iQuate, the leading IT inventory and discovery specialist unveils Mediro ICT as its latest partner. Focusing on the South African market, Mediro ICT is a fast growing specialist provider of niche focused IT services and solutions.

Mediro Business Service Management will use iQSonar – iQuate’s automated agentless inventory and discovery technology – in a range of innovative solutions designed to meet the growing demand amongst South African business for ensuring software license compliance.

“We have seen the main enterprise software vendors such as Microsoft and Oracle increase their audit activity in South Africa in recent years”, comments Neil Richardson, Managing Director Mediro Business Service Management, “and this, along with imminent legislation, has seen large enterprise software customers take this more seriously as they realise that the cost of not doing so is likely to result in significant, unbudgeted costs.  iQSonar, combined with our team of experts, provide the accuracy and clarity that customers need to finally get control of their software licensing”.

“Partnering is a critical part of iQuate’s business strategy – but only with the right partners.” adds Pat Durkin, EVP International, iQuate,” Mediro are a perfect fit for iQuate as their team can offer a full, locally–based solution that delivers the highest levels of technical, project and subject matter support. I look forward to working with Mediro to deliver world-class solutions to the South African market.”

For more information on Mediro, click here 

Software Asset Management tools  (such as HP Asset Manager, IBM TAMIT, and various tools from Flexera, Snow, CA, BMC, etc.) generally try to encapsulate processes – some have a wider scope than others and all have various strengths and weaknesses, different areas of focus, etc.

Software Asset Management goes well beyond License Management and compliance and encompasses everything from asset acquisition (procurement) through to asset disposal (retirement). However License Management is a key focus of SAM at the moment because it provides real benefits to the organization, including:

• Cost savings (in the form of license optimization)
• Reduced risks associated with vendor audits, whether it be before, during or after the audit process
• Accurate information relevant to regulatory compliance

License Management depends on two key inputs – entitlement information (What have I bought, what licenses do I HAVE?) and deployment information (What is out there, what licenses do I NEED?).

Software deployed on servers in the data center make up the majority of your total software spend (depending on industry specifics mid to large size enterprises typically spend 70-80% of their software budget on big ticket items from Oracle, IBM, Microsoft, SAP, etc.). This same software often has license metrics which are based on intangible and difficult to ascertain data points – for example:

• Low level CPU data relating to cores and hyper-threading
• Virtual server configuration (CPU and memory pool allocations, pinning, etc.)
• Clustering (at application or OS level, Veritas Clusters, Windows Clusters, RAC Clusters, etc.)
• Application specific configuration (Oracle database option usage, WebLogic components, WebSphere JDBC connections, etc.)

“SAM Solutions” fail to deliver this level of detail about the environment. The “Discovery” elements of these product sets simply don’t get to the level of detail required. It is irrelevant how big a solution’s “library” or “catalogue” is – it cannot provide the really important information that actually determines if licenses are required or not – e.g. If Partitioning is in use within a given Oracle Enterprise Edition database and if it has been configured in such a way that impacts licensing or which servers are in what clusters and what resources are being maintained by those clusters, etc..

Now that really is a problem! That is something that needs a solution and iQSonar is that solution. iQSonar is focused specifically on gathering the low level details required to ascertain license details for enterprise level datacenter focused products from vendors such as Oracle, IBM, Microsoft, Symantec, VMware, etc. We focus on gathering the low level details required to support complete and accurate identification of license requirements in complex environments.

iQuate won’t sell you a “SAM solution” – as I said SAM is a process, not a problem. iQSonar enables accurate SAM by providing a real solution to the real problem – not knowing what you have deployed and  where it is deployed in sufficient detail to ascertain your assets and liabilities. This in turn can plug into pretty much any pre-existing “SAM solution” – it’s likely that whatever tools you already have in place are sufficient for the job of maintaining an accurate asset register and compliance position, they’re just missing the details of what is out there that they need to do an effective job.

Many tasks go into delivering a successful SAM project, but they should not be left solely to the SAM Project Team. Others in the organization are also critical in having useful input to the project.

So who else should be involved in a SAM project and what might they contribute?

Procurement & Legal
This is the primary source for entitlement records.  These teams will have records of all purchases and more importantly the contract details.  This is particularly useful when there are no electronic records, complex ULAs or older and non-standard contracts.

Accounts
This team will have records of the annual support that is being paid. These could provide clues on entitlement and what is still valid.  They will also have details of the support paid per vendor and this simple fact can be quite valuable in establishing the priority for what should be audited.  In addition, the Accounts team will also be able to drive license consolidation and SAM process improvement by having the details of all license purchases. All of this information will be important, but it may not be pretty!

Department Heads
The managers of the various divisions will be able to tell you what systems they use, what might interface to them and the total number of employees.  They should also be able to tell you how many are using a particular application or system at any one time and how critical that is to them operationally. This will assist in establishing a concurrent user metric, a measure of multiplexing and where double counting might be occurring.

IT Services & Service Desk
These teams should be able to assist in telling you what the IT estate is by providing details of numbers of servers, cores, virtual and physical servers, etc.  Where change management and a CMDB is maintained they should also have deployment details.  This information will give you an indication of actual usage. If the people supporting users of the IT estate do not know what is being used, you are unlikely to find it anywhere else in your organization.

There are likely to be other teams who can help in a SAM project – IT security, capacity management, outsourcers and even vendors.  The important thing is to get assistance from all stakeholders to ensure your project findings are based on the most comprehensive set of information available.

