ISO 19770-1 SAM Standard

The requirement for the management of software assets (ISO 19770-1 standard) first emerged in the late 1980’s when major vendors became aware that the license agreements for the usage of their products were being breached.

The creation of the Federation Against Software Theft (FAST) and the Business Software Alliance (BSA) plus some high profile court cases and associated settlements raised the importance and associated risks of not adhering to licence agreements.

Until recently the whole matter was very much centred on audit and compliance and for most businesses absorbed a lot of time for little reward outside of being legal in their use of software assets.

However, the creation of the ‘Best Practice for Software Asset Management’ guideline as part of the ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library) gave organisations a real and workable structure to adopt for SAM and, for the first time, recognised SAM as a meaningful management discipline. The guideline escalates SAM from being considered an issue peculiar to the domain of an organisation’s IT team to one that embraces nearly every part of the business and its managers.

As ITIL is the fastest growing IT service delivery methodology and Software Asset Management (SAM) is a fundamental part of it, the requirement to create a world class standard for SAM became both obvious and logical.

The ISO 19770-1 standard will recognise any organisation that achieves accreditation as one that tasks its operational efficiency, risk management and customer (internal and external) satisfaction very seriously and has created an environment where these issues are effectively managed.

The ISO 19770-1 SAM standard will put the importance of managing valuable software assets on the world stage and SAMpartners who were contributors to the creation of the standard are working with early adopters to help them enjoy the many benefits of it.

An extract of the standard can be found at www.investorsinsoftware.com