Software Asset Management-as-a-Service
The business case for Software Asset Management Managed Services.
Why SAM-as-a-Service (SAMaaS)?
Free to focus on value-creation: Effective SAM is essential but it can also be a huge resource drain. Free up your headcount and your budget for value-creating projects.
Confidence you’re always compliant: Remove the stress and cost of unexpected vendor audits by ensuring you’re never under-licenced or in breach of vendor T&Cs (which change regularly).
Remain cost-optimised: Ensure that you never pay for more for your software licences or support than you need to, taking into account changing usage and vendor terms.
Why now?
Rising vendor audits: It’s inevitable you will get audited. Don’t wait for an audit notice. We identify your organisation’s Effective Licence Position and ensure you stay in a continuous state of licensing optimisation, compliance, and audit readiness.
Get ahead of the annual maintenance renewal cycle: Don’t just accept standard vendor uplift. Understand your actual licence usage ahead of time and proactively negotiate a maintenance renewal contract that works for you.
Tightening economy: SAMaaS finds ongoing savings in what you already have and frees your team to focus on revenue-generating projects.
Why Invictus
Partners?
We love the stuff you hate: We can take away the headache of all the operational parts of running a SAM practice within your organisation. Understanding ever-changing software contracts and terms is not pleasurable for most, but we love it and we’re good at it. Our enterprise software experts love delving into contracts and finding opportunities for doing things smarter when it comes to enterprise software licensing and spend.
Best-practice SAM methodology: Invictus Partners SAMaaS employs proprietary methodologies drawing on decades of experience, intellectual property, and best practices to address the gaps in an organisation’s structure or priorities necessary to set up, transform and run an end-to-end SAM capability. Our approach incorporates people, process, tools, and governance and we work alongside your IT, procurement, commercial, and business teams to implement recommendations, realise benefits, and help you de-risk.
Experience across a broad range of SAM tools and software publishers: Invictus Partners SAMaaS leverages an organisation’s SAM tools of choice to provide ongoing management of its software footprint. We can work with ServiceNow, Flexera, Snow Software, Aspera, VOQUZ, and vendor tools to deliver a complete and continuous set of SAM services across a broad range of software publishers including Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, SAP, Red Hat, Salesforce, Workday, and more.
Chat to an expert
Our SAM Managed Service breakdown:
Invictus Partners SAMaaS is SAM delivered as a managed service. It includes advisory, recommendations, and actions based on observations and data. Provided monthly, Invictus Partners SAMaaS supports you to realise compliance, cost optimisation, and contractual opportunities and enables sound and timely data-driven business decisions.
Invictus Partners SAMaaS is delivered by highly skilled and experienced resources to enable scalability and enhance SAM maturity while delivering day-to-day SAM activities across the SAM lifecycle. It may include some or all of the following phases, depending on the organisation’s requirements.
Phase 1
SAM Maturity Assessment
The first step is a pragmatic introspection to determine where your organisation sits on the SAM Maturity Curve and how you can attain value out of a SAM program.
Disorder
Reactive
Compliant
Proactive
Strategic
Once we have a good understanding of your SAM maturity, we can recommend options for ongoing value-realisation through your SAMaaS program.
Phase 1
SAM Maturity Assessment
The first step is a pragmatic introspection to determine where your organisation sits on the SAM Maturity Curve and how you can attain maximum value out of a SAM program.
Disorder
Reactive
Compliant
Proactive
Strategic
Once we have a good understanding of your SAM maturity, we can recommend options for ongoing value-realisation through your SAMaaS program.
Phase 2
Foundation: Software Asset Management Business Case
Invictus Partners takes care of the foundational set-up needed for a successful SAM Managed Service program. This involves defining and agreeing on processes and governance structures, aligning stakeholders, and the optimal configuration of SAM tools. We coordinate and own all resources required to load all your organisation’s software contracts into the tools.
Phase 3
Baseline: Software Asset Management Framework
We conduct a Software Licence Health Check to create a baseline for your enterprise software. This enables us to establish and agree a starting point for your SAMaaS program. The premise is to understand exactly what you have installed, what you are entitled to, the difference between those two points, and a series of advisory recommendations with tasks to remedy. This review clearly identifies gaps between licensing arrangements and entitlements and helps shape the objectives of your ongoing SAMaaS program.
