1E has been talking about ISO Standards in its SAM articles for some time now. But why has 1E embraced the ISO SAM Standard known as ISO/IEC 19770?
The answer is simple. 1E has always been about automating the software lifecycle for the digital business. While our readers know the software lifecycle entails everything from acquisition, request, delivery, management, reclaim and retirement, it is important to follow best practice standards when formulating the policies and approach to the software lifecycle. This is where ISO Standards come into play.
1E actively participates in ISO SAM. While other organizations also contribute, 1E has three people who dedicate significant time (and in turn, 1E contributing significant time) to creating, testing and fostering SAM Standards. The three include:
- Peter Beruk, who is secretary of the ISO SAM working group and was an active contributor to the ISO Process standard (19770-1), namely developing the Tiered approach to software asset management.
- Steve Klos, who is Project Editor of the software identification tag (19770-2). Now in its second iteration, software ID tags provide authoritative identifying information for installed software.
- Jason Keogh, who is project Editor of the software entitlement schema (19770-3). The soon to be published schema provides a technical definition of an XML schema that can encapsulate the details of software entitlements, including usage rights, limitations, and metrics.
So what do these have to do with 1E and our goal of automating the software lifecycle? We all know that managing software assets are a challenge. Every software vendor has its distinct way of licensing its technology – making effective management of those assets difficult. Even though (conceptually) it should be easy to know what is installed, and licensed, we all know it is not. Solving this challenge is where ISO Standards start to help.
For the software identification tag, vendors such as IBM, Microsoft, Symantec and others are embracing this standard that will result in their making available ‘tags’ that will provide authoritative information for installed software. What this means is that tools vendors (1E included) will no longer have to rely on their proprietary catalogs to identify software. Tools providers (1E AppClarity included) will, over time, rely on a central repository of these tags to authoritatively identify installed software – which will enable organizations to identify (correctly) installed software.
For the entitlement schema, like the software identification tag above, the entitlement schema will allow a software vendor to provide a schema that will provide an effective description of rights, limitations, and metrics associated with an organizations software license. Tools like 1E AppClarity will be able to consume these schemas that will enable accurate tracking of software entitlements.
Bottom Line: In both cases, 1E is supporting the ISO Standard as it will help automate the software lifecycle by bringing together software vendors and technology standards in a way that will benefit all organizations.
To learn more, please visit our AppClarity page to see how it is the fastest way to establish visibility into software usage, control application sprawl and reduce spend.
