Where we can help

Software Consult’s service offering is aimed at covering all aspects of software licensing, throughout the lifecycle of the software products used within your company: from initial acquisition, through all the changes in the live technical environment and updates to the product itself, to the sunset of the product.

Software Consult wants to ensure that you obtain maximum value from our services. Below is a non-exhaustive list of services that we can provide. Please contact us to discuss your project.

Examples of domains where we can assist are:

Impact of new technologies

New technologies emerge at an ever-increasing pace. In the last decade we have seen multi-core processors, virtualisation, mobile computing and cloud computing that have moved from “emerging” to “mainstream” technologies.

Software Consult can help you in assessing the impact of these technologies on software licensing requirements.

Architecture cost-effectiveness assessment

Companies develop new solution architectures or re-vamp existing ones. In most cases the proposals of the technical experts are well-thought on technical and performance levels, but often they do not take into account how the software products are licensed. Unknowingly this drives up the cost of the total solution.

Software Consult can work with your architects and other stakeholders to ensure that the new solution is well balanced between technical performance and cost.

Contract Right-Sizing

Software vendors’ licensing structures change over time, as do your company’s needs and requirements. While some people incorrectly believe that cloud computing will remove the need for software license management, it is a major game changer that still requires licenses to be managed, albeit in a different way.

Software Consult helps you find the best way of licensing your software, be it for cloud-based computing or for the more traditional setup on your premises or within your service provider’s datacenter.

Contract Negotiations

Knowing what you have and what you need is crucial to efficiently negotiate new contracts.

Software Consult can assist you in understanding your licensing needs and requirements, and translating these into a contractual agreement with your software vendor.

Risk Assessment

Over the years companies have implemented software products without having sufficient controls in place to manage them effectively. Therefore, some products may be deployed beyond the allowed entitlements, with a non-compliance risk as the result. Some other products may be over-licensed, which leads to an inefficient cost structure. And for some products, or even vendors, some contractual responsibilities may be neglected, potentially entailing significant additional charges.

Software Consult can perform an assessment that identifies a company’s risks in the areas of: non-compliance, over-licensing, contract responsibilities

Vendor-Initiated Audit

Most major software vendors perform software audits on a regular basis. In fact their audit activities are on the rise!

Software Consult can assist you throughout the audit process, from a thorough preparation, to managing the communications with the vendor or their auditor, to the final settlement negotiations should a – sometimes alleged – license shortfall be identified.

SAM Tool Selection

Good software license management requires a tremendous amount of detailed information about the technical implementation. As your environment changes on a daily basis, the amount of work to collect this data is enormous. Changing licensing schemes make this activity even more complex and time-consuming. SAM-tools provide a way to automate collection and validation of inventory data. The offerings in the market change from day-to-day and a good match with your requirements is absolutely necessary.

Software Consult can assist you in selecting the right tool for your company, with a larger focus on the datacenter environments that house the more expensive software products.

SAM Tools Services

SAM tools are a great help and even a must in any software license management program. However, such tooling merely collects data across your environment. The collected data must still be interpreted and correctly processed in order to deliver good results.

Software Consult has the skills to perform the activities that are needed for your preferred SAM-tool to deliver value to your company.

ILMT Services

Companies running IBM-software have a contractual responsibility to run IBM’s tool to monitor and report on the usage of PVU-based software.

Software Consult can assist you in producing the audit reports that IBM requires.

Process Review

SAM-programs often start from the need to cope with vendor audits. This is a reactive approach. The true value of software license management comes out when it is used pro-actively. This requires that a number of business processes be reviewed and modified to ensure that all the required information is readily available to the software asset manager.

Software Consult can review key processes and propose the changes that are needed for a successful software license management.

Mergers, Acquisitions, Divestments

Companies are subject to severe pressures in the market. In some cases such pressures lead to companies joining forces or companies separating so that each of them can go their own way.

Software Consult can guide you in the re-assessment of your contracts to ensure that any potential risk from the merger/acquisition/divestment be addressed.

SAM Services

Most companies use software from several vendors. Keeping track of all these vendors’ licensing schemes is quite a challenge. This has reached the point that companies prefer to fully outsource all licensing-related activities to experienced third parties.

Software Consult can provide a full range of services to accommodate your requirements.