With SAM becoming ever more important to many organizations, it has seen the increase of independent consultants offering to come in to your business and utilize any existing SAM tool and processes to produce an ELP. Whilst this tool agnosticism is sold as a good thing, a closer look at what is actually happening is quite revealing.

From what we have seen, many consultants will take a look at the technology and processes you already have in place and come to the conclusion that the only way to produce an accurate ELP, that they will be happy to sign off, is to compile it manually. Naturally, this will be costly, but in the overall scheme of things you will likely come to the conclusion it is money well spent. But is it?

Out-of-date ELP the moment it is produced

Firstly, an ELP is a static point-in-time report that is effectively out-of-date the moment it is produced. Whilst it is important in demonstrating compliance and so protecting you from the worst effects of a software vendor audit it needs to be constantly updated to remain effective. So, with a manually produced ELP, whilst you may be compliant today, you won’t know if you will be the next day, week, month or even year – unless you repeat the whole costly exercise again.

SOURCE: certero.com