What LDS Can Offer

SAM Pro’s Content Library contains tons of software publishers. Commonly used license metrics such as Per User, Per Device, Concurrent User, Per Named Device, Per Core, and Per Processor, are provided.

For software publishers with complex licensing, packs are included for publishers such as SAP ®, Microsoft ®, Oracle ®, IBM®, Vmware ®, Citrix ®, and Adobe®.

These packs include publisher-specific calculations to aid mostly with complex server licensing, such as Oracle database options that can go unused providing a tremendous optimization opportunity to reduce license costs.

Sample Reports

The Biggest Mistake You Can Make

Do not assume that the licensing position is correct. Auditors typically use the approach of throwing everything at the wall and seeing what will sticks. At best, they interpret all the data in the way that servers them best. They know with experience that most of the customers are not going to review the license position report, rather they will accept the report and then focus on the settlement numbers.

The Second Mistake We Often See

The second biggest error customers fall into is often to negotiate a lower cost settlement before knowing if the license position is correct. Settling before knowing the true license deployment without evaluating the actual position can be costly. This mistake usually ends up with a higher initial settlement cost then what is required, and also higher on-going costs for licenses or products that are not truly required.

Understand You Have Rights

You should not be controlled by the rulings of the auditors or by their time schedule. You have the right to review their findings and to correct mistakes that have been made. You should review all the findings and thoroughly challenge what you believe is not correct. Only then, should you start to discuss a settlement. Ideally you can negotiate a settlement that gives your company some business value and try to avoid a settlement that is punitive and where you end up with products you do not want.

Build The Core Cross Functional Team

Build a core cross functional audit response team usually involving stakeholders from IT, Procurement, Legal and other business units depending on the nature of the software.

Seek Specialized External Help

You are outclassed from the start of the audit. Auditors have unpublished rules for interpreting data. Auditors are extremely specialized because they do this all the time and have access to a warehouse of details. If you receive the audit letter don't feel embarrassed to seek external help early in the process.

Perform An Internal Health Check To Understand & Optimize Your Risk

Before sending any data to the customer you should get a through understanding of your software deployments and entitlements. Perform an internal health check on your SAM tools because they might be incomplete or reporting false positives. There are many avenues available to you to optimize your real estate before receiving the bill from the software vendor. Determine your risk and where allowed to make remediation before submitting the data to the auditors.

LDS Can Help!

LDS has defended hundreds of software licensing compliance audits, we know exactly how auditors will interpret the data, we understand their playbook, we can help you identify your risk and create a roadmap for optimization/clean up.

Key Review Subjects

This service will cover all the key aspects of how your organization manages its software usage.

• Contracts Analysis: clauses specific to user access, levels and restrictions
• Software entitlement data gathering
• Software Deployment Analysis

Service Outline: Output

Following the review, you will receive an in-depth report summarizing our findings and recommendations including:

• 'Effective Licensing Position’
• Independent recommendations for licensing and process improvements
• Recommendation for remediation and optimization based on your licensing.

Case Study

Fortune 500 Insurance company with unknown license deployments hired LDS to discover and optimize software installations. By the third iteration with continuous improvements LDS had helped customers optimize his deployments realizing a 95% save by taking the true up opportunity from $10 Million to $500K. Solution was implemented on a mix of on premise and cloud.

Key Review Subjects

This service will cover all the key aspects of how your organization manages its Microsoft software estate.

• Analysis of Contracts specifics
• Analysis of software entitlement data
• Analysis of software deployment 
• Analysis of licensing metrics

Service Outline: Output

Following the review, you will receive an in-depth report summarizing our findings and recommendations including:

• Current ‘Microsoft Effective Licensing Position’
• Current ' Microsoft Licensing Optimization Report'
• Current ' Office 365 Optimization Report' 
• Independent recommendations for licensing and process maturity improvements
• Road map for recommended licensing strategy and optimization
• Best practices to negotiate a good deal with Microsoft

Testimonial

IT Director of a mid sized distribution company

“LDS did an awesome job they helped us prepare for our last yearly true up, prepare for the 3 year EA negotiation and helped us save 1 Million on our contract”

Head of procurement at a small west coast SMB biomedical company

“LDS was very cost effective in terms of the ELP project fees”