How Accurate Inventory puts you back in control

In this webinar, iQuate CTO Jason Keogh, will demonstrate how accurate inventory puts IT organizationsback in control. Having a readily available source of accurate inventory data allows you to really discover what is being used and by whom. This understanding will finally give you the ability to optimize your IT assets while saving costs and reducing risks.

Click here to view

To find out more about Jason and the reason why iQuate was formed and our plans for the future, listen to the interview by clicking here.

There are two key words when it comes to identifying the reality of both deployment and entitlement – these are completeness and accuracy. If you lack either element, you’re not dealing with all of the data you need to understand your actual position.

However, 100% is a very high target to hit. If you’re starting down the road of implementing Software Asset Management – where do you start?

I get asked this question all the time. Here is my general take on the answer:

First understand where your spend is, by vendor and by product. Compare that with where you think your largest risk is (in terms of vendor audit). That should give you the list of vendors and technologies you need to get a handle on in order of priority (high risk and high cost, followed by medium risk, high cost, etc.).  Then you need to understand the license metrics involved for each of those “key” products.

You will also need to identify your contracts and proof of purchases, in other words, identify your entitlements.

The last step is to choose a tool which can help you identify your deployment. When considering what type of data you require (which is dictated by identifying the metrics you need for your key software list) , virtual to physical machine mapping  is critical for many high cost applications. e.g. it is important for different aspects of Oracle, IBM and Microsoft (server) licensing. If you have multiple platforms, ensure your tool of choice covers all of them, if you have Oracle database, DB2, MS SQL Server, WebLogic, WebSphere, etc. on your list – make sure you can get the details required for the license metrics for options, packs, modules, etc.

To state the (hopefully!) obvious, iQSonar covers all of the items I mentioned above. It is aimed at large enterprise and handles complex networks well. No tool can give you 100%, no tool can just “do” SAM. You need to devise sensible processes and a step by step approach that allows you to ensure your company is optimizing (reducing!) spend while tackling high risk areas. iQSonar can provide you with low-level measurement of difficult to find metrics from many of the key software spends in your organization.

iQuate, the leading IT inventory and discovery specialist has announced further key appointments to drive its global expansion plans.

Doug Ehrenreich joins iQuate as VP Business Development.  Based in San Francisco, Doug will be spearheading sales and market development efforts in North America and will be a key member of the iQuate executive team.  Prior to iQuate, Doug held a variety of roles at Sun and Kabira Technologies.

iQuate has also established an office in Brazil headed up by experienced local IT executive Luciano Dolenc. Luciano has held senior management and sales roles in organizations such as Intergraph, Sun, SCO, Peregrine and Unica and is tasked with establishing iQuate’s presence in Brazil and other key South American markets.

 “I am thrilled to welcome experienced people into the expanding iQuate team” says Paul Sutton, iQuate CEO,” Doug brings a wealth of really relevant experience and his success at Kabira in introducing a product into complex enterprise markets is invaluable to the future success of iQuate and I am confident that, given Luciano’s experience, we will enjoy great success in South America.”

For more information on Doug, visit www.iquate.com/company/leadership

iQuate will be sponsoring the Gartner Symposium & ITxpo in both Orlando, Florida and Barcelona, Spain this year. See www.iquate.com/events for more information.

Learn how iQSonar helps you get control of your Oracle licensing.

Click here to view

The ever constant theme we have discovered over the last 3 years is that Oracle licensing is complex – and Oracle customers know that. They may not understand it, but they know that they do not understand it.

This complexity is common to most enterprise software publishers and certainly isn’t unique to Oracle.  As customers change the way they use technology and as new technology is invented (virtualization, cloud, etc.), publishers change their metrics to keep up. Most of us remember the challenge of companies exposing previously internal applications to the web when they were on a user-based license metric.  Vendors tried to apply these metrics to the new world order and just ended up with a lot of bad publicity and not much success.  At least those days are gone.

I was once again struck by how seriously the Oracle customers I spoke to at OpenWorld really wanted to get this right. They do not set out to deliberately under license their software and the vast majority really try hard to their licensing accurate. Unfortunately most fail.

iQuate helps customers cut through this complexity to provide the deployment details required to enable Oracle customers to ensure their licensing Oracle  database and middleware products correctly.  We do this by providing the facts they need to get control. Once they get their licenses sorted, iQSonar provides the on-going control they need to continue to manage their Oracle (and other vendors) licenses moving forwards.

iQuate, the leading IT inventory and discovery specialist has announced the creation of its Asia Pacific operation.

Based in Sydney, Australia the operation is headed up by experienced Australian IT executive and entrepreneur, Ian Buddery who brings a wealth of practical and relevant experience to the company.

“iQuate helps large companies do what they thought was impossible – get control of their complex software implementations”, comments Ian Buddery, iQuate VP Asia Pacific. “This is a global problem and not restricted to just one industry sector or geography, so I am delighted to lead iQuate as it establishes itself in Asia Pacific – the home of many large global enterprise IT users”

“I am thrilled to welcome someone as experienced as Ian into the expanding iQuate team” says Paul Sutton, iQuate CEO, “Ian’s technical background, executive-level software industry experience and knowledge of international markets is a significant asset to iQuate as we establish ourselves in this region – a critical market for all globally-focused technology companies .“

For more information on Ian, visit www.iquate.com/company/leadership

iQuate is once again exhibiting at Oracle OpenWorld in San Francisco. See www.iquate.com/events for more information.