6 reasons your SAM tool may fail

• Published: Feb 24, 2021
• Tag: ITAM, Management

It happens often:

• You have a SAM tool, a good one.
• You look after your software estate.
• You maintain licence compliance.

Yet the audit report is shocking.

And it leaves you wondering, why?

Here's what you can do to prevent that.

1. Incomplete coverage

Is your entire IT covered by the tool?

What about:

• Secure zones and multiple segments,
• Development and testing,
• Servers in third partydatacentres,
• The new cluster you’ve just deployed,
• The company you merged with?

Pro tips:

• ✓ Check coverage regularly,
• ✓ Implement solutions for secure zones.

2. Incomplete data sources

If you only have inventory of virtual machines but no related data from hosts and clusters, the data is useless for compliance calculations.

Pro tips:

Tools are rarely capable of automatic discovery of virtualised infrastructure.

• ✓ Make sure you configure connectors,
• ✓ Check connectors on a regular basis.

3. Unfinished configuration

Out-of-the-box software catalogue may not “know” that you acquired your licences in bundles. Ifso, compliance calculations will be incorrect.

IBM software may be the most frequent but not the only example.

Pro tips:

• ✓ Engage with SMEs to configure bundles,
• ✓ Implement regular checks.

4. Incorrect licensing metrics

Ifyour license says “per user” but the tool reports software per device, how can you calculate compliance?

• Catalogue in the tool may have errors.
• Vendor may update the metric for a new version. Does the tool know about it?
• It may be unique to you (e.g., “Turnover in USD”).

Pro tips:

• ✓ Engage with SMEs to verify metrics,
• ✓ Implement regular checks.

5. “Dirty” data

It’s not unusual to have duplicates or incorrect data in the tool. The reasons may be:

-Multiple data sources, -Multiple discovery methods, -Quality of data from third party tools -Manually maintained CMDBs

Pro tips:

• ✓ Check and fix data merging in the tool
• ✓ Sometimes you may need a custom add-on

6. Lack of capabilities

Sometimes the tool just doesn’t know how to calculate compliance position (ELP).

Even worse,it may simply be incorrect.

Oracle customers are the most frequent victims of tools’ shortcomings. But it may happen to any other vendor’s software.

• ✓ Perform an independent ELP review
• ✓ See if your tool may be fine-tuned
• ✓ Implement a custom solution if necessary

How L-IT can help you fix it

• ✓ By fine-tuning your current tools to maximize return on your investment
• ✓ By integrating and building customised solutions to augment your toolset
• ✓ By realising your SAM-related business goals in the most effective way to optimise time and money you spend on SAM

Please contact us to discuss how we can help you achieve the best commercial outcome.