Organizing Software Licenses
Is a good topic to discuss since this is a common challenges in the IT Department, so let’s have a good scenario to fully understand the importance of Organizing Software Licenses.
Imagine your company is in the business of Software Development and you have several offices spread worldwide where all the developer, QA,Training,Testing Group and Project Implementation are working together using different kinds of Software Tools.
Let’s say:
1. On one workstation per Developer they are averaging 10-15 Software Tools installed for their development and that doesn’t include their Microsoft Stuff like email, Operating System (OS), Antivirus and etc.
2. Multiply that to all developer team, their Supervisor & Boss plus the QA, Training, Testing Group as well who are spread across the globe with different timezone.
3. Adding to that is the hiring constantly of your company everyday where new developers come ins every week and they need their software tools for their training and get onboard for the production as quickly as possible.
4. Of course the attrition aspect you need to consider everyday of Developers,QA, Training, Testing Group as what will happen to their existing licenses and who will make a call where the licenses will be transfer?
5. Not all company have centralize purchases of Software tools so most probably the Developer Department, IT, QA, Training and Testing Group have their own OPEX/CAPEX for Software licenses purchases. When they received their Software Tools from the vendor delivery package, the licenses or activation keys are probably there but sometimes due to the nature of their job they are not focus and preoccupied with departmental meetings & deadlines especially if launching software version is nearer. So definitely they seldom collate properly all the necessary physical Software licenses documents, as this will add another burden to their existing load plus who will coordinate with other offices worldwide for the shipment or central physical repository of software license package? Worst it’s not part of their KPI as well. A classic case study for Organizing Software Licenses.
6. Typically the Head of the Developer, QA, Testing, Training Department would not take the ownership (which is common practice now a days unfortunately) to manage their departmental Software licenses as they cannot afford to loss precious time (manpower time) and distract their focus which would result profit loss to the company product if they miss the target date especially releasing new version to address critical bug, features or enhancements.
7. The CIO was given a challenge from the C’s level Team as who will take ownership of this Software licenses Globally and of course you know already the turn of events which will fall basically to your IT Department, which they say’s this is part of your Department responsibility by default. Another good case study for Organizing Software Licenses.
With all the possible scenario’s identified, how your IT team will tackle this? what will be your very first step to do? and the succeeding steps until closure? Even if you have Microsoft Key Management Service (KMS) Server this doesn’t address completely, because KMS is for Microsoft Products and how about the third party App? Even if you have Microsoft SCCM (System Center Configuration Manager) or third party Audit Software to scan workstation across the globe this is second to impossible as lots of challenges your IT team will face like:
1. Execution time if your business is 24×7 and across different timezone. Is your IT Department is in 24×7 shift?
2. Some Software Tools licenses or activation are in the vendor Systems premise and no info can be extract in the local workstation.
3. Will consume more bandwidth to your office branches connectivity.
4. Additional load to your developer workstation and their job will be affected if not properly advise ahead of time.
5. Network devices additional load.
6. Firewall devices additional load.
Organizing Software Licenses task cannot be done in an overnight alone even if you have sophisticated tools in place.
What we want you to know having powerful inventory software tool is not guarantee enough to do the job done, as Organizing Software Licenses is all about Comprehensive Suite & Systematic approach and to do that you need at least important elements in your team to succeed like Documentation, effective policies & procedures in place, sophisticated inventory software tools (of course), structure thinking and your IT team strong determination to accomplish this goal. Having these elements flow in your system , you can now easily face the challenge and have a realization (mental note) that Organizing Software Licenses in the Global scale is something doable and feasible in your IT Department plate.
We cover Organizing Software Licenses as standard SOP for our Managed Services Offering. You can visit the site at https://www.ptech.com.ph/managed-services/
