Why SaaS & IT Asset Management Are The Go-To-Models in IT Industry?

Technology is evolving at an almost lightning-fast speed today. Things that were almost a dream yesterday are turning into reality today and are also going beyond imagination at times. Digitalization is the main catalyst for this revolution worldwide.

With digitalization, managing IT assets – both hardware and software, has been gaining much attention, and this has become a common trend among businesses. Hence, the terms IT Asset Management and SaaS Management are becoming familiar to almost everyone.

But have you wondered why this sudden change in the trend? Or why IT asset management or SaaS management is gaining so much attention? Read on to discover why Saas and IT asset management are considered the go-to-market models in the IT industry.

What is SaaS?

If SaaS (Software as a service) has to be explained in a layman’s way, it can be referred to as the process of utilizing online applications via the internet. Meaning, in a SaaS model, you don’t need to install any software or worry about its maintenance process. You can simply access the software via the internet without even worrying about any hardware or software complexities.
Technically, SaaS can be explained as a software licensing and delivery model that utilizes the internet to deliver or use applications. SaaS could be of multiple types: web-based, on-demand, and hosted type. Clients using SaaS applications don’t require to download or install any application. Rather, clients can directly run the application through their web browsers.

Salesforce, Google Workspace, Dropbox, etc. are some of the most commonly known SaaS applications.  

Advantages of using SaaS

In today’s digitalized workspace, SaaS proves to be the most beneficial model for businesses. Since it doesn’t require any installation or maintenance cost, it proves to be highly cost-effective as well as an efficient software licensing and delivery model. Here are some of the most important advantages of SaaS:

• Low infrastructure and maintenance cost:

Yes, SaaS doesn’t require any installation or external hardware. Hence, businesses require a bare minimum of infrastructure and maintenance costs. This also makes SaaS an extremely cost-efficient model.

• Accessibility:

SaaS application doesn’t require any installation and can be accessed directly via the internet. Hence, they can be accessed from almost everywhere. While working directly from the workspace or going remote mode, SaaS applications can be accessed from any corner of the globe.

• Highly Scalable:

The SaaS model enables your business to adapt to all business requirements. Be it while your workforce grows or your workstation requires more machines, having a SaaS model would make you adaptive to all environments. Thus, the SaaS model helps your business grow more scalable.

• High Security:

Since you don’t have to install any external program and use the SaaS model directly via the internet, security always remains top-notch. Add to this, everyone within your network enjoys the same level of security.

• Auto Updates:

While you subscribe to SaaS services, you really don’t have to bother much about any future updates. All the updates are taken care of by the SaaS providers as per your needs and requirements.

What is IT Asset Management?

Before explaining IT Asset Management (ITAM), let’s understand what are IT assets. IT assets or information technology assets for an organization could be any piece of information, programs (software), or hardware. While software assets could be any program (free or paid) or information, hardware assets could be any physical assets like laptops, desktops, and other devices.

IT asset management (ITAM) is a set of business practices or processes that ensures efficient or proper utilization of an organization’s IT assets. IT asset management plays a crucial as well as an important role in every organization. It is solely accountable for the tracking, monitoring, deployment, maintenance, upgradation, and disposal of all IT assets within an organization.

Working of IT asset management process

Any IT asset management process works in three primary stages:

• Identification of Assets:

Inventory management comprises the primary function of this stage. Herein, a detailed IT inventory report gets created in order to identify all the IT assets and optimize them for better efficiency.

• Tracking of Assets:

This stage mainly focuses on monitoring and tracking all the IT assets based on their operational importance. For example, all the types of IT assets like financial, contractual, and inventory data assets are differentiated in this stage and monitored individually. 

• Maintenance of Assets:

Renewal, upgradation, and disposal of software licenses are required at regular intervals. These operations are mandatory in order to maintain equilibrium in the environment. This stage mainly focuses on all these operations to ensure all the IT assets are utilized and maintained properly.

