Article Written by Ben
Eagling, Marketing Manager of License Dashboard
Artificial intelligence, machine learning, and automation
are all set to eliminate repetitive tasks at work. Artificial intelligence is
being adopted across businesses in manufacturing, transport, utilities,
facilities, operations, and IT. Forrester predicts that by 2025, 16% of US jobs
will be replaced by cognitive technologies such as robots, artificial
intelligence, machine learning, and automation, with new roles such as "robot
monitoring professionals, data scientists, automation specialists, and content
curators".
Organizations that are embracing automation are enjoying
improved productivity, time saving, and cost cutting. It is evolving quickly
into business intelligence applications, and in IT specifically, opportunities
to apply automation in procurement and maintenance look to offer major
disruptive potential.
The IT
department is crying out for automation
Automation in IT speeds up operations. It standardises the
execution of tasks, reducing errors and discrepancies, and improves governance
and security. Although some human intervention is required to monitor
performance (an automated error has the potential to snowball far more quickly
than a manual one!), automation means the IT team can assign resources to other
tasks, which are often more beneficial to the department, or organisation as a
whole.
Whether it's something simple like running daily reports, or
more complicated tasks with multiple steps combining multiple scripts like
moving and backing up files; automation will save IT time if it's a task that
is performed frequently.
Automating
SAM to free up internal resource
Larger organisations especially, can better accommodate an
investment in an internal SAM solution compared to a smaller company with
perhaps a reduced budget or team.
License Dashboard found that 73% of SAM Managers spend most of their time on
transactional license management tasks. Gathering,
consolidating, and normalising software install and usage data, and cross
referencing that with license entitlement - it doesn't matter how big the IT
budget is; it's difficult to justify the fact that almost three quarters of the
resource assigned to a task are unnecessary, when it could be completed in less
time, and more accurately, through automation.
Automation in
managing User Based Licenses
Using automated functionality inside its chosen SAM
solution, the IT department keeps a record of installed software on each device
on their network, plus an inventory of all software purchases - they should
have a good handle on keeping the company compliant.
Microsoft Office 365 subscriptions, permit the installation
of Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2016 on up to five PCs or MACs, five
tablets, and five phones. Tracking these devices when multiple users have
access presents a challenge for the IT department in tracking the instances of
Microsoft Office that are covered by the Microsoft Office 365 subscription, and
understanding how many separate Microsoft Office device licenses are needed -
achieving compliance, and maintaining it, becomes far more complicated.
Complexities may arise where a user with a subscription to
Microsoft Office 365 has the equivalent version of Office installed on their
laptop, on their desktop PC, and on their tablet, the Office 365 admin portal
reports the subscription, but the network discovery tool is asking for a
license for each of those three installs.
Similarly, with Microsoft Developer Network, a developer is
able to deploy multiple products to multiple devices under one subscription,
however, the network discovery tool sees full deployments of the applications
like SQL Server, Exchange Server, Windows Server etc, and therefore asks for a
license for each.
User based licensing can be extremely cost-effective, but
reconciling each user to their multiple aliases, and then allocating a single
license across a user's set of devices is a hugely time consuming yet
business-critical task. Performed manually, it would be a huge drain on
internal resource to gather and process the data, and then to maintain it. It
would also be susceptible to error. Performed automatically, it would take a
fraction of the time, a fraction of the resource, and it would produce
accurate, reliable data to the benefit of not only the Software Asset Managers,
but also other stakeholders in the organisation from HR, to procurement,
finance, and the business itself.
Managing SAM
flexibility with artificial intelligence
A data centre offering an online catalogue service for
retail products needs to cope during busy periods through the day, and seasonal
peaks in demand. Additional compute resources should be allocated to cope with
the increase in activity and ensure business-as-usual. Software licenses for
products in a data centre are complicated, and do not always support unplanned
changes, such as an increase in capacity requirements, which could lead to
unexpected costs for licensing.
Artificial intelligence learns through historical data, and
is able to predict trends through the business as a result. Using the previous
years' information, artificial intelligence will understand when additional
capacity is required, and therefore when additional software licenses are
necessary. Organisations are fully informed of what is required and of any
further purchases, and has a list of recommendations for the coming financial
year based on historical performance.
Software
asset management for artificial intelligence
How an artificial intelligence system works determines how
it will need to be licensed. Traditionally, customers own any and all data
entered into a software program, and they own any and all data produced as a
result. But in the case of a machine learning model the data produced, is the
result of training a learning algorithm which is then applied to the data.
In the case of a perpetual license, for example, the
customer has the rights to (and so can use) the machine learning model during
the agreed term. After which time, the vendor can destroy the model, retaining
the fundamental software and algorithm, but without risk of reusing the
customer's model for others.
Artificial
intelligence will change SAM as we know it
Automated software asset management processes provide the IT
department with much needed support and guidance on managing software assets,
but it is still necessary to oversee the process manually through a
professional. Without regular intervention, should a machine make a mistake, IT
and indeed the organisation itself could run into some unwelcome surprises
during any review of their effective license position (ELP).
When negotiating with a vendor regarding an artificial
intelligence, machine learning, or automation user agreement, this goes beyond
a standard software licensing agreement. There are many more complicated
scenarios to consider. Make sure your organisation understands any restrictions
on what you're able to do with data output. Your SAM solution must also
understand how software for artificial intelligence is licensed.
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About the Author
Ben
has worked as a marketing professional for nine years, with four years spent in
the IT sector. Working closely with software and licensing experts within
License Dashboard, Ben produces regular content on Software Asset Management
tools, services and market insights.