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I know the fact that MS has extended Windows 7 Professional downgrade rights is an old story now, but I haven’t seen too many blogs about it. I think it’s worth a quick post, particularly as it makes my last Windows 7 post is so out of date!
See here for a the low-down on the [...]

I thought I might do some thinking about what processes we need to implement to achieve good SAM, and I thought (just for fun!) that I would do this in the context of Critical Success Factors (CSFs)  and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). I’ve never expressly done this before, so if anyone feels they could improve [...]

I spotted a link to this webcast on LinkedIn – although a little long, I enjoyed it, particularly the IT Service Management oriented approach to SAM and Lifecycle Management.
http://www.absolute.com/resource_center/webcasts/gartner2010?aa=true

What’s NOT in the CLARET Report is just as important as what is in it, because there are many reasons why perfectly genuine entitlement isn’t listed in the CLARET.
FPP (Box) Product
Are licenses that are purchased ‘off the shelf’ – although it can be purchased from corporate resellers, it can also be purchased from retail outlets such [...]

I’ve recently been working intensively with Microsoft CLARET reports, so I thought I’d outline some of the lessons I’ve learned – often the hard way!
But please don’t consider this a definitive guide.
Microsoft CLARET reports are a tool that Microsoft has designed to display an organisation’s entitlement, including software assurance. The information in CLARET Reports is [...]

So as promised, here are my top tricks for effective management of support, maintenance and subscriptions. They are in no particular order!
Storage
Support, maintenance and subscriptions are all types of contracts. You should scan them in for your own reference and as a back-up, and send the originals for storage by the legal department in their [...]

Are you going to be surprised when I tell you that Support, Maintenance and Subscription arrangements have a lifecycle too? I didn’t think so!
New Agreements
Most of these agreements are entered into as an adjunct to the purchase of a piece of hardware or software, although subscription licenses are the actual license, but paid [...]

I hope everyone had a good Christmas and New Year! Mine was… interesting… to say the least, as I was visiting my brother’s in-laws in the South of Italy. Highlights of the stay included helping with the slaughtering of two pigs and processing the meat for salami and hams! Very cultural to say the least, [...]

As we’ve seen, software deployment and upgrade maintenance functions tend to follow the same set of processes. We’ve also seen that because software is just code that can be updated and changed easily over a long period of time, it has a much longer lifespan than hardware does generally.
But software will come to the end [...]

The software lifecycle is truly circular – unlike hardware which may be repaired only once or twice in its life, software will often go through many iterations of improvements (bug fixes, new functionality etc).
Most of the activities involved in the upgrade of existing software are exactly the same as those involved in creating and deploying [...]