As we exit the turbulent seas that the COVID typhoon has caused across all walks of life and all industries; EasySAM and Ultima have sat down together to reminisce over the past year and the changes we have seen. As a result, we have both said our fond farewells to the old ways of managing software. It is time to re-examine our hopes for business moving forward, taking everything into account that has now changed forever.

After all, the way we work has changed forever – Digital transformation has accelerated, and it is now time to re-evaluate the future. Last year saw a complete shift in the way we all work with quick-fix stop-gap solutions rapidly put in place, organisations now need to ensure that employees can work securely and productively from anywhere – business needs to respond to demands.

With this comes a need to re-examine what this means on not only on a licensing and application level, but also the necessary safety procedures that come hand-in-hand with environment changes and how hardware and software communications are structured. There are people in the world that aim to profit from others hard times and weaknesses, so IT fortresses need to be more solid than ever.

So, as you blaze forward towards the new goal of work from home hybrid environments & technology to make this as easy for users as it can be…take a moment to revaluate any weaknesses under those pins you put in them. We are talking about things like unsupported versions of software, whether licensable or not. For example, Java is something that comes quickly to mind as a vulnerability that hackers have capitalised on in the past. Bet you haven’t had a good hard look at that application in a while!

When lockdown struck, organisations were affected differently depending on where they were in their cloud journey, with those already in the cloud better positioned to respond fast. One thing is clear – cloud is no longer a matter of if, but when. Given the uncertainty of the future, it is now mission critical for all organisations to review their cloud strategy for the short, medium and long-term.

Alongside this, there have been critical changes to things like Dynamics365 that might have been overlooked during the chaos of the last year. One of the major changes being the connector re-classification by Microsoft. Connectors that did come with the Dynamics 365 licensing and flagged as ‘standard’ are now classified as ‘premium’ and require Power Apps licenses to run. There is a light at the end of the tunnel, in terms of a grace period here for some, but this still means major budget changes for most.

Technology 100% played a transformative role during the pandemic. But now it’s time to assess where cost savings can be made, get a clearer understanding of what software assets reside in the organisation, and how to best utilise those assets and remove audit risks. Duplication of certain categories of software is also something EasySAM find often within all customers of different shapes and sizes. You will probably find there are multiple software applications in your organisation that are doing the same job. A bit of weeding is probably overdue here whilst you do your due diligence.

Luckily, there are great resources like the licensing teams at Ultima and the software asset management specialists at EasySAM to help you focus and prioritise. We hope you found this blog informative and implore you to get in contact for more detailed conversation on anything discussed.