Software Asset Management program challenges - a personal PA perspective

[Richard Smith]

First, an admission... I am not an implementation specialist in SAM Pro. I don’t currently hold the certification, and have never led an implementation of it for a customer. Perhaps not the best of starts? 

In my role as a platform architect though, I have worked with a number of customers who have either implemented, or are implementing SAM Pro.

I've seen several of common challenges during the last 3 years but before I jump into that, I think it is worth setting the scene for those perhaps not familiar with SAM. No apologies for shameless references to the learning material or docs here!

"Simply stated, Software Asset Management is the stewardship of software assets from planning through sunset"

A SAM practice aims to maintain compliance, support audits (e.g. by software publishers) and optimising spend - which is primarily about reducing the cost of software licenses.

How do we do this in ServiceNow? The 10 kilometre view: You record your entitlements, and all your software installations and usage in the platform; and SAM Pro reconciles the two, to provide you with an effective license position.

Really though, how?

Entitlement

• You ensure that your software contracts, entitlements to use software are all  recorded in ServiceNow. It is important to consider carefully the options here. I.e. There are usually a lot of entitlements of different types, for a large range of products, from many publishers.
• Software will regularly change as it goes end of life, is replaced, or is purchased.
• It's complex work. Getting them right will involve making use of the import mechanisms, technical integrations and process integration (i.e. embedding entitlement changes into the procurement/contract processes).

CMDB - software installations, and details of the hardware it is installed on

• You use discovery to ensure that the infrastructure AND software installations and usage data are correctly brought into ServiceNow and kept up to date. This includes things like:-
  • A source of End User Computing (EUC) data, such as SCCM, or the ServiceNow Agent Client Collector (ACC-V)
  • ServiceNow's agentless, horizontal discovery, to discover the datacentre estate

The following are a list of challenges which I have seen impacting the success of implementations. It is not intended to be a complete list.

Challenge 1: Believing the tool is a magic bullet

ITAM programs, including SAM programs, are (according to Gartner) 80% about process and governance, and 20% about tooling.

An ITAM program is not a project with a defined start and end date. It is an ongoing process. It typically takes many years to fully establish and mature an ITAM / SAM program.

A couple of thoughts... do documented processes and named key stakeholders exist?

• E.g. The SAM Team, Infrastructure team(s), Process Owners, Application Owners, Development, Support, Procurement, SecOps, Contracts, Finance, Enterprise Architecture, Business Relationship Managers…
• Are there regular meetings (established governance) to discuss the SAM Program (SW Lifecycle impact) with these key stakeholders?

Challenge 2: Training not considered, or not completed

I have been surprised to find that even years into some programs of work to deploy SAM in ServiceNow, no training has been taken by key SAM administrators, developers and users in the SAM Practice.

Software Asset Management is complex. Licenses are (often) complex. Infrastructures are complex. Ensuring everything is correctly imported, configured and reconciling is… complex.

Even if you are working with an experienced implementation partner who know their Software Asset Management and SAM Pro (and you almost certainly should), you should ensure you are also trained up front.

ServiceNow's Implementation methodology, Now Create, includes such training right at the start of implementation programs.

Challenge 3: Not correctly considering Discovery as a prerequisite

You cannot manage what you cannot see. To reconcile software installs and usage against your entitlements you must have a complete, accurate and trustworthy CMDB.

Establishing quality discovered data in the CMDB must be factored into the SAM programs timeline, and it needs to be done first. It is a pre-requisite.

Most customers looking to implement SAM Pro will already have some, or even most of the required discovery already happening. Why? Because discovery underpins so much more on the platform. It supports the ITSM processes, AI Ops, and (hardware) Asset management processes.

If you do not have discovery well established, or are using non ServiceNow discovery/supported integrations - it is likely that the data in the CMDB will not support SAM Pro reconciliation. Remember, it is going to rely on the CIs being in the right class, hardware details such as CPU types, counts, cores being recorded. OS versions, CI relationships, being in place, free from duplicates, gaps, etc.

If you are near the start of your discovery journey, or are pivoting to ServiceNow discovery/ACC, from another technology; do not underestimate the scale of the task. In a typical Discovery implementation, you should be getting executive sponsorship in place very early, and be deep in conversations with Infosec, networks, infrastructure and application teams as early as possible!

Challenge 4: Not having an achievable program of work, aligned to realising value

Kind of related to the first challenge. SAM tools are no magic bullet. If you have a sizeable infrastructure, it will be overwhelming to attempt to establish compliance for all publishers and products at the same time, or even lots of them together at the same time.

Go slow at first. Pick something straightforward in EUC, and get it right. Ensure that process, governance and technology are all in place and you get the desired outcome.

Analyse. Plan well. Understand where the value really is:-

• Don't prioritise a publisher/product purely based on its large cost. It might be the next thing to get going on, but are you already locked into a contract with that publisher for several years which cannot be influenced? What is the value in doing it now?
• Prioritise based on a variety of things. Cost, proximity to contract renewal, proximity to, or likelihood of audit.

Challenge 5: Not having a clear scope or plan for SaaS applications

SaaS applications typically constitute a large chunk of an organisations spend on software.

Understand the scope of your software estate and the out of the box SAM Pro capabilities. It's a hugely capable suite, but it does not have a dedicated integration to every SaaS vendor on the planet.

For example, for each SaaS vendor, consider:-

• Is there an OOTB SAM Pro plugin? If so, it's likely that this is the right way to go.
• Can SSO integration get you what you need?
• Still no? Is your spend with the vendor significant enough to warrant using the template ServiceNow provide, to help create a custom integration?

Don't forget challenge 4. It might be tempting to just "do all the out of the box integrations first" and leave any custom integrations for another day. It’s a big factor, sure, but what about the value? Be led primarily by the value a solution for each publisher/product will give you. If the value of doing a custom integration is very large, why would you wait longer than necessary?

Challenge 6: Overlooking capabilities

There are a number of great capabilities in SAM Pro, which I have regularly seen either ignored, or "parked", seemingly indefinitely. Really valuable capabilities. Of course, if you'd addressed challenge 2: the training would have told you a lot of this.

I intend to write another article about some of these capabilities later on, so for now I'll just list them. But I would encourage you strongly to be familiar with them and what they can do for you.

• Software spend detection (Identifying)
• License Change projection (Understanding the license cost of infrastructural changes)
• Automation of Software reclamation / Client Software Distribution (CSD)
• Success Portal / Success goals and tasks

Resources

• https://www.servicenow.com/community/sam-articles/software-asset-management-quick-start-guide/ta-p/3...
• https://www.servicenow.com/premium/resource-center/ebook/getting-value-for-software-asset-management...