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Perplexity AIThe role of a Software Asset Manager can be lonely. As a relatively unknown sector of the organization, and usually working in small teams, they’re responsible for the mammoth task of tracking, managing, and optimizing all software assets used across the organization. IT environments evolve more and more rapidly in the digital age, but SAM managers are faced with a handful of timeless challenges:
- Audits and License Compliance – Managing the complexity of license rules and metrics to stay compliant and avoid audit penalties.
- Cost Reduction – Decrease software spend where possible by removing redundant software, limiting unneeded installations, and avoiding financial penalites.
- Inventory – Discovering and Inventorying all hardware, software, and users in the cloud and on-prem across the organization.
- Shadow IT – Controlling unauthorized, unmanaged and risky applications from proliferating, particularly in remote work environments.
Xensam’s SAM platform was designed with these challenges in mind, with advanced functionality to address these needs.
Total Visibility
Trying to normalize applications on data from LANDesk, SCCM or any other data source doesn’t provide good enough data. Companies without a SAM platform to inventory their data miss applications, version, and editions of their applications. Legacy solutions offer better visibility, but many still miss SaaS applications, and offer limited vendor support. Xensam’s advanced AI-powered software normalization delivers total software visibility to help you manage vendors and applications, Web Apps (SaaS and IaaS), Data Centers, virtualization, remote applications, users, and hardware. Our industry-leading library recognizes over 490,000 applications in total, and more than 90,000 SaaS applications. It’s a single source of software truth, eliminating the need for alternative data sources that are not built for SAM inventory, and manual gathering of data. No additional modules are necessary to manage specific vendors like Oracle or engineering applications. Xensam’s visibility is broad-spectrum, and all-inclusive.
Cost Optimization
Xensam offers unique cost optimization capabilities with Active Usage Tracking. By tracking consumption down to the minute, you can look at all applications installed but unused to uncover redundancies and stop paying for software you don’t use. The second place to look for cost optimization is all applications with low Active Usage. These applications can be downgraded to cheaper licenses, offering further cost reduction. Active Usage Tracking will become even more critical as more SaaS vendors adopt consumption-based license metrics. Trustworthy usage data serves as a defence against software license audit penalties, enabling you to stay compliant without guesswork.
Our AI-Powered Mutli-Dimensional Trending functionality enables you to forecast cost savings into the future by offering trend anlyses per user, and per application for greater insight, and our Cost Center provides an overview of costs at a user, department, and organizational level.
Accessible Data
Data is useless if it’s not accessible. Most legacy SAM tools are complex and highly technical, with clunky dashboards and reporting systems that turn out incorrect data. This makes it difficult SAM managers to manage licenses accurately or control costs effectively. In contrast, Xensam’s platform comes with 271 pre-built Standard Reports, which you can easily share with anyone in your organization via email on a one-time or recurring basis. The platform also supports Custom Reports, so you can create your own combination report on the metrics that matter most to your unique organizational SAM needs.
Automation
Xensam’s software normalization is automated via our lightweight agent, collecting fresh data from your IT environment nightly to make sure your view is real-time and accurate. Default license metrics, upgrade and downgrade paths, and Maintenance/Software Assurance are included in our inventory resulting in automated license allocation. License auto-allocation extended covers complex SQL servers and Windows server in Data Centers. Our technology is always improving to deliver greater automation and time savings. The Integration Platform also supports automated notifications, and extensive integration with up to 5,000 other systems.
Simplicity
Xensam’s user-interface is unrivalled in it’s simplicity. A column-based system, it doesn’t hide any data in complex navigation bars or obscure dashboards. We collect data from multiple different sources, combining and presenting it in an easy-to-interpret user-interface that is customizable to fit your unique needs. This minimizes your manual workload. You don’t need complex training or certification to use Xensam’s simple solution. Deployment is straightforward and fast, with most rollouts taking place within 2 weeks for instant access to data. No backend software to install, update, maintain or support and all hosted securely in the cloud. Constantly evolving with improvements, new functionality and bug fixes are released seamlessly several times per month.
Responsive Support
The Support function can be accessed directly via our platform and response time is usually under 4 hours, with most issues being resolved within 24 hours. Our Support Technicians are highly skilled, easy to work with, and responsive. They also field custom development requests and specific feature support to make sure that you get the most from the platform.
Conclusion
Xensam was built for SAM managers who need more control, trustworthy data, advanced usage metrics, accessible data, and more automation. With features designed to benefit the end user, we deliver advanced software intelligence to any user, every user, and all use cases.