Software is typically a large part of the IT budget, but one that many organizations strain to control. A new software asset management solution from HPE and Flexera brings a new level of efficiency to the usage, maintenance and retirement of IT assets.
By Eric Coughlan, Business Development and Product Manager, HPE
John Cummings: How do companies typically manage their software resources today?
Eric Coughlan: I think the first thing you have to do is break it down into those that are actually doing some form of software asset management, and those that aren't doing anything at all! For a lot of businesses, SAM isn't a top priority, and it doesn’t get the air time it should at the C-level. Software, and efficiently managing it, is not seen as something critical to the business or how the business operates.
Yet at some point companies are going to be spending more on software than they do on hardware. This is largely being driven by the shift in how we consume software; for example, via new cloud- and as-a-service-based licensing models designed to improve software vendors’ annual recurring revenue (ARR).
How companies tackle it today is a bit of a mix. Some use spreadsheets. Some even try to do part of the process on paper – they might have someone who goes down to the server room with a clipboard and pulls info off the servers. Others have performed some kind of market analysis, or maybe they’ve run an RFP of sorts, and ultimately may have bought some tooling. Just by buying the tool, companies often believe they have solved the problem.
Others have realized they don’t have the skills and expertise to run a SAM program and therefore outsource it to a third party. But at the end of day, you can outsource the task, but you can’t outsource the risk.
Kevin Smith: Managing software spend is a complex task. Organizations that embark on this journey in order to optimize their software spend often realize very quickly that they’re out of their depth. Investing in a SAM product alone doesn’t deliver the whole solution. People, Processes, Policies, Procedures, Best Practices and Governance are essential. The SAM technology can do a lot. But taking the information provided and driving change to realize savings requires certain levels of skills and expertise; this is where HPE can help and deliver great value.
The analogy I often give is: Buying software is like buying Coca-Cola. There’s a multitude of ways to do that. You can buy a large, medium or small plastic bottle or the classic glass bottle. You can buy a single can or a pack of 4, 6, 12 or 24. You could order a coke in a café. You can also buy many varieties; classic, diet, zero, cherry etc. So now imagine yourself holding a glass of coke, thinking – well how did I buy this? Where did it come from? What did it cost? That’s what it’s like when companies try to think about how they consume software. It’s hard to track back and manage when you’re only holding a glass of your favorite Coke.
John: Can you give me a nutshell description of the new software asset management offering?
Eric: HPE has developed a fully managed Software Asset Management service for our clients. HPE’s SAM service combines people, platform, and processes to deliver a continuous SAM service to clients, enabling them to gain control of their software licenses, reduce the costs of software licenses, and optimize their software license portfolio. The service is built on two levels of service: Technology Insights and License Intelligence.
Technology Insights provides a single pane of glass to show all hardware and software discovered and recognized within the client’s environment. HPE customers and their end users have access to reports, views, and alerts, including end of life, end of support, virtual environment configuration, application categorization, dependency mapping, and business service mapping, to name just a few. The service can consolidate data from various discovery sources; standardize, normalize and deduplicate the data; and provide this data for consumption into customers' ServiceNow or other CMDB tools.
License Intelligence builds on the foundation of Technology Insights and adds the tracking of purchase order and contract data. HPE then interprets the product use rights and rules, reconciling these with the software inventory and purchase order and contract details, to deliver optimized license consumption reports to our clients.
All of these combined enable customers to have a complete view of their technology estate, reduce obsolescence and security risks, increase operational efficiency, optimize investments in key software vendors, right-size the environment, rationalize assets and increase business agility.
John: How can companies purchase this new service?
Eric: We wanted to give customers a world-class solution for this challenge, and we wanted to make it convenient to purchase by offering it through multiple HPE portfolio offerings. We’re offering it through HPE GreenLake Management Services, through HPE Pointnext Complete Care and HPE Datacenter Care, and also through HPE GreenLake edge-to-cloud platform.
However, it’s not limited to just those severs which HPE may be managing or providing existing services on. The SAM service is designed to cover the entire customer estate – all servers, all desktops/laptops, Cloud, SaaS etc. To have a truly effective SAM service, you must be able to view the entire environment holistically.
John: How does Flexera fit into the new HPE SAM service?
Eric: The SAM service is a combination of people, process and platform. Within HPE, we knew we had the people, and we knew we had the processes. However we still needed a world-class platform to provide the services from.
As we designed our go-to-market, we knew that the software license management tools sector is very mature and therefore relatively small. Through market analysis, research and a proof-of-value exercise, we identified Flexera as the number-one vendor to support our new SAM service. Independent analysis firms also showed that Flexera has been a leader in this space for many, many years, which demonstrates Flexera's commitment to this very specific market. They are a very partner-centric organization; approximately 70% of their business is driven through partners. This is exactly what we were looking for.
