even non-IT decision-makers can easily understand.

It’s sometimes assumed that only large enterprises use software asset management tools, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. In reality, excellent software asset management tools have become readily available and surprisingly affordable.

The only problem is knowing how to choose the right one. As we’ve already said in the previous chapter, a software asset management tool should support software products from many different vendors, and it should also fit the budget of the organization that wants to use to optimize how it utilizes software assets.

Network Inventory Advisor

One such tool is Network Inventory Advisor. Network Inventory Advisor features unique license aggregation, collection, and management for most major software products from more than 500 vendors.

The fact that Network Inventory Advisor is the best software asset management tool for its needs doesn’t mean that only large enterprises can use it. One of the best things about Network Inventory Advisor is its flexible pricing, which is determined by how many nodes an organization wants to manage. In other words, organizations of all sizes can pay only for what they really need and not a single dollar more.

Network Inventory Advisor

Network Inventory Advisor scans Windows, macOS, Linux computers, and SNMP devices, and it’s just as capable of inventorying hardware assets as software assets. Hundreds or even thousands of network devices can be scanned with the press of a single button, and network administrators can set up alerts to be notified of changes in a timely manner.

Editor’s choice 2019
Network Inventory Advisor
Automatically collect all relevant data on all network devices and get detailed OS and devices statistics.
Download for Windows
Network Inventory Advisor for Windows scans Windows, Mac OS X, Linux computers and SNMP devices, any of them will count as a node.

Conclusion

Software asset management should be every organization’s top priority because of its numerous benefits, which include cost savings, time savings, legal certainty, and others. Software asset management additionally provides an ideal planning basis for software updates and procurement, and it significantly streamlines communication between IT and non-IT people. To get started with software asset management, organizations should familiarize themselves with software asset management best practices and choose the right software asset management tool for their needs.

We believe that Network Inventory Advisor is the best software asset management tool for organizations of all sizes because of its impressive features and flexible pricing. Best of all, anyone can download Network Inventory Advisor for free and evaluate it for up to 15 days without any commitments.

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Editor’s choice 2019

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Network Inventory Advisor for Windows scans Windows, Mac OS X, Linux computers and SNMP devices, any of them will count as a node.