To centralize or not to centralize?

Once I was attending a Software Asset Management Fair in The Netherlands. I attended several different sessions organized by different Service Providers.

In two consecutive sessions I got some contradictory information. In one session the Service Provider mentioned it was key to decentralize Software Asset Management as much as possible. In the following session the Service Provider made it clear to centralize as much as possible. At that point I realized that Software Asset Management had not reached the maturity of ITIL yet.

Working for mainly Fortune 500 companies with many Operating Companies underneath, I think it is best to work with a combination of the two. I will tell you why I think so.

When a large company has different Operating Companies, in a lot of occasions the governing company does not have insight in the details of these Operating Companies. Software Asset Management Tooling could help, but if not properly filled, this will result in an overview of what has been discovered, and sometimes how it is utilized. That is nice to have, but does it show the locally bought Software Assets? Does it identify software used in a laboratory which was equipped with the software off the shelve? It might, but usually it does not. Most likely tooling will not be able to identify what is Production and Non-production either.

For a lot of coordinators in Global, data from tooling is just what it is… data! When speaking to the technical teams in the Operating Companies however, they are able to make Information of this data. They are often aware of those locally bought software packages and whether it is for Production or Non-Production. They are usually also aware of the requirements in the foreseeable future. Hence, it important to use this kind of decentralized approach.

At Global however, they usually know in what Operating Companies the different software packages are used. By combining the data from different Operating Companies, they could help getting best out of the volume discounts. They could also help identify situations in which software can be moved from Operating Companies where the software is decommissioned, to Operating Companies where there is demand.

With a good alignment with decentralized teams, providing reliable information and advice to the  centralized (Global) team, data becomes information at both sides of the spectrum.

So when you ask me if a large company should go for a decentralized or a centralized approach, I would say, go for both with a proper government plan! Part of that plan is to share knowledge between Global and Operating Companies both ways.