Will SAM die out with the growth of subscription-based licensing?

Well qualified SAMs will remain critical to the enterprise as licensing types evolve. Recognize that subscription-based licensing has been the bane of mainframes for decades & only began leaching into the client-server environment at the turn of the millennium.

In fact, studies have consistently found that the prohibitive costs of subscription licensing are one of the top barriers to mainframe growth. Expect the same with client-server. 

The evolution away from perpetual licensing is a result of two factors:

• Sheer greed on the part of software industry players. Gotta keep those revenue streams rolling.
• Legal precedent actions (in some enlightened countries) that have strongly suggested that, if a license is perpetual, it may also be labeled as possessed (as in owned). NOT a concept the software industry players want to take hold.

If you carry the concept one step further, the loss of perpetual licenses is merely a single step toward removing what few licensing controls enterprises have over their software. The next, and even more costly, step is SaaS.

Capable SAMs actually represent the single point of defense enterprises possess when licensing becomes more a process of cash flow than services. Unfortunately, a majority of SAMs have been trained (by SAM programs sponsored or funded by the software industry players themselves) to function tactically (responding to external impetus) rather than strategically (predictively minimizing risks while establishing long range cost reductions & deliverable value).

*(This quick discussion is a response to a post by Rajat Kumar Singh on the LinkedIn group “Software Asset Management Professionals, India.)

The Corporate Approaches to Software Piracy & Copyright / License Compliance Need to Move to the Next Generation of Leadership.

This post is in response to an article in ComputerWeekly noted HERE.

The original article discusses how the software piracy landscape hasn't changed much in the past few years. Licensors continue to use unnecessarily complicated licensing schemes & licensees continue to fail to understand as well as fail to manage licenses & licensed products. We CAN, however, change this distressing software piracy trend, but we have to wake up & smell the decaying business processes that expose us to punitive software industry players & their predatory compliance enforcement auditing friends.

It's time to move our outdated software asset management mentalities out of the dark ages & into the next generation of software life cycle management, systems life cycle management, & over-all IT life cycle management.

• As long as business technology consumers permit the software publishers to control the entire licensing process, we will continue to be targeted by predatory compliance enforcement industry players.
• As long as the enforcement industry publicity teams use “piracy” as a synonym for "non-compliance", or "honest licensing errors", we will continue as targets.
• As long as the "compliance landscape" is constantly shifting, we'll be easy targets.
• As long as the enforcement industry-sponsored "studies" & media blitzes represent the smoke & mirrors world of piracy to the public & our legislators, we'll continue to be targeted.
• As long as we permit nebulous terms & conditions (such as the literally limitless "right to audit" clause) in licenses, we'll continue to be targeted.
• As long as our software asset managers are not trained, are being trained only to the enforcement industry perspectives, or are being "qualified" as "professionals" in over-night certification classes, we'll continue to be targeted.
• As long as the enterprise pays only lip service to software & license life cycle management, we'll continue to be very easy - even clueless - targets.
• As long as the technical "experts" in the enterprise continue to be in the dark about the realities of license compliance, we'll remain targets.

It's time for the next generation in software asset management professional development & awareness. Business technology consumers need to stop being reactive & start being "intelligently proactive" in addressing the root causes of software life cycle management & compliance assurance.

I've spent nearly twenty years studying the enforcement industry players & their games & it has become evident that our training programs are less than optimal in their approach to compliance assurance (& nearly empty in terms of effective life cycle management). Each & every issue listed in this article & my response could have been minimized by intelligent asset management. Unfortunately, our asset managers frequently are not given the knowledge they need, nor the executive support necessary to address the problems up front - where they could have avoided the confrontation.

For an example of what I'm saying, look through the technician comments on the discussion thread noted in my previous post.

What you'll see, if you can make it all the way through the thread, is that these front line IT personnel DO NOT generally have a clue about compliance or license management. If these people do not understand, or if there is no well-trained/empowered software asset manager in their enterprise, their companies are defenseless - & ripe - for punitive compliance audits.

You want answers? I'll be glad to provide them, along with pointers to the next generation of strategies & tactics for compliance assurance & software life cycle management professional development. Feel free to connect with me at any time.

