SAM Training – Can you re-wind and repeat your SAM certification training at will?

Probably not… One of the most significant drawbacks of a majority of Software Asset Management training and certification programs is that they’re essentially “one and done” in their delivery. This means that you attend a one- or two-day program, they teach you how to pass the exam, and you’re finished: “Instant Expert.” There is no provision for review, reflection, customization, or mastering the content.

The Institute for Technology Asset Management, with its Learning Management-Based online SAM Credential, takes you into the next generation of professional development.

For the first time in our industry, you, the SAM practitioner, can now:

• Attend an online professional development program that is self-paced – allowing you to learn when it’s convenient for you and for your enterprise.
• Attend a program that is based on the genuine competency needs of the individual practitioner – experience the knowledge you need to succeed in the real world of front line software asset management.
• Attend a credentialing program with a clear and publicly available professional development Roadmap that delivers genuinely supplier-neutral SAM skills.
• Attend this cutting edge professional development program from anywhere on the planet without leaving home.
• Attend a program that includes a workbook that is actually a Work Book – encouraging you to convert each competency covered into a customized solution for your unique enterprise.
• Attend a program that permits you to Learn to Mastery – view and review each competency module, each training page, until you are comfortable in your ability to actually use what you have learned.

What’s more, SAM and ITAM programs from The Institute for Technology Asset Management interface practitioner competency development with an Open Source curriculum, unique in the industry, allowing practitioners to apply local, or even in-house, training experiences to their credential growth.

Better yet: At ~175 USD, your TAMInstitute SAM credential exam is a fraction of the cost of alternative certificate options.

Institute programs are available in any of these formats:

• Online, self-paced: GO HERE for Core Competencies and GO HERE for Advanced

• Live Boot Camp Style – Either via our Norfolk, Virginia-based alliance with Infotectraining.com or delivered directly to your enterprise. (Check under Leadership and Management:  GO HERE )

• Combined Boot Camp, with live delivery PLUS access to the online, self-paced materials for extended review / reference.

Each program includes access to our best in class Workbook with over 500 pages of genuinely useful information (no fillers), allowing you to convert the coursework to customized solutions.

Onerous tech agreements are killing your company

Beware: Many software licenses are DESIGNED to ensure you will violate the terms & conditions. Existing SAM certifications minimize this issue, apparently brushing off comprehensive license definitions; terms & conditions detailing; and document management as if these topics are virtually irrelevant.  This "partial" coverage gives you a false sense of security while leaving you defenseless.

Here's the thing: The agreements that legally bind your company to copyright protected products are carefully designed by well-paid lawyers representing the software industry players to ensure that you - the software consumer - have no rights while the software publisher retains all rights. On the flip side of the equation? The software publisher has none of the responsibilities and the software consumer has ALL of them.

Following is a brief video/audio example of the typical Warranty terms of a very common software product. As you listen, keep in mind that you are purchasing a business tool that could easily wipe out your company if it fails to deliver the value for which you purchased the product. Unfortunately, the Warranty clearly states that the product DOES NOT HAVE TO WORK.

You'll find the basic software Warranty slide deck (with sound) HERE.

The Institute for Technology Asset Management has identified over 42 distinct software license types - in the client-server environment alone. We've also disassembled several common licenses into individual terms & conditions to help practitioners better understand their relationships. Our object is to bring software asset management & compliance assurance training into the next generation of quality. When you genuinely understand the ROOT CAUSE of software licensing & compliance issues, you take the first major step in gaining maximum value with minimal risk from your software portfolio of goods, services, & contractual relationships.

Take a look at our Software &; Copyright Compliance Assurance (SCCA) and Software Asset Management (SAM) credential roadmaps. Merely click on the acronyms to download the PDF. Both programs are available as online, on-demand, professional development sessions.

