Avoid headaches and wasteful spend by proactively managing your software assets. By leveraging asset management services, you are positioned to have a complete understanding of all your subscriptions and their support options. Companies that deploy software asset and support contract management services reduce their costs, reduce their risks and are better prepared to avoid fines and true-up costs from a software vendor audit.
Don’t ignore your Open Source Software (OSS). Most IT environments are a blend of proprietary enterprise software, commercial open source based software and community open source software. Treat all these assets equally in the proactive management of their life-cycle.
Proprietary Enterprise Software
e.g. Microsoft, Oracle, VMware – The “Traditional” software that comes with License Fees, Subscription Fees and Support Fees
Support options – Licensing/subscriptions and support are largely restricted for proprietary software products.
- The offerings from the original software vendor may be your only option
- There are some exceptions such as HPE offers VMware support and subscriptions – HPE can also offer VMware multi-year ELAs
Action – Deploy asset tracking services and manage these licenses, subscriptions and support renewals.
Commercial Open Source Software
e.g. Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), SUSE Enterprise Linux (SLES), Ubuntu Advantage – These packaged distributions usually have Subscription Fees and Support Fees
Support options – The choices are broader and more competitive than with proprietary software.
- The original software vendor is an option, but not the only option
- Commercial third-party subscription and support with 24×7 or 9×5 unlimited phone support, guaranteed response and a choice of service level is also available
- Self-support is possible with all source code being readily available.
Action – Deploy asset tracking services and manage these renewals.
Community Open Source Software
e.g. Apache, Python, Kubernetes – Collectively developed and distributed, this software is largely self-supported.In mission critical cases in can be covered by a third-party support contract.
Support options – Self-support or competitive third-party support from multiple sources are available.
- Self-support by your staff leveraging the community and open access to the source code and many free online resources.
- No support renewals, you maintain your in-house skills and manage all risk mitigation.
Action – Deploy asset tracking for the self-supported assets in your environment.Track your installed versions.Track your software to its parent machine or parent VM workload.
- Subscribe for support with your Open Source project’s developer or with your systems integrator that deployed your software.
- With paid support renewals, your developer or integrator provides a specialist with the necessary skills. Potentially many parties become involved across many OSS platforms complicating risk mitigation.Support delivery is likely to be from multiple sources and usually is best effort or ad-hoc in nature.
Action – Deploy asset tracking and renewal management.
- Sign up for commercial third-party support with 24×7 or 9×5 unlimited phone support, guaranteed response and service level choices.Gain enterprise class support and response times, with risk mitigated to the highest degree.
- Paid support renewals from an enterprise level support provider offer a custom level of support across multiple OSS products.Reduce your needs for in-house skills while also reducing your exposure to self-risk mitigation.
- With the accelerated adoption of Open Source Software, our customers are finding value in our end-to-end enterprise class support offerings for their OSS environment.
IT Partners can provide you with enterprise class OSS support offerings featuring:
- Enterprise level support – unlimited level 1, 2 and 3 coverage
- Seamless collaboration on multi-vendor products from a single source provider
- Unlimited support incidents
- 24×7, 9×5 or custom support coverage options
- Fast response
- Vendor agnostic support
- Competitive pricing
- Includes both break/fix along with proactive “how to” advisory and architectural support
Action – Deploy asset tracking services and manage these renewals.
IT Partners Contrax Asset Management and Support Contract Services
Please contact us and ask how we can help you comprehensively manage all your software assets with our Contrax asset and support contract management services.
