On 13 December, we organised the Software Asset Management (SAM) theme session. This time we were guests of Royal Boskalis in Papendrecht.

The reason for the SAM theme session was the outcome of our supplier satisfaction survey, in which we found that many of our members are not satisfied with the licensing and contract models used by software and hardware suppliers. We experience a lot of rigidity in contracts and little transparency in licensing models which often leads to compliancy issues that need to be resolved between the supply and demand sides in the market.

So how do you arm yourself against incompliancy and what silver bullet can help you do so? ‘At least make sure you have your SAM in order!’ was the message from some of the presentations. Many of our members are in the process of setting up and implementing SAM. During this session, experiences were shared and we looked for the ‘silver bullet’. Is there one ‘all-in-one’ tool that can help us? Whatever SAM tool vendors may claim, their ‘all-in-one’ tools cannot alone provide the solution for organisations. It seems that many large software vendors adapt their licensing models to increase the risk of ‘incompliancy’ of customer organisations because it is part of their revenue model. This was once again evident at the last presentation where, vis-à-vis one major software vendor, we were presented with the ‘pittfalls’ in detail and given an insight into the complexity of this vendor's licensing model.

The SAM theme session provided our members with insights into the design and approach of SAM and the conclusion that there is no silver SAM bullet available. This proves once again that knowledge sharing between demand-side organisations can drastically reduce compliance risks. It is not for nothing that we have drawn up a Code of Conductcalling for more transparency and flexibility in licensing, contract models and the relationship. We challenge software and hardware vendors to provide their feedback on this Code of Conduct and engage in dialogue with us.