Software Asset Management
Software asset management (SAM) is all about managing the software and the entire software lifecycle in your network environment, both on servers and desktops/PCs. SAM is more than just making an IT Asset Audit. The major parts in a professional software asset management strategy usually consists of:
- Strategy and process for software deployment
- Iterative software inventory/audit/IT Asset Tracking strategy
- Process for handling software licenses and license compliance
- Structured way of managing software support & maintenance agreements
- Process for handling software support & maintenance agreements
- Tracking of software usage
The aim of implementing a long term strategy for software asset management is of course to lower the Total Cost of Ownership for your software assets.
Software Asset Management solution
If you are aiming to have a as standardized Windows environment as possible you should focus on having a SAM-solution that is as integrated as possible. Maximizing the use and value of your Active Directory will give you less infrastructual and security problems. A good choice of infrastructure is a good start of implementing a software asset management solution. One could even say it is a prerequisite.
Specops Software's solution is to use Specops Inventory for your software asset management needs.