Mike Austin explains why software vendor audits are common and disruptive, and how licensing changes pile up faster than most companies can track. He walks through four ways to build software asset management: hire internally, use consultants, go with a service, or combine them.
Questions this video answers
Two thirds
Over 200 changes per year
Chapters
Hi, I'm Mike Austin, CEO of Metrix Data 360. Congratulations for making it through our software audit video series. Industry analysts say that two thirds of you will be audited this year. Audits are aggravating and they are a time waster and a drain on your resources if not done properly. The software industry is ever changing. Licensing rules are constantly changing. For instance, we know that Microsoft makes over 200 changes to their products licensing terms each and every year. Staying on top of that is very difficult. And that's why having a great process like we've outlined in this video series is so important. If you've got good processes in place, if you do get hit with a software audit, it's not going to be that time consuming because you've already done it. For those of you that are just starting out on the SAM journey within your company, there's a number of different ways that you can go about this. If you're lucky enough to get budget, you can hire an internal software asset manager. Other organizations get started by bringing on a consultant to help them out. Others still may do software asset management as a service. You may even decide to do a mix or a match of these. Maybe I hire a software asset manager and bring in other resources to help because I need more than one person but can only get budget for one. Or I want expertise that maybe my organization doesn't have, so I'm going to supplement that with outside help. However complex your needs are, we're here to help. Please feel free to reach out and we can talk about how we can just simply answer questions that you may have or right up to maybe we can come in and do a self assessment for you to running a full software asset management as a service program for you. We've got the time, we've got the people, and we've got the resources to help. So if you've got a software audit letter that's been dropped on you, or if your vendor's sniffing around and it looks like they might audit you, please reach out and talk to us. Because it's better if you've got your ducks in a row before this happens than scrambling post audit notification to put all this stuff in place. All right, so enough of the sales pitch. If you haven't done it already, please go out and download our software audit process guide. That document is worth its weight in gold. In order to help you understand all the details of this process that we've gone through in the video series. Again, thank you so much for spending this time with us and learning about the software audit process. Until the next time, have a great day. I'm Mike Austin, CEO of Metrix Data 300.
