What 2016 Holds for Businesses from a Software Management Standpoint

Software Asset Management Critical to Cybersecurity Initiatives and Automation to Managing Agile Development Cycles in 2016

Vincent Smyth, General Manager & Senior VP EMEA for Flexera Software, offers his insights into what 2016 holds for businesses as they grapple with more complexity in maintaining and securing their software estate.

• Windows 10 – Agile Dev Will Break Fragile Ops: Windows 10 has gone agile. Microsoft is now making more, smaller updates of its operating system, allowing enterprises to roll out enhancements to employees on an ongoing basis. Flexera Software predicts that enterprises will need to automate processes in order to accommodate the increased pressure on resources caused by the increase in frequency of application upgrades, patches and bug fixes that are accelerating due to agile development release cycles.

• Enterprises Will Need to Start Understanding the Risky Behaviours of Mobile Apps Hitting Their Networks: While many organisations plan on instituting policies that prohibit risky app behaviours, in practice most are not taking action to enforce those policies yet. In light of heightened security scrutiny facing organisations today – this situation will change over the next year. An organisation cannot enforce a policy until it has identified the type of behaviour constituting a threat, and the apps causing those threats.

• Software Asset Management Will Support CyberSecurity Efforts: According to a recent IDC report, the more unlicensed software running on an organisation’s network, the greater the malware risk. The SANS Institute’s Security Controls prioritise as its foundation an organisation’s ability to 1) inventory authorised and unauthorised hardware devices on the network, and 2) inventory authorised and unauthorised software on the network. Over the next 12-24 months more security teams will discover that software and hardware inventory data they desperately need is already being managed by their Software License Optimisation teams – and the two will work increasingly together – adding more value to the organisation and transforming their Software Asset Management capabilities.

• Enterprise Software Vendors Will ‘Go Freemium’: Apples’ App Store exponentially increased the market for consumer apps, and consequently their value to consumers and revenue for app producers. How? It perfected the try-and-buy, “freemium” model. Over the next 12-24 months we will see more traditional enterprise software developers offer “freemium” and “try-and-buy” versions of their software.

• Organisations’ Move to Subscription Software Will Accelerate: Flexera Software predicts that the shift away from perpetual (the traditional model) to subscription licensing will continue to accelerate. According a recent Flexera Software report, less than half of organisations (45%) say that the majority of their software estates use perpetual licenses. In 12-24 months, this percentage will go down to 36%. Almost a quarter (24%) of respondents says the majority of their software estate uses subscription licenses. In 12-24 months this percentage will rise to 26%.

• Software Vendors Will Continue to Audit Customers’ Software Use and Exact “True up” Penalties (And the Largest Organisations Will Be Targeted the Hardest): Software vendors will continue their aggressive practices of auditing their customers for software license compliance. A recent Flexera Software report indicated that 63% of respondents report having been audited in the last 18-24 months. Large companies are being targeted particularly heavily.

[su_box title=”Vincent Smyth, GM & Senior VP EMEA at Flexera Software” style=”noise” box_color=”#336588″]Vincent Smyth, is General Manager & Senior VP EMEA for Flexera Software. Flexera Software helps application producers and enterprises increase application usage and security, enhancing the value they derive from their software.  Our software licensing, compliance, cybersecurity and installation solutions are essential to ensure continuous licensing compliance, optimised software investments, and to future-proof businesses against the risks and costs of constantly changing technology.  A marketplace leader for more than 25 years, 80,000+ customers turn to Flexera Software as a trusted and neutral source of knowledge and expertise, and for the automation and intelligence designed into our products.[/su_box]