As part of SAMChannel‘s ongoing monthly series of SAMPanel debates, we reached out to our panellists and wondered; “Looking ahead, what are your predictions for the SAM market?”

Also, we also very pleased to announce two new panellists joining the discussion this month, so here’s a warm welcome to Vincent Smyth of Flexera Software and Libby Phillipps of License Dashboard. We’re sure that you will enjoy their views and analysis as much as we have enjoyed having them. So, with that being said, let’s hear what our panellists thought of this month’s topic!

 

Libby Phillipps | Marketing and Events Co-ordinator with License Dashboard | Connect with Libby

In a nutshell, the cost of effective SAM is going to climb. This will manifest in a number of ways, the most obvious of which is an increase in the level of audit activity.

Back in 2012, according to Gartner’s survey at their annual ITFPAM events in London and America, there was a 63% chance that an organization would be audited. There is now a 68% chance of being audited in the next 12 months. This isn’t just about larger companies with 25,000 employees or more, either – you’d be forgiven for assuming that because an organization is larger, they’re more likely to be audited – but more and more we hear that smaller companies with between 500 and 5,000 employees have been targeted.

Again, looking at revenue generation, we can expect to see the prices from vendors increase. Vendors spot an opportunity for revenue in changing license metrics to increase the customer bill, and the cost of support and maintenance is also likely to increase year on year.

Read Libby’s Full Submission Here

 

Vincent Smyth | Senior Vice President EMEA at Flexera Software | Connect with Vincent

*Licensing will become a potent security weapon helping software vendors /application producers reduce hacker risk. Also, pushing software updates will be key to defending against IoT hackers.

According to a recent BSA Global Software Survey, 43 percent of the software installed on PCs around the world, totalling more than $62 billion in value, was not properly licensed last year.  In 2015 producers will start implementing advances in tamper-resistant software licensing to reduce hacker risk and protect their intellectual property.  Techniques such as tamper resistance, code-obfuscation and hacker detection are a few of the licensing strategies that will be deployed to reduce software piracy.

In the context of the Internet of Things, one of the primary concerns associated with internet-connected devices is the risk from hackers exploiting vulnerabilities and using applications on device as a vector for viruses/malware.  Because defending against hackers is a continuous ‘cat-and-mouse’ game, once patches to hacked software are created, device makers will need the ability to automatically push those patch updates to the product to ensure installation – and ensure the manufacturer and customer are protected.  By end of 2015, more than 10% of device makers will have added automated firmware/software updates to their capabilities in order to defend against Internet of Things hackers.

Read Vincent’s Full Submission Here

 

May Turnbull | SAM Consultant at EasySAM | Connect with May

The United Kingdom is ahead of most 1st world countries in terms of Software Asset Management (SAM) with a particularly large jump over the last 5 years in terms of awareness around SAM, particularly the License Management/Compliance piece. If EasySAM were to make some speculative predictions about the next few years in the SAM space, they would boil down to these five areas:

1. An even greater SAM awareness

Vendor audits have probably been the greatest catalyst for SAM awareness in the past and will certainly continue to be the main incentive to get your SAM into gear moving forward. Software publishers are focussing their attention more intensely on SAM and as a result will increase associated targets. This is understandable, with software audits driving a large portion of current revenues.

Read May’s Full Submission Here

 

Rory Canavan | Owner of SAMCharter | Connect with Rory

This is a great question – with the advent of the cloud, some folks had ideas that this was the end of SAM; I don’t think we are there yet, but I do think there will come a shift away from counting installs and a move towards counting services.

Equally, I don’t think it will be the software vendors who will be calling for vendor audits – over time I fully expect companies/end user organisations to take software vendors/providers to task for down time and failures in delivery of service.

That though, will be preceded by an ever dizzying spiral of vendor audits used to drive clients away from on premise installs to cloud provision.

The days of cloud will also be an interesting time for Software Vendors, as once customers have made the switch to as-a-service (in whatever format it may be) the lucrative spectre of a vendor audit will be no more, so software vendors will have to think of alternative means to make up the revenues that these once-profitable forays generated.

Read Rory’s Full Submission Here

 

Niall Eddery | Senior Consultant at Livingstone | Connect with Niall

Making predictions is always challenging, especially about IT. One of Steve Ballmer’s best known predictions from 2007 was that “There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share”, and we all know how that worked out.

One prediction I am pretty confident about is that Software License audits are only going to increase. Vendors are continuing to be dependent on audits as a stream of revenue, aand vendors increasing audit volumes and introducing more tool based approaches. End user organisations will need to become increasing sophisticated in their audit responses, and companies that provide good third party audit support are well placed to grow their businesses in this area as the number of skilled resources in this growing niche area is very limited and companies are unlikely to have licensing specialists for all vendors.

In the area of tooling, SAM will increasingly become a Business Intelligence problem. Most large enterprises have many data sources with key data, such as multiple hardware and software discovery tools, Active Directory, virtualisation management tools, CMDB, application access control lists and so on.

Read Niall’s Full Submission Here

Some very interesting points raised by the SAMPanel this month to say the least! Be sure to leave your thoughts in the comments below or if you would like to join the SAMPanel, email the editor and share your opinions on SAM!