Looking to build a business case for a SLO program?
Building a Software License Optimization (SLO) program for your organization costs money, but doing nothing also costs money – probably more so! Like any investment you need to make a sound business case to get the go-ahead.
This will likely involve educating the budget holders about the risks and potential costs of doing nothing as well as highlighting how implementing a SLO program will reduce risks and save money – providing a compelling ROI.
To aid in this Forrester recommends asking 4 key questions:
Are you buying more licenses than you really need?
The answer is probably “yes” unless you have a comprehensive, formal license re-harvesting process. You need to find out whether each product’s overall usage is consistent with your expectations and with peer organizations.
How much do software vendor audits cost you?
Investigate whether you could have prevented that cost by fixing underlicensing before the vendor finds it. Calculate what you could have saved by optimizing your license position rather than waiting until the vendor hits you with an invoice (and likely, a fine!). And let’s not forget the hidden cost of software vendor audits, such as lost opportunity costs whilst your valuable resource is tied up responding to the audit.
Do you know the full extent of your software liabilities?
Identify the metrics that apply to your environment and that no one currently tracks. Understand the pricing of these metrics and test staff understanding of the relevant licensing rules, e.g. virtualized servers cause many licensing issues. If you have outsourced some operations, find out whether the MSP or yourself is responsible for ensuring compliance, or even worse, if your MSP is able to deploy software across your enterprise whilst you maintain full liability of any resultant non-compliance.
How much software do you source reactively?
Analyze how much software you buy with transactional negotiations. Evaluate what you could save by strategic sourcing of future needs and framework contracts that secure appropriate volume discounts.
Tools to Support Building a SLO Program Business Case
Finding out this information can be very difficult without some form of tool that can deal with things such as: discovery, inventory and metering.
Fortunately, Certero products have been developed to provide this information and much more.
Get in touch with Certero today to discuss how the Certero technologyy Services can support you in implementing a SLO program.