Non-Commercial Use Clause - A Software Licensing Land Mine

At The Institute for Technology Asset Management, we’ve encountered the “Non-Commercial Use” clause in multiple instances of enterprises being audited for non-compliance. The bottom line behind this clause is its very “obtuse-ness” (if you will).

Much like the “right to audit” clause & its reliance on various nebulous (ever-shifting?) definitions of both “audit” & “compliance”, the Non-Commercial Use clause permits the copyright holder to write the rules as they encounter the instance – even up to selecting the most useful copyright law to cite in your legal notification - thus maximizing the potential for non-compliance settlement fines & penalties.

Further (& again, we believe intentionally), VERY few IT personnel have any clue how non-commercial applies to ownership of the system versus how the product is actually being utilized much less which systems in the enterprise contain these products. As software asset managers - SAMs - it's up to us to help educate the enterprise about this hazardous clause - one that is present in a wide range of licenses.

Result of Misinterpreting This Clause: You become an easy - & conveniently defenseless - audit target!

Bottom Line: Closely review the license terms. If the license has a Non-Commercial Use clause, recognize that the clause essentially applies to both where you put the product AND how you use that product. Essentially, do not place the product on a corporate system & do not use that product to produce any subsequent product or service.

Want a revealing experience relating to this type of clause (from the perspective of real live IT personnel)?  Read the following thread - it's long...but invest the time in clearly understanding this classic disconnect between licensees & licensors.  The organization initiating the thread used an evaluation licensed product – with a non-commercial use license caveat - in a production environment.  The odds are really high that your own IT personnel have done this, or are doing this… The thread is HERE.

Software Asset Management is NOT About the SAM Tool!

We're constantly neglecting the key disconnect in terms of software asset management within a majority of enterprises. In brief, the company wants to rely on automated tools to perform effective SAM and we continually fail to ensure that there are qualified software asset managers present to utilize those tools. The SAM tools approach follows the classic IT line of approach that "software" (in this case, the systems discovery tool) can cure all our problems.

This post is in response to an article published in "Business News Daily" - Making the Case for Software Asset Management.

The practitioner members of The Institute for Technology Asset Management have determined that a clear majority of SAM-related issues can be resolved with minimal cost & disruption to the enterprise when software goods and services are managed from a business life cycle perspective. For Example: 

The core of many of our software issues can be traced back to ineffective license and agreement negotiations coupled with a failure to genuinely FOLLOW the terms and conditions of the agreement.

As long as the enterprise fails to approach SAM from this business perspective, with intelligent controls in place and clearly managed, the enterprise will over-spend on virtually all tech-related products and services as well as remain essentially defenseless targets for an ever-expanding predatory software and copyright compliance auditing industry.

Do you need justification for SAM? Try these:

• Fewer than 20% of software licenses are seriously negotiated by the business consumer
• A majority of software asset managers are trained & "certified" in programs designed by the compliance enforcement industry & their friends - The Institute provides the only genuinely supplier-neutral life cycle asset management training to the SAM community of practice.
• If your training enterprise is owned by, or financially supported by, the enforcement industry or software publishing industry, your training is NOT going to be focused on cutting life cycle costs. That would represent a serious conflict of interest to the provider.
• Fewer than 10% of SAMs have ANY training in detailing (following?) license & agreement terms & conditions.
• A majority of enterprises has no idea where the proper license support documentation is located. These companies are easy audit threats & the enforcement groups KNOW it.
• Fewer than 5% of SAMs have any level of oversight in terms of "how" software products are distributed across the enterprises systems. This is one of the TOP VIOLATIONS in non-compliance audits.
• Over 95% of enterprises still believe that, if they are compliant, they will not be targeted for audit. WRONG. According to your license agreements your business can be audited at any time, for any reason, & for NO REASON by any number of 100+ enforcement groups.
• That same 95% of enterprises still believes that, if they are audited by one enforcement group, they're safe from further audits. WRONG. Just because one enforcement group gives you their "blessing" does NOT preclude the rest of the groups from piling on & conducting their own audits.

