Simplify software governance on a single platform

[Bryan Blackburn]

The 2020 global forecast for enterprise software spend amounts to $507 billion, with SaaS spend reaching $110 billion (1). Within the first year of implementing a SAM solution, organizations can save up to 30% in software costs. Without proper SAM governance, organizations are at risk for tremendous amounts of software waste (2). By the end of 2020, $152 billion in enterprise software spend and $33 billion for SaaS will be wasted if companies don’t have SAM programs.

Considering a large amount of IT budget goes to software, SAM governance becomes an important part of a mature IT strategy. Software governance pays close attention to data protection and standards, but it also includes aligning your software and business strategies. Standardized workflows and processes are vital to effective SAM governance which will help mitigate software compliance risk and help you minimize software waste.

With potential savings being so great, it’s a wonder why SAM isn’t more of a strategic business initiative. Gartner has been saying SAM should be a C-Level imperative for a while now (3). With complex licensing and pricing models from top publishers, asset managers are faced with a number of challenges when it comes to SaaS and software governance. Below, you will find some common challenges, paired with some simple solutions to elevate your governance practices.

Challenges	Solutions
Software proliferation unknown to IT; IT is uninvolved in purchases	Utilize software spend detection tools to quickly identify and categorize software purchases, including those unknown to IT Create automated workflows and processes that control how software is requested and deployed.
Limited/no visibility of software installed vs. used	Use a discovery tool to identify deployed software, connecting entitlement data and normalized software data Use a SAM solution that enables you to determine meaningful usage for various applications and reclaim “stale” licenses
Overlapping software	Rationalize the number of applications and application types (e.g. do you require 10+ different file sharing apps)
Patching and security	Implement a SAM strategy with blacklisting capability that limits software proliferation so that employees are only using software that is compliant with IT security standards Proactively identify software risks with publisher life cycle dates for application planning and security vulnerability actions

ISO Standards provide a framework guiding the organization to recognized approaches to common IT challenges. For example, common to IT, we see ISO frameworks which are all interconnected:

ISO Standard	Common Name associated with the Framework
ISO/IEC 27701 2019	Privacy Information Management System (PIMS)
ISO/IEC 27001	Information Security Management
ISO/IEC 19770	Information Technology Asset Management

For purposes of this blog, let’s take a closer look at ISO 19770 ITAM standards specifically.

According to ITAMStandards.org (4), “ISO/IEC 19770 is a framework of ITAM processes to enable an organization to prove that it is performing software asset management to a standard sufficient to satisfy corporate governance requirements and ensure effective support for IT asset management overall. ISO/IEC 19770 is aligned to Service Management (ISO/IEC 20000) and contains 27 process areas, with objectives and detailed outcomes defined for each. The standard also advocates a tier-based approach to allow organizations to adopt ITAM processes that are suitable to the needs and size of the organization.”

The objective of the standard is to provide organizations information and assistance to address the risk and cost minimization of ITAM assets. Through implementation, these same organizations will acquire a competitive advantage through:

• Management of the risk of interrupted IT service delivery, breach of legal agreements and audit
• Reducing overall software costs through the implementation of various processes
• Better information availability leading to improved decision-making based on accurate data (5)

Better manage software governance on a single platform

A single platform can better manage software governance outlined in the ISO standards listed above. As a single source of truth for IT and business data, you can trust that centralized perpetually clean data is being shared and utilized across the organization. Standardized process governance can help companies achieve the ISO objectives, including minimized disruption to service delivery, reduced risk of legal agreement breaches and improved decision making based on accurate data. This increases visibility across the organization to monitor what has been purchased and what is being used by connecting the dots between finance, procurement, HR, GRC, and IT security. A single platform helps determine more clearly if active, in-use software are compliant with IT security standards.

With process being a critical component of effective software asset management, a single platform makes creating IT workflows simple. You can automate your workflows to trigger a set of needed actions that strengthen SAM and governance processes. The Now Platform already gives you the ingredients you need to get going in SAM like CMDB, Asset Management, or Discovery, for example. You can also push that enriched software data to other areas of the platform for your cross-functional teams to get major value out of it as well.

Our customers are saving millions on software spend and we’re helping them mitigate compliance risk. What makes ServiceNow unique, is that you can run SAM natively where you are already managing IT, to get to value much more quickly, better positioning SAM for cross-functional use cases and simplifying how software governance is managed.

1. https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2019-10-07-gartner-says-global-it-spending-to-grow-06-in-2019
2. https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2016-07-19-gartner-says-organizations-can-cut-software-costs-by-30-percent-using-three-best-practices
3. https://www.gartner.com/en/documents/3237218/software-asset-management-is-now-a-c-level-imperative
4. http://www.itamstandards.org/iso-iec-19770-1/
5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO/IEC_19770