Licence Management is an often used phrase these days and yet at ITAMS it has been a core focus for us for years.

Our experience has led us to an unparalleled knowledge of what it takes to licence pragmatically. We believe that organisations should not strive for perfection but should optimise their licensing position in order to reduce risk and unnecessary spending on software.

The fact is that most software publishers do not expect perfect record keeping and control. But they do expect due diligence and focused effort in managing software buying, appropriate record keeping and restraint over uncontrolled software deployment.

Today new developments that will help organisations to better address licence management problems include standards such as ISO19770-1 (ISO Software Asset

Management Processes) are emerging and will provide some useful guidelines to organisations. New technology has also arrived to help manage the complexity of licence entitlement including capabilities to manage upgrades, downgrade paths, OEM, concurrency, MS Enterprise Agreement and Select and similar complexities. Gone is the time when the only tools were asset repositories had basic engines to vaguely help in this area but did not contain licensing ‘intelligence’.

At ITAMS we recommend licence management pragmatism and we always aim to achieve tangible results and positive returns whatever the organisation’s level of maturity. When an organisation like ours has defined the licence management processes for some of the largest and best known companies in the world – and then been told by them that ‘we couldn’t have done it without you’ we know we have got it right. We would like to share this knowledge and experience with you.