Train your software managers to genuinely manage the entire range of SAM products and services. Ensure that their training reaches beyond merely counting computers and policing surface compliance. For more clarity, take a moment to look over the FREE Software & Copyright Compliance Quiz. Take notes and recognize that each question represents a category of SAM deliverables you need to have in place to ensure maximum ROI and value with minimal risk.

Are you interested in the NEXT GENERATION of SAM credentials? Take a look at these Credential Overviews from The Institute for Technology Asset Management.

Are you ready to join the NEXT GENERATION of well-qualified Software Asset Management Professionals?  Follow this link to The Institute's exclusive online - on-demand - training programs. professional development.

A Software License Is NOT a Software License

I just read an excellent post on the ITAM Review. It's entitled "Oracle Customer Has Licensing Meltdown" and is located HERE.  Please take time to look it over. Both Martin & the original author have excellent points - points about software licensing issues that we continue to encounter yet never effectively address in the real world.

Software License Terms & Conditions Can Be Changed By The Licensor At Any Time & Without Directly Notifying You.

The key problem is this: As business technology consumers, specifically software consumers, we do not effectively negotiate our licenses. If we did, then we'd actually have to read the license. Having read a software license, and actually understood the inherent instability of the agreement, any sane negotiator would - or rather should - dump the product & the supplier right out of the supply chain and move on to their BATNA.

Instead, we either fail to read the license; or we do not understand what we're reading; or we assume that the copyright holder won't actually enforce the terms; or we treat the acquisition the same as a crack junky desperate for their latest fix - purchasing without regard to future problems.

Here's the bottom line: If you see a clause in a license that looks like this -

Modifications To This Agreement

"We reserve the right, at our sole discretion, to change, modify or otherwise alter these terms and conditions at any time. You can find the most recent version of these terms and conditions on the Site, with the date of last modification noted above. Such modifications shall become effective immediately upon the posting thereof. Therefore, we encourage you to check the date of our terms and conditions whenever you visit this Site to check if they have been updated. You must review this agreement on a regular basis to keep yourself apprised of any changes. If you do not agree to the revised terms and conditions, your sole recourse is to immediately stop all use of the Services. Your continued use of the Services following the posting of modifications will constitute your acceptance of the revised terms and conditions."

It means you do not have stability relating to your existing license terms. This basic wording will show up in your original license as well as contract renewals, updates, upgrades, (even patches) so look for it BEFORE installing. Once you have activated the license by installing (or even accessing) the product, you are stuck with the new terms.

Keep in mind that each of these license agreements also includes a "Right to Audit" clause that will be enforced by the licensor. During that audit, you will be responsible for conforming to the CURRENT terms & conditions for each product. If you are not up to speed on those changes, the auditors don't particularly care. You will pay the fines & penalties for being out of compliance.

Software License & Copyright Compliance Assurance Quiz – It’s FREE!

Do you have questions about the ins & outs of software license compliance audits? Are you concerned that you may not be prepared to counter a software license audit, or a copyright violation audit? The average business is currently hunted by as many as 100 anti-piracy auditing groups. Very few enterprises trust these enforcement groups to provide answers without pursuing their own hidden agenda, so where can you go to find a trusted resource?

Take a few minutes & step through the following confidential quiz from The Institute for Technology Asset Management. Your ability to answer – or not answer – these simple questions will give you an excellent baseline regarding your chances of minimizing exposure to crippling software license non compliance & copyright violation audits.

The “Software License Compliance & Copyright Compliance Baseline Quiz” is available HERE. 

As you step through the quiz, keep track of the number of issues for which your only justifiable answer is "no." A valid justifiable answer is one you can prove "...to the satisfaction of the copyright holder..." so anything you cannot prove must produce a "no" answer to the quiz issue. Each of these issues will represent a specific weakness in your preparedness for stonewalling, or at least minimizing, the impacts of a punitive enforcement audit.