Test your licensing knowledge by trying to answer one of the questions taken from our latest whitepaper: SAM Insourcing Vs Outsourcing where we explore numerous factors that need to be understood and weighed up before an informed decision can be made.
What skills & knowledge do you need to be able to deliver effective Software Asset Management?
Understanding if you have the right skills & knowledge is vitally important when considering what your organisation is capable of in relation to planning, implementing and managing an effective SAM programme. It mustn’t be underestimated that the structure of agreements and licensing can be an extremely complex area. To illustrate this, here is a scenario and question to consider:
Scenario 1
Your organisation (2,500 active staff) uses Microsoft SQL 2012 Standard (managed through V-Sphere) across 4 physical and 24 virtual servers, which are all on your premises. You have structured it like this for load balancing and also to provide a development environment for your 4 developers, that each has a Visual Studio with MSDN subscription.
You also have a disaster recovery site, managed by a third party, that has mirrored, passive servers. At the last anniversary of your Microsoft Select Plus Agreement, which was 1 year ago, Software Assurance wasn’t renewed.
Question 1
What do you need to take into consideration to ensure you are licensed correctly?
For SAM to be successful it must become ingrained within the organisation. The tools must be used by people who are sufficiently trained to do so, and processes must be put in place to ensure they are used continuously as a matter-of-course and not as a “task to do when you haven’t done SAM for a while.”
For more information and to test your knowledge with another scenario ……