Phase 4
Run: Software Asset Management Metrics & Reports
Once the SAM implementation work has been completed, the engagement focus shifts to running and refining the ongoing service to meet evolving SAM requirements. This includes monthly reporting and reviews, quarterly stakeholder meetings, SAM tool reporting, updates and maintenance, new contract uploading, and entitlement mapping. Obtaining accurate, reliable, and trusted data from the SAM tooling is critical throughout as this is the mechanism that feeds the ongoing advisory element of this phase.
Phase 5
Advisory: Software Asset Lifecycle Management
Once set-up is complete, we monitor usage against entitlements and adjust systems accordingly. The Invictus Partners SAM Advisory Service goes above and beyond the monthly operational aspects of running your SAM function and includes identifying additional areas for software optimisation, providing ongoing software licence audit defence support, and providing enterprise software advisory in areas including cloud migration, Third-Party Support migration, and next-generation ERP transformation.
Which SAM-as-a-Service delivery model is right for you?
Invictus Partners SAMaaS is adaptable to your organisation’s needs. We can give you a little or a lot, via our three modes of engagement:
Staff Augmentation
For organisations that need to supplement their own SAM resources with specialist skills. If deep licensing expertise is needed in a particular area to bolster in-house capabilities this model can work well.
Fully Outsourced
For organisations that don’t have a dedicated SAM team and don’t care to have a dedicated SAM team. Invictus Partners can run the whole SAM function, including managing all your software contracts and compliance and all of the necessary SAM tools, enabling in-house IT resources to stay focused on value-creating projects.
Hybrid Model
For organisations with some SAM capability in-house but who want to outsource particular SAM functions. Invictus Partners can provide ongoing expert advisory to your in-house team. We work with key stakeholders to ensure the necessary levels of skills, rigor, and discipline are in place for an ongoing best-practice SAM program.
Whichever model you choose, the service is delivered by our highly skilled and experienced SAM experts to enable scalability and enhance SAM maturity, while delivering day-to-day SAM activities across the SAM lifecycle.
Vendors we manage:
- SAP
- Oracle
- IBM
- Microsoft
- Citrix
- Red Hat
- VMware
- Adobe
- Informatica
- Salesforce
- Workday
- Autodesk
- ServiceNow
- Infor
- ServiceNow
- Flexera
- Aspera
- VOQUZ
- Snow Software
- Vendor-specific tools
- Other SAM tools
- Resource augmentation
- Fully outsourced
- Hybrid model
Download our SAM Services datasheet
The Invictus Partners difference: Software Asset Management Service Provider of SAM Managed Services
As a specialist enterprise software advisory firm, Invictus Partners delivers SAM-related consultancy and managed services based on people, process, and governance, independent of tools. Invictus Partners has expertise across all the major SAM tools and deep knowledge of the software industry including the products, licensing structures, and compliance processes of the major software vendors (SAP, Oracle, IBM, Microsoft, and others).
The Invictus Partners team comprises of senior executives from various software vendors, experienced SAM professionals, and enterprise software licensing consultants who have many decades of combined experience, including delivering SAM solutions, utilising a range of different SAM tools to manage extensive software portfolios including a mix of on-premise, SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS.
To ensure a successful SAM engagement, Invictus Partners adopts a highly collaborative approach supported by research, facts, and open and honest communication. Invictus Partners views its role as an independent and objective advocate for its clients when dealing with software vendors.
Talk to a
SAMaaS expert
Doug Gibson
Managing Partner
Doug is a 29+ year international IT veteran, having worked in executive and general manager roles with organisations including SAP, Oracle, and IBM across A/NZ, Asia Pacific, and Africa. Doug’s intimate knowledge of software vendors, licensing and auditing practice has enabled him to successfully assist clients in retail, manufacturing, utilities, the public sector, and financial services to achieve positive outcomes in their audits, along with assisting them during software contract negotiations. Heading up the team and the company, Doug embodies the relevant skills and mindset to grow this company into a worldwide organisation.
Talk to a
SAMaaS expert
Katherine Xu
SAM Delivery Lead
Katherine is a 20+ year veteran of the IT industry, holding numerous SAM and licence compliance roles on both client and vendor side. Katherine is adept at re-aligning existing ITAM business processes with best-practice frameworks based on the SAM/HAM/cloud asset lifecycle. Katherine’s background in software commercials, compliance and management brings significant value and thought leadership to the Invictus Partners team and our clients across managed services engagements, from full SAM-as-a-Service to single-vendor licence managed services for IBM and SAP.
Case Study
NSW Land Registry realises software savings with Invictus Partners SAMaaS
