I came
across a question many times, what are the key positions in SAM during my
conversations with HR, clients and with senior management? Today, I would like
to briefly talk about role and positions in SAM.
When I joined SAM industry 10 years ago, there
were not a lot highly experienced Software Asset Management (SAM)
professionals. Very few companies have deployed SAM tools.
In the course of time, SAM industry has evolved,
and it's been turned out from "nice-to-have" to
"must-have". The management/ executives prospect towards SAM
investment has also changed from investment to cost optimization.
This was not just happened, the importance of
SAM programs has risen up because many things like increasing software audits
with negative outcomes, badly negotiated contracts in terms, overspending on
software licenses and maintenance etc. Now a day, companies want to gain
control on their software investment and reduce audit risk.
There could be many SA roles but mainly below
are the key positions:
Software Asset Manager: This position manages and priorities IT Asset
management projects and tasks base on business driver (cost saving, risk
mitigation, innovation)
License Analyst: Gathering data, license entitlements and compliance
positioning etc.
Contract Management Analyst: Primarily responsible for favorable terms and conditions.
better negotiations of support and maintenance etc.
SAM Technical Analyst: Primarily responsible to run and configure SAM tools
These are the main positions, however there
could be many more roles based on organization structure. The industry is
rapidly growing with lot of dynamic changes in licensing metrics and models. So,
demand of SAM professional will be risen up, the only thing is important to
have being SAM professional you always need to update the skills and follow the
trend of IT to be in race.
