By John Emmitt
Gartner analysts Victoria Barber, Katell Thielemann and Stewart Buchanan published a report in December 2015 entitled: U.S. FITARA Compliance Requires a New Approach to Software Asset Management. The report states that U.S. government agencies must position Software Asset Management (SAM) as a governance function, rather than just an IT operational function, with a mandate to provide software asset lifecycle oversight.
As noted in the report, FITARA—the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act, was developed to reduce wasted spending and optimize delivery and impact of IT systems. It requires federal agencies to know what software assets they have. Gartner recommends that agencies establish a software asset management policy that is based on industry best practices and ensures that there is a consistent and systematic approach to management of software assets.
According to a 2014 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, only four out of 24 major federal agencies have centralized software license management. Lack of centralization and reliable data on software license entitlements and software inventory are the key reasons why the extent of the SAM problem is essentially unknown within the federal government.
FITARA aims to establish a closer working relationship between CIOs, CFOs and Chief Acquisition Officers (CAOs), to enable improved technology acquisition throughout the federal government. This may include the use of government-wide contracts as part of a strategic sourcing initiative.
As noted in the Gartner report, Software Asset Management is critical to the success of the FITARA program.
Software Asset Management and License Optimization Provide:
- An accurate understanding of what is deployed in the IT environment (discovery, inventory and normalization of the data)
- The ability to track contracts and license entitlements in a central repository
- Reconciliation of license entitlements with software inventory to understand the license compliance position of the organization; this reduces software audit cost and risk
- Automated license optimization based on usage and entitlements to reduce ongoing costs for software
- Usage data and trend analysis that enable better budget management and forecasting
- Accurate chargeback mechanisms for allocating costs to different agencies or departments within agencies
- Contract management
- Application rationalization and consolidation to reduce management, maintenance and support costs
Federal agencies must:
- Have a sound software asset management policy in place.
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee published a scorecard of agency progress in complying with FITARA in November 2015. It showed that GSA was one of only two agencies that had an overall grade of B; GSA has a SAM policy in place.
- Implement the necessary SAM and software license optimization tools to automate asset management processes.
Agency CIOs and CAOs should see Gartner’s report: Three Use Cases Can Help You Select the Right SAM Tool.
Additional tools can also help significantly improve software asset management throughout the software lifecycle:
- An Enterprise App Store—improves software governance by providing automated processes for requesting, approving and deploying authorized software to end users. The app store provides a catalog of authorized applications that have been packaged for deployment. In addition, an app store can help automate the license reclamation process for unused applications, working in concert with the software asset management and license optimization tool. The integration between the app store and the SAM tools also allows agencies to proactively maintain license compliance by checking for available licenses when a software request occurs.
- An Application Rationalization and Consolidation Tool— Application rationalization is a crucial step in the six step Application Readiness process, to identify, assess, and consolidate applications. Through reducing the number of applications that IT teams must actively support, enterprises can simplify platform migrations, reduce operational costs, and improve the efficiency of day-to-day application service delivery. This helps to narrow the scope of IT projects, including the move to Windows 10 and streamlines ongoing desktop transformation efforts.
To learn more, please visit our website: http://www.flexerasoftware.com/enterprise/
See also: Cybersecurity Strategy Must Include Software License Optimization.