Technology or Service: What’s the fastest route to SAM success?

Technology or Service: What’s the fastest route to SAM success?

There can be many triggers that force stakeholders to realise it’s time to invest in Software Asset Management: maybe you’re being audited (or worried that you might be), maybe you need to support a digital transformation or application migration project, or maybe you’ve finally decided that technology spending needs to be optimised and better governed.

Whatever the business driver, the fundamental choices for your SAM programme are the same: do you go it alone and on-board the staff and technologies you need, do you outsource the problem to a services partner, or a combination of both?

Of course, in reality, the devil is in the detail and setting yourself up for SAM success is much more difficult than the simple choices outlined above.

Software Asset Management can be addressed in many ways, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. However, how you choose to tackle SAM can determine your programme’s costs, timeline and overall success, so taking the time to fully evaluate the options available to you is well worth it.

Four basic options for your SAM programme

Although there are nuances and subtleties that create many additional considerations for your choice of how to manage your SAM programme, the basic options can be distilled down to four:

1. Buy a SAM tool and run it yourself
2. Buy a SAM tool and have a third party provide a full or partial service around it
3. Contract SAM managed services from a supplier, using a third-party technology (i.e. not their own)
4. Contract a full or partial SAM managed service from a supplier using their own technology