A third of SA firms admit to lack software asset management savvy

Not having an effective software asset management strategy can result in a higher liability with vendor software licensing compliance.

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Local businesses could be putting themselves at risk through a lack of adequate software asset management tools and processes.

This is according to ITWeb's Software Asset Management Survey conducted in partnership with Deloitte and Snow Software.

The survey examined the state of software asset management in local businesses and how some of the software asset management challenges - ensuring compliance; reducing software and licensing costs; and reducing complexity - are being addressed.

While the majority (78%) of respondents have a defined IT strategy in place, more than a third (35%) admitted being concerned about the limited or lack of software asset management tools deployed in their organisation. A further 27% were concerned about software non-compliance, while 22% were concerned about limited visibility of software deployments.

Managing assets effectively is the key to achieving production targets, controlling costs, and meeting corporate and organisational goals.

One would expect every business to have defined an IT strategy, yet about 14% of respondents said they do not have one in place. The picture is better though, when it comes to defined organisational structure, roles and responsibilities for software asset management, with 91% saying they do have these, and only 7% saying they do not.

Not having an effective software asset management strategy can result in a higher liability with vendor software licensing compliance; therefore a dedicated software asset management team that fully understands the risks and benefits of having an efficient software asset management system in place is essential.

While many organisations see a move to the cloud as a key component to their digital transformation strategy, 27% of professionals surveyed admitted to not yet making the move to cloud, while 63% had migrated. Another 83% said they are adequately prepared for the risks associated with moving to cloud, and 14% were not sure of their ability to mitigate risks.

Furthermore, a third of respondents said their organisation had not been audited by a software vendor in the past three years. Out of the 46% organisations that have been audited by a software vendor, 29% said they had identified licence deficiencies.

According to industry research, companies who do not manage their software effectively tend to unknowingly over-purchase software licences or inadvertently be out of compliance. They also fail to negotiate their software licence agreements.

Without putting software asset management policy in place to ensure that staff know what is expected of them, the roll-out becomes disjointed, slowing down an organisation's software asset management process.

The majority of respondents (63%) said they have a documented policy in place that defines the process for procurement of software that is easily accessible by all personnel.

In terms of using visibility technology to help companies view and manage the entire end-to-end processes, 45% said they are using automated reporting, while 7% were using internal audits and 7% using other forms of visibility technology.

As for software asset management governance risk and compliance programmes, 59% were using centralised contract repository, while 29% were reporting to the executive board on a quarterly basis.