Software License Compliance
Too many licenses and you pay too much. Not enough licenses and you’ll pay a fine. By combining details about exactly what software is in use from Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager with license and contract information you maintain in the Provance IT Asset Management solution you’ll avoid costly non-compliance fines and prevent overspending on licenses, maintenance and support. You’ll gain further cost efficiencies and control by fully automating your workflows for software requests, approval and fulfillment.
License Compliance
The “what” and the “why” of license compliance is simple: The software in use must match the quantity and conditions of the license; otherwise, additional licenses are required to avoid a penalty or fine. It’s the “how” that’s hard. How do you know exactly what software is in use? How do you keep track of multiple versions of software under a range of licenses from various publishers and vendors deployed across the numerous individuals and locations in your organization? How do you match the software to the licenses?
Provance IT Asset Management works with Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007 or Microsoft Systems Management Server (SMS) 2003 to provide a complete and powerful license compliance solution. Using a knowledge base of nearly half a million applications, Configuration Manager performs identification and categorization of software installed across both physical and virtual environments to give you a clear, complete and accurate view of software in use. Provance IT Asset Management provides you with a single location to track license and contract details and manage the proper allocation of software. Tight integration between Configuration Manager and Provance IT Asset Management lets you compare actual software deployment with licenses and entitlement. At a glance compliance and exception reports let you quickly identify and reconcile discrepancies and respond to vendor audits.
Together, Provance IT Asset Management and Microsoft Configuration Manager (or SMS) combine to deliver a complete license solution that ensures you’ll avoid costly non-compliance fines.
Software Asset Management
While software license compliance lets you avoid the probable cost of under licensing, software asset management lets you eliminate bona fide costs incurred through overspending on licenses, maintenance and support. Provance IT Asset Management lets you proactively control and manage software expenditure by optimizing the use of your licenses, eliminating unnecessary non-license expenditures and increasing your purchasing power.
When reports comparing software discovered by Configuration Manager with available licenses tracked in the Provance IT Asset Management solution show a license surplus, this represents an opportunity for you to recover costs by terminating or reallocating unused licenses. When a deficit of licenses occurs, software asset management gives you alternatives to an outlay for more licenses. In addition to the active assets that Configuration Manager inventories, Provance IT Asset Management provides visibility into inactive assets, such as those in procurement, repair, storage or retirement. Where no licenses are available for allocation but there exist licenses assigned to inactive assets, Provance IT Asset Management lets you identify opportunities to recover, or “harvest” licenses for reallocation. Similarly, software usage information from Configuration Manager can identify additional candidates for harvesting that have installed software that is seldom, if ever used.
In addition to the cost of software, non-license costs for maintenance and support can be substantial. Because Provance IT Asset Management tracks maintenance and support costs associated with your software, you can optimize your agreements to accurately reflect your actual requirements. It is particularly expensive to pay maintenance and support on surplus, inactive or underused software as these costs typically recur on an annual basis.
Even when the optimal mix of software in use, licenses, and maintenance and support is achieved, there are still opportunities to further lessen software costs. Provance IT Asset Management provides you with the information you need to effectively plan and forecast your future requirements and consolidate your purchasing. With significantly increased buying power, Provance IT Asset Management lets you take full advantage of volume discounts and reduce the costs of managing multiple vendor relationships and contracts.
Software Request Management
Your most valuable and expensive assets are your people. With Provance IT Asset Management you can fully automate the process of placing, processing and provisioning software requests from beginning to end, freeing your people to be more productive.
Provance IT Asset Management provides a web-based Service Request Catalog that lets you select software from a catalog of approved publishers and titles, request changes, participate in approval processes and check the status of your orders. Requests placed through the Provance IT Asset Management Service Request Catalog are automatically processed with a powerful and flexible workflow solution. You can custom create any number of serial or parallel workflows to automatically route and process software requests based on the business rules and variables you define, such as participants, type of request, escalation conditions, entitlement, available inventory, location, organizational relationships, the dollar amount of the request and more. Once the request, approval and allocation processes are complete, Provance IT Asset Management uses the powerful Software Distribution capabilities of Configuration Manager to automatically install the software to desktops, servers, laptops, and mobile devices across your enterprise. After the software is distributed, Provance IT Asset Management verifies the installation using Configuration Manager’s auto-discovery and updates the asset records.
By fully automating software request management, Provance IT Asset Management speeds delivery, increases accuracy and control, and frees your costly human resources to focus on higher value activity.