Luke Burywood Archives - EasySAM https://easysam.co.uk/tag/luke-burywood/ Software Asset Management. Simplified. Thu, 15 Aug 2024 14:35:08 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.0 https://easysam.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/easysam_icon-60x60.png Luke Burywood Archives - EasySAM https://easysam.co.uk/tag/luke-burywood/ 32 32 Hunter vs Gamekeeper: Who should be giving you advice on your software licensing? https://easysam.co.uk/blog/hunter-vs-gamekeeper-who-should-be-giving-you-advice-on-your-software-licensing/ Thu, 01 Apr 2021 10:20:00 +0000 https://wptest.easysam.co.uk/?p=18280 Our marketing lead, Luke Burywood, takes us through the potential pitfalls when getting advice on your software licensing.

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Luke Burywood

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Luke Burywood

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.

Written by

Luke Burywood

Marketing Lead

Image Credit

MART PRODUCTION via Pexels

The post Hunter vs Gamekeeper: Who should be giving you advice on your software licensing? appeared first on EasySAM.

]]> True software re-harvesting in 2021: What does it mean in the post-Brexit era? https://easysam.co.uk/blog/true-software-re-harvesting-in-2021-what-does-it-mean-in-the-post-brexit-eratrue-software-re-harvesting-in-2021-what-does-it-mean-in-the-post-brexit-era/ Fri, 15 Jan 2021 09:20:00 +0000 https://wptest.easysam.co.uk/?p=18291 Our marketing lead, Luke Burywood, looks at what Brexit means for the second hand licensing market.

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Luke Burywood

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Luke Burywood

Our marketing lead, Luke Burywood, looks at what Brexit means for the second hand licensing market.

Published on 15th January 2021

In 2012, the European Union (EU) ruled that a software license legally can be treated like any other good, so long as the license was perpetually owned (I.e., not on a subscription). The analogy we often tell customers is if you run a business where you owned a fleet of vehicles, when the time came to upgrade, what would you do with the old vehicles? Leave them to rust? Of course not. You would sell them on as they still hold value. So why should a software license be any different?

Working alongside partners, we at EasySAM have helped our customers make back £1,000,000+ from re-selling old software.

An example of where we see this in the real world is where a customer moves to Office 365. All their old Office Professional Plus Licenses still hold value, and in a lot of cases this can be a sizeable figure.

On the 31st December 2020, the United Kingdom (UK) formally left the European Union (EU).  A withdrawal agreement (‘Treaty’) was agreed, and the following summarises the key facts concerning how that Treaty affects the trade of pre-owned software transactions between the UK and the EU:

  • The Treaty has no historical impact on previous pre-owned software transactions made between the UK and the EU, on or before the 31st December 2020;
  • The Brexit Treaty does not retrospectively have any impact on pre-owned software licences originally ‘put into use’ in the UK on or before the 31st December 2020.  Therefore, software licences first ‘put into use’, on or before the 31st December 2020, can still continue to be resold to the EU, on or after the 1st January 2021;
  • Software licences that are first ‘put into use’ in the EU, on or after the 1st January 2021, can still be resold to the UK.  During 2020, the UK Government enshrined in law that it will continue to recognise the ‘Exhaustion of Rights’ principle, whereby pre-owned software originally ‘put into use’ within the EU, can flow freely from the EU to the UK:

Intellectual property rights which were exhausted both in the Union (EU) and in the United Kingdom before the end of the transition period under the conditions provided for by Union law shall remain exhausted both in the Union (EU) and in the United Kingdom

  • Whilst a Treaty was agreed, it did not specifically address the trade of pre-owned software ongoing.  Therefore, software licences that are first ‘put into use’ in the UK, on or after the 1st January 2021, cannot subsequently be resold to the EU; such software can only be resold to UK clients. 

One of EasySAM’s partners for re-selling software is a company called Discount Licensing. They had this to say on the matter:

Discount-Licensing warrants that it will only resell pre-owned software to EU clients with software in compliance with UK and EU guidelines, as summarised above. 

Whilst it is not a legal requirement in order to maintain trade between the UK-EU, we have decided to open a subsidiary company within the EU in case our EU clients prefer to trade with an EU based ‘Discount-Licensing’ entity.  In any case, it is our ongoing commitment to continue trading within the UK and the EU to the same high levels of service that our European clients have come to expect from us.

To summarise, the main changes are for licenses ‘put into use’ in the UK on or after 1st January. As was mentioned earlier, licenses ‘put into use’ in the UK before this date can still be resold to EU customers, however from the 1st Jan, they can only be sold into the UK.

If you think you may have a surplus of old licenses that are no longer being used, get in contact with us today and see if they have any value. You could be sitting on a great deal of money and not even know it! To find more info on Software Re-harvesting click here.

Written by

Luke Burywood

Marketing Lead

Image Credit

Tumisu via Pixabay

The post True software re-harvesting in 2021: What does it mean in the post-Brexit era? appeared first on EasySAM.

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