Advantages of IT Asset Management

By now, you might have been aware of the benefits of having an IT asset management tool. Here are some of the additional benefits of having the ITAM tool that you must not miss out on:

• Centralized Data:

An organization can have multiple types of IT assets. Managing all these assets could be a tough challenge. However, having all of them placed in a centralized location would make it easier and more convenient to track them.

• Optimization of Assets:

An efficient ITAM tool always makes it easier to optimize all the IT assets in an organization. For example, with OpenLM’s ITAM services, organizations can easily track and monitor all their IT assets. This in return enables organizations to optimize all their IT assets and save millions every year.

• Stay Compliant:

Software compliance issues could become severe while working with third-party vendors. However, when all the IT assets are tracked and monitored timely, it becomes easy for organizations to stay compliant. 

• Better Business Decisions:

ITAM tools ensure better evaluation of all the IT assets. It also helps organizations with better purchase decisions and takes required actions on them.

Saas, IT Asset Management and OpenLM

OpenLM has been one of the globally trusted Saas and IT asset management service providers. OpenLM has been offering cloud-based Saas and ITAM services since 2008. Over the years, the organization has catered to around 1,000+ clients globally.

 

OpenLM Cloud Portal

The OpenLM Cloud Portal is a Platform as a Service model. Currently, the platform offers five different products:

• Software License Management Cloud Directory Sync:

Provides all the essential engineering software license tracking capabilities and reports you need. You can optimize your software inventory, helping you to stretch those expensive software licenses to their limit.

• Directory Sync:

OpenLM Directory Sync enables organizations to synchronize their OpenLM database with their primary directory service. Currently, this is possible for directories that use the LDAP protocol (e.g. Active Directory, ApacheDS, Novell eDirectory, Google Directory, Azure AD, and AWS directory).

• LDAP Connector:

The LDAP Connector enables software vendors to integrate an organization’s Active Directory or any other LDAP directory into their software.

• OneDirectorySync:

Manage only one directory, we will do the rest. The changes made in your organization’s primary directory will be automatically synced with all connected directories. Don’t lose control over your cloud services. Automatically remove stale accounts from the digital workspace.

• Virtual License Manager:

OpenLM creates a virtual layer on top of your physical license manager and allows you to bulk assign licenses to your organization’s various departments. You can select all products and their features, or just certain features, and automatically allocate licenses to all existing and new users of the selected department in an organization.

Why You Should Switch to OpenLM Cloud Today?

While talking about cloud services, security and safety are the first things that come to mind. Here are a few reasons why OpenLM Cloud is considered the most secure and safest for any organization:

It is hosted on a leading online server provider – AWS and it is maintained in a highly secured facility. 

• Data transmission is encrypted via SSL using 2048-bit certificates. Using the HTTS protocol, it makes the data transmission secure.
• Databases for all the customers are isolated. Data is encrypted at rest with AWS RDS Encryption. 
• OpenLM Software License Management Cloud (SLMC) is provided with Role-based in-application security. 
• For data regulatory compliance, OpenLM  SLMC provides options to customers for using region-specific hosting cloud instances.

 

Maintenance & Scalability with OpenLM

While the functionalities in both the versions OpenLM SLM and OpenLM SLMC are the same, the cloud version comes with additional advantages. 

1. It requires minimal on-network setup, and deployment on required components – broker and agents on the existing servers. 
2. The core application and the central components hosted on the cloud are fully maintained by the OpenLM team. 
3. Major and minor upgrades are served automatically. 
4. With the cloud version of OpenLM SLM, customers don’t need to procure and deploy any additional hardware or infrastructure for hosting any component of OpenLM. Hence, there is no requirement to maintain that additional hardware – Servers and their Operating Systems.

This helps in saving cost and effort in managing the Software License Management solution in the organization. 

Also, for growing businesses, organizations’ headcount increases and hence increases the requirement of different software and its monitoring. On-premise software license monitoring solution is less flexible to adapt to these sudden changes in the number of software licenses or applications to be monitored as the existing on-premise infrastructure of the SLM solution like the applications server, database has to be increased or modified. 

For such cases, OpenLM SLMC is the best solution which provides both scalability and ease of setup.