The Institute for Technology Asset Management publishes its Guide to the Technology Asset Management Body of Knowledge - TAMBOK - the planet's only cost-effective guide to the competencies asset management practitioners need to succeed in the front lines of SAM & ITAM.

SAM Credentials Need To Evolve To Reflect Competency, Not Instant Certifications

It never fails to astound me that asset management practitioners can be transformed from "I just got this job" into proficient(?) software asset management professionals in as few as one or two days of training. I'm further blown away that a majority of our industry training programs include an "instant" short-term memory exam as part of their certification schedule.

Do me a favor & check my math. It looks like the typical training session can be completed in an average of two business days. These sessions probably include multiple breaks for coffee, tea, lunch, & (I hope) at least a 2.5 hour exam. If I'm correct in my calculations, the actual time-on-task for today's certified SAM practitioners churned out by the typical 2-day program is less than 7 hours. I hate to even consider the time-on-task for a single day program.

Based on all this, it would seem to me that we're actually killing our credentials by popping out people who know just enough to get themselves & their enterprises into what an ancient Chinese knowledge expert dubbed as "interesting" SAM operational times. (Yes, I know they didn't phrase it quite that way.)

Here's how we approach the typical SAM certification problems with the training & credential programs from The Institute for Technology Asset Management:

• Our SAM credential has been broken down into Software and copyright compliance Assurance (SCCA) and Software Asset Management (SAM). Between these two, the candidate receives more than 29 hours of actual time-on-task training broken into approximately 39 individual focused self-paced sessions.
• We are not proprietary in our programming. We focus on openly available competencies that practitioners can easily apply specifically to their SAM (and IT) environments. Nothing is hidden.
• We have broken out the classic SAM training program into brief self-paced on demand sessions that can be taken singly or as a bundle.
• Via this individual session delivery, we can deliver significantly more time-on-task than ANY alternative program in the industry.
• When the basics of the certification are delivered online, we can eliminate the costly & disruptive travel aspect.of typical SAM programs.
• The Institute also provides an "open source" style knowledge base (in the form of our easily acquired Guide to the Technology Asset Management Body of Knowledge (TAMBOK). Through this simple TAMBOK practitioners and enterprises alike can gain a comprehensive view of the actual needs of asset management infrastructure.
• What's more, The Institute provides third party tracking of your training portfolio via a SCORM Compliant industry standard Learning Management system.
• Also, the SAM-related exams are free-standing and can be completed at any time after fully completing the coursework. This provides candidates with plenty of time to study and translate their knowledge from short-term memory into their more stable long-term memory. Result? Candidates learn and remember more than ever before.

I'll cover additional differentiators for Institute credentials in follow-on posts. For now, recognize that The Institute is moving SAM & ITAM credentialing into the next generation of credibility - for practitioners, as well as for those who hire credentialed SAMs / ITAMs. 

To look over the range of Institute Software & Copyright Compliance Assurance (SCCA) and Software Asset Management (SAM) credential programs, click HERE

sign in to the LMS (Learning Management System) [ It's Free] and review the course content.  Each session has a brief printed introduction and the live sessions last from 30 to 90 minutes.

Any questions, please let me know.

Software Piracy Settlement - Delhi, India

In August, 2011, a small enterprise in Delhi, India was confronted for hard disk loading. The consequences for this enterprise were costly but there was a critical hidden message for every software asset manager behind this court case. When fewer than 10% of software piracy, or license non compliance, settlements are made public, it pays to know how to respond to the few that DO show up in public.

For a quick review of this incident, and a more comprehensive discussion of how asset managers in this region should respond, take a look at my commentary HERE.  (Or click here for a link to the original IndianExpress.com article by Utkarsh Anand). At the end of the commentary you will also find a link to the full Institute for Technology Asset Management PDF Knowledge Briefing that will provide you with strategies & tactics to respond to events similar to this in your geographic area. 

THESE are the some of core competencies that are only exhibited by Institute-trained Software Asset Management Professionals.

Software Asset Managers (SAMs) Beware: This scenario represents one of the most frequent blindsides in our industry.  A single reseller who violates copyright regulations - if linked to your enterprise - can cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars - in many cases, it'll even cost you your job. (Conveniently enough, you don't even have to have done anything wrong...)