Enterprise

IT departments face severe budget restrictions and a growing list of strategic objectives—from software deployment projects around application virtualization and migrating to Windows 7 to ensuring software license management best practices, software compliance and optimized spend—all geared towards increasing business efficiencies and productivity. The result of these pressures is driving growing interest in pay-per-use software licensing models that require IT to have greater visibility into software usage and entitlements.

Ensuring Software License Compliance

Enterprise License Optimization adds a rigorous financial discipline to software asset management. With the power of centralized software license management, organizations can greatly improve their ability to ensure that the right users have the right software at the right time, they also can tighten the reins on software spend and use budget savings to further other strategic objectives. An Enterprise License Optimization strategy can also ensure your organization is in continuous compliance with your software license agreements.

Such a strategy will move you from reacting to ensuring proactive software license compliance by:

• Delivering the information required to ensure software audit readiness
• Providing the tools to complete software asset identification
• Helping you understand what you have purchased versus installed
• Providing vendor license position certainty
• Enabling you to manage virtual software licenses

Solving Windows 7 Application Migration Challenges

Many enterprises are preparing to migrate to Windows 7, where application compatibility becomes a primary challenge. To solve this challenge, they look to application readiness solutions that encompass automated application compatibility testing, software packaging and application virtualization to accelerate and streamline the operating system migration process. Windows 7 migrations have significant impact on IT in terms of time, budget and internal reputation. Ensuring application compatibility and deploying applications for optimal performance and functionality is an essential requirement.

To simplify the management and deployment of applications, many organizations are combining Windows 7 migrations with application virtualization projects with the goal of an optimized desktop. IT organizations can smooth Windows 7 and application virtualization migrations with Flexera Software AdminStudio, an application readiness toolset that reduces risk, time and costs by analyzing application compatibility and fixing issues. AdminStudio helps IT teams to develop clearly defined, trackable and repeatable processes for both Windows 7 and application virtualization migrations.

Reducing IT Spend

For enterprise IT, reducing IT costs is a constant priority.  Software spend represents an opportunity to deliver significant bottom-line results. The budget for applications that cost millions each year and even more to upgrade and maintain (as much as 80% of ongoing IT budgets) is a prime area for cost control. IT, finance, and procurement should be looking to squeeze maximum value out of the enterprise software budget. But while applications have become strategic to the business and total investment in applications continues to climb, they are amongst the least well managed of all strategic business assets.

You can begin to control software spend and optimize licenses with a comprehensive Enterprise License Optimization strategy designed to:

• Eliminate unnecessary software licenses and software maintenance fees
• Mitigate the risk of under-licensing software and failing a software audit
• Manage software entitlements so they provide the most value when and where they are needed
• Unify software purchases and software license contracts  across the enterprise
• Accurately forecast and plan future software spend
• Conduct smarter, fact-based negotiation with software vendors

Enterprise License Optimization centralizes software license management and extends software asset management at an enterprise level to deliver measurable IT cost reductions on a daily basis.