Striking a chord with SMBs

by Matt Fisher 12. April 2013 05:14
New research released by the Business Software Alliance (BSA) suggests that 30% of small businesses in the UK are ‘knowingly under-licensed’. The research fails to identify the reason, but if the figures are accurate, it does suggest that SMBs are either simply not seeing the value in the commercial software they use, or fail to recognize the risks of being caught using unlicensed software (or, perhaps worse, perceive the cost of buying the software to be higher than the risk of gett... [More]

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Software Licence Management

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UK Government budget highlights need for SAM

by Matt Fisher 20. March 2013 06:28
Today in the UK is ‘Budget Day’, the day when the Chancellor of the Exchequer announces the Governments’ spending, borrowing and taxation plans for the next financial period. It’s a day many managers within the UK public sector will be dreading – with leaks already suggesting that the Chancellor is going to announce the need to make £2.5 billion (US $3.8bn) in departmental spending savings in order to protect and boost spending in other areas.   The £2.5bn figure equates to... [More]

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Eating the SAM Elephant

by Matt Fisher 19. March 2013 06:32
Software Asset Management. It sounds simple, doesn’t it? The reality is far from simple, however. To begin to understand the full spectrum of SAM requirements, you just need to turn to the now infamous definition of SAM from the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL): “…all of the infrastructure and processes necessary for the effective management, control and protection of the software assets…throughout all stages of their lifecycle.” Not much to do then! With this in... [More]

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Microsoft listens to customers on Office 2013 retail licensing

by Matt Fisher 7. March 2013 11:14
If you’ve been reading the IT media over the last few weeks, you may have caught wind of a storm brewing over a change of licensing rules to retail copies of its Office software. Thanks to an eagle-eyed reporter in Australia, a previously-unannounced change was found in the licensing terms that meant retail copies of Office 2013 were tied to a single machine for life – with no opportunity to move the software to a new piece of hardware. When challenged, Microsoft’s response was initially con... [More]

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How to turn inventory from a cost to a cost-saver

by Matt Fisher 7. February 2013 05:35
For the most part, understanding the business benefits of deploying an inventory solution is not difficult. After all, how can you expect to manage systems, availability, costs and risks if you don’t know what you’re actually supposed to be managing? Suffice to say a good inventory solution will give you a basic understanding of what hardware and software is deployed on the network. Okay; in reality that’s over-simplifying it somewhat, as inventory solutions vary in their ability to deal wit... [More]

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SAM | Software Licence Management

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New Year – same old challenges?

by Matt Fisher 7. January 2013 07:04
Just before Christmas, License Dashboard conducted a straw poll asking how many organizations had faced a software audit in the last 12 months. We wanted to see if the results of our thumbnail research either mirrored or disputed the latest figures from the likes of Gartner and Forrester, who currently state that organizations now face a 65% likelihood of being audited by at least one software vendor in the next 12 months. The results of our straw poll made for interesting reading. In fact, a... [More]

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Software Licence Management

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Dealing with Microsoft CAL pricing changes

by Sean Robinson 29. November 2012 09:03
With Microsoft increasing its client access licence (CAL) pricing by 15% from the 1st December, there has never been a better time to get clarity over your current software licensing position. Why? Because while it may be inevitable that you are going to have to bear the cost of increased licenses, by taking a proactive stance on managing license entitlements, you can at least minimize the scale of this increase while also avoiding falling into non-compliance. The simple fact is that organizati... [More]

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General | SAM | Software Licence Management

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Stark reminder not to ignore software compliance

by Matt Fisher 30. October 2012 05:23
As a vendor of software license management solutions, we prefer to focus on the positives of SAM, helping organizations understand how to make substantial cost savings by optimizing volume licensing agreements, re-harvesting unused applications and more. But news this week that a UK safety firm has been forced to pay the Business Software Alliance (BSA) nearly £100,000 (US $160,550) for using unlicensed copies of software from Adobe, Autodesk, Microsoft and Symantec brings into sharp focus t... [More]

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General | SAM | Software Licence Management

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Buyer Beware: How to select a SAM solution (part 2)

by Matt Fisher 21. September 2012 10:20
In part one of this topic, we looked at how organizations investing in SAM tools could take comfort from independent validations of technologies, such as the new KPMG SAM Tools Assessment. This kind of recognition can be a very effective way to reduce the number of potential solutions down to a manageable short-list. But at some stage in the buying cycle you are going to need to test the solution and see how it matches to your individual requirements. How you construct and the conduct this tes... [More]

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ROI in a day? Yes, it really can happen

by Matt Fisher 12. September 2012 04:36
One of the differentiators for License Manager when it comes to managing software license entitlements is the ability to import Microsoft License Statements (MLS) in their raw state.  That, in its own right, is a major labor-saver for organizations - eliminating the need to manipulate or transform data before it can be imported into the license management solution. But in the case of License Dashboard, that feature is something of an iceberg - impressive enough above the waterline, but the... [More]

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Profile

License Dashboard’s team of licensing experts have, together with our partners, delivered over 800 audits and SAM projects to customers around the world.  This blog is populated by three of the key personalities at License Dashboard:

Sean Robinson is the man behind not only the License Dashboard products but also the ISO 19770-1 international SAM standard.  As a License Dashboard director, he works closely with large customers to ensure their SAM projects deliver significant ROI benefits.

Matt Fisher has over eight years’ experience bringing SAM solutions and services to market and is a well-known commentator on the SAM and licensing market.  Matt heads up business development at License Dashboard.

David Chamberlain is one of License Dashboard’s leading licensing experts, helping customers understand how to maximize their use of License Dashboard technologies to optimize their software usage and license availability.

Together, our three contributors will help you keep up-to-speed with what’s happening in and around the world of Software Asset Management (SAM) and software licensing. 

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