Software License Management in the services oriented organisation no longer stands for cleaning up the licensing mess and looking after compliance. The new software licensing world provides dashboards that show costs and identify risks; parameters that facilitate business steering

Managing software licenses is complex these days: your stock management application is hosted by a third party; in a datacenter that you will never see from the inside; on virtual devices that dynamically create capacity, supported by licenses you have procured through a reseller. It is your challenge to proof that your software entitlement rights correspond with the mode of deployment.wereldbol

As software costs money to procure, to use and to maintain; brings constraints and risks to the organization, you want to know what it does and for whom, and users immediately notice when it is not available…. then this subject requires the undivided attention of the Software Asset Manager. You may ask yourself however whether this same Software Asset Manager commands all expertise and skills to manage all licensing rules and metrics for dozens of software suppliers. Can he hold grip on integral costs and risks of software licensing? Isn´t a licensing managed service the more attractive solution?

Licensing Management as a Service (LMaaS) means investigation of software usage and license rights, compliance verification, ELP creation and optimization consultancy. This sequence is repeated at a quarterly pace, while the organization’s stakeholders have access to dashboards and reports in a secure web interface. The volume of services is determined by the number of software supplier contracts to be managed. For example the top-5 most expensive software contracts in a combination of desktop software suppliers and data center software suppliers like Oracle and IBM.

License lifecycle management adds yet another dimension to the equation. The software AppStore holds a catalog with a selection of preferred software products. Employees make their software requests in a web interface; authorization, availability checks and if required purchase orders are processed in a workstream application. Deployment orders are sent to the deployment desk or to a  service management application. No proliferation of unauthorized software installations, less helpdesk pressure  and effective re-use of licenses  that become available after re-harvesting.

Mobility, cloud, virtualization, multi-sourcing are the standard for today’s tailor-made services to support the business needs. Licentie Management as a Service puts the Software Asset Manager in a proactive role to support these services;  his information search is transformed to information analysis in the web interface of the license management service. The Software Asset Manager redefines his role. Away from ‘what count do I have ‘ is he on his way to ‘ what views can I offer to support business decisions’.  Far beyond the spreadsheet era!