Hunter vs Gamekeeper: Who should be giving you advice on your software licensing?

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Hunter vs Gamekeeper: Who should be giving you advice on your software licensing?

Our marketing lead, Luke Burywood, takes us through the potential pitfalls when getting advice on your software licensing.

Published on 1st April 2021

EasySAM has grown rapidly over the last few years, which is a testament to the work ethic of our team to provide savings for our customers. Throughout recent years operating as a Software Asset Management consultancy, we have found competition not only from other SAM Consultancies but also from resellers with their own internal SAM Teams. The likes of Softcat, CDW and Computacenter to name a few.

Fortunately for us there are still many customers who still chose to use an external SAM partner for a reason we like to call, the ‘Hunter vs Gamekeeper’ analogy. This simply meaning, you do not want the same company providing you license advice to be selling you your licenses.

Which brings us onto our next point, where should you get your licensing advice from and who should you trust?

Internal SAM team?

Should an organisation have made a decent investment into their Internal SAM Practice, this can be a good option. However, in most cases the investment is not enough for the size of the organisation. This ultimately will lead to poor coverage of the organisation’s estate.

The SAM tool you have just bought?

Buying a SAM tool is a lot like buying a gym membership. Whilst it is a good step to ensuring compliance and rightsizing licensing concerns, if not given the time and attention it deserves it can be a waste of money. Gartner recently published that 80% of customers feel like they do not get value from their SAM tool. We believe this is largely down to overselling from the SAM Tool providers. When presenting a tool to a prospect, the SAM Tool provider will often show a ‘demo’ environment that gives every detail one could ever need for every user/computer.

What they do not show is the hours of data entry it takes to get that information, as well as the hours one needs to dedicate to the project to ensure compliance moving forward. EasySAM are tool agnostic and can offer advice around which SAM tool to buy based on your environment as well as providing support to ensure you see an ROI on your SAM Tool.

Licensing advice from your reseller?

This option should be approached with caution. Because often the reseller is basing advise over partial sets of information and they are often target driven. It is a big conflict of interest for the reseller to provide you licensing advice that could save you potentially millions of pounds, as this will be millions of pounds of licensing revenue they will lose out on. In this scenario, the reseller is acting as both the ‘Hunter’ and the ‘Gamekeeper’.

Advice from an independent SAM consultancy?

For us this is the best way to ensure the information you are getting is accurate. Through working with an independent SAM Consultancy, you are going to be getting advice from the best consultants who do this day in day out.

EasySAM, for example acts as an impartial advisory body without any hidden agendas other than providing analysis and advice around the software you purchase and deploy. EasySAM helps organisations correct any potential overspend on software and make sure that any risks are proactively identified and addressed. Software is an asset that is easily overlooked, often not being re-harvested or used to its full capacity. As it makes up a large portion of any IT budget, this is an area where you can see quick returns if managed correctly.