John: But couldn’t customers just go directly to Flexera? Why come to HPE?
Eric: HPE and Flexera offer a true managed service approach. As I mentioned earlier, the service provides the people and the process, as well as a world-class software solution. I often compare Flexera technology to a Formula One car. You can go out and buy the best of the best, but if you haven't got the driver who knows how to get the best performance out of it, the pit crew to maintain it, and the design and engineering teams to continue to improve it, you've just got a very expensive car sitting in your garage.
We all know that a tool is just that, a tool. You have to have the experts who know how to get the best out of that tool and how to interpret the data to enable the savings and optimizations that are all so commonly promised.
John: What are the key benefits for the customer?
Eric: I’ve spoken extensively about the benefits of a managed service. However, at its core it’s about complete control of your software spend with the ability to view it, optimize it and ensure that it is compliant with the software vendor terms and conditions. It's about having control of the entire software license estate across what is now an expanding IT environment, including on-premises, cloud, SaaS and others. It allows for the savings achieved to be reinvested into other IT transformation projects, accelerating those projects and propelling the business forward.
Kevin: Yes, it’s optimized spend, and that can be looked at in a couple of ways. One is spend reduction: if you have full control and an optimized view of software costs, you don't have to buy licenses you don't need. You can negotiate better contracts and renewals with software vendors. That's hard-dollar savings. Then there’s cost avoidance. When you know what you already own, it’s a lot easier to avoid unnecessary spending in the future.
You also avoid expensive audits and the time those take up. Software audits typically, for enterprise organizations, cost over $100,000. Being audited by software vendors is a very expensive ordeal, and it takes people away from core business functions inside the IT department. Building out a SAM team yourself and trying to manage it on spreadsheets and a mixture of discovery tools is not efficient, it’s not accurate, and it can’t provide the same assurance of compliance.
In addition, some companies need to demonstrate a certain degree of control of their IT environment, including software, for regulatory compliance purposes. With a global service provider like HPE, underpinned by a world-class solution in Flexera, you’re getting a more accurate and efficient way of managing that. A SAM solution helps you tick that compliance box.
Eric: The ancillary benefits also include things like security. You can easily answer questions like, what’s the end-of-service status on this piece of hardware or that piece of software? Are we still receiving up-to-date patches? Or has it hit end-of-service and it’s no longer receiving updates, potentially raising a security risk and providing a point of attack for cybercriminals?
The service also helps you with optimization of maintenance and support spend. If you know when an asset is heading into end-of-life or end-of-support, it’s easier to make decisions around extended support. You may be able to save the company additional money because, as we know, extended support does tend to run expensive!
Kevin: The solution makes all of that intelligence available for multiple use cases. The combination of HPE expertise and Flexera technology is unique in the market – no other organization offers that breadth and depth of capabilities, delivered in a fresh, new, dynamic way.
John: How do you see the market developing in the future, with the rise of hybrid cloud?
Eric: Companies still spend significantly more on hardware than on software, but that’s changing fast, and analysts are saying that software will overtake hardware within the next five years. Businesses tend to keep a close eye on hardware and how it depreciates on the ledger, but many of them are totally unprepared for this software train that’s coming down the tracks. They need to start putting tools, processes, and practices in place to help them manage it.
Kevin: The move towards as-a-service, which is rapid and accelerating, isn't solving the problem in the short term – in fact, it's just making it more complicated. Now you have your SaaS in addition to your traditional on-premises assets. How do you manage your SaaS consumption?
There's a misconception in the SaaS world that this approach solves the asset management challenge. But while it’s very easy to consume, or overconsume, as-a-service software, it’s not so easy to track it. Very few vendors build that capability into their products.
From the data center perspective, if you’re thinking of doing a lift-and-shift to the cloud, there’s all that licensing complexity as well. Which applications and thus licenses make up the service you’re looking to move to the cloud? What are the entitlements? If I’m rebuilding a service in a private or public cloud, how do I manage the on-premises licenses left behind? So there’s an increasing need for software asset management as more companies adopt hybrid cloud.
Learn more about HPE software asset management and how we help you gain efficiencies, reduce risk and optimize costs.
Kevin Smith is EMEA Alliances Director at Flexera, responsible for managing a team of alliance managers across Europe. Kevin is primarily focused on Flexera’s market leading SaaS-based IT management solutions, which empower enterprises to accelerate and multiply the return on their technology investments. Flexera helps organizations inform their IT with total visibility into complex hybrid ecosystems, providing insights that fuel better-informed decisions. In his spare time, Kevin assists his partner running a small village pub in the Surrey hills.
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