· North West Ambulance Service (NWAS) implements ongoing Software Asset Management (SAM) with Trustmarque’s Snow Hosted Managed Service
· NWAS now has the opportunity to re-harvest any unused licences, avoiding un-necessary future purchases
York, UK: 4th January 2011. Value Added Reseller (VAR) Trustmarque Solutions announced today that it has created an effective licence position (ELP) for NWAS for four major vendors using a Snow Hosted Managed Service.
As a result, NWAS can now accurately obtain the licensing position of all its installed software. The hosted service has enabled the Trust to monitor its entire estate across Cheshire & Mersey, Lancashire, Cumbria and Greater Manchester Areas. Commenting on the implementation, Kate Cushion, IT Security Manager at NWAS said:
“Since deploying Snow Inventory via the Hosted Managed Service the North West Ambulance service is now aware of the licensing position of four major vendors and we are working towards that same knowledge for all vendors that are in use within NWAS. Moving forward, using Snow is continuing to help NWAS to proactively manage our licensing due to ease of use and the metering data it provides.”
The Licence Management element of Snow is exceptional compared to that of many other software asset tools, many of which merely act as “sniffers” providing meaningless licence information that can be a nightmare to manage. Trustmarque’s Snow specialist consultant, however, has provided training, knowledge transfer and a policy and procedure review to enable NWAS to continue using Snow, ensuring ongoing software compliancy.”
Since implementing Snow, NWAS has a better understanding of how software is being used by the Trust and it can make informed decisions when reviewing software licensing budgets. NWAS now has the opportunity to re-harvest any unused licences and avoid unnecessary purchases, and can remain confident that it is software licence compliant should it face a vendor audit.
Formed in 2006 by combining a number of smaller NHS ambulance services, the NWAS NHS Trust serves the Greater Manchester, Cheshire & Mersey and Cumbria & Lancashire areas making it the largest NHS Ambulance Service in England.
However, merging these NHS trusts from across a large area left the NWAS with a problem; it lacked a comprehensive view or adequate control over the software licensing systems for the whole NHS trust. Whilst a Software Asset Management (SAM) tool was in place, NWAS found that it was failing to meet its requirements for both asset discovery and metering of applications. Alongside this, the tool was not proving to be user friendly which was compounded by a lack of support from the tool’s suppliers.
NWAS required a Software Asset Management tool which could effectively discover, monitor and report on the Trust’s software use across a wide number of systems. NWAS approached Trustmarque and based on Trustmarque’s expertise in the Snow Software Inventory Tool, the decision was made to implement this software and host it off site at Trustmarque’s York data centre.
Initially NWAS chose to analyse four vendors and Trustmarque then produced the Effective Licence Position (ELP) for each vendor. Trustmarque advised on how this compliance view was achieved and in addition gave recommendations on how to avoid the situation recurring. The Training and ongoing support provided by Trustmarque has enabled staff to get the most from the new SAM tool. During the SAM review the licensing agreements for the NHS in England changed and Trustmarque will be working with NWAS to help it understand its new position and what is required moving forward.
David Marriott-Lodge, Services and Solutions Director at Trustmarque comments, “It’s fantastic to see a public sector organisation investing in software asset management. Many organisations are still unsure of the value in SAM but it’s clear from this example that it can be extremely effective. With the added pressure of the recent spending review it’s vital that public sector organisations establish what software they are actually using and the licensing requirements of their vendors. There are many organisations who are paying large sums of money for licences they do not need.”
Earlier this year, Trustmarque gained a place on the government IT framework for Commoditised IT Hardware and Software (CITHS), previously known as Catalist. Trustmarque is one of just ten companies to be awarded a framework agreement for a position on the prestigious software supplier list with preferred adviser and provider status to both central (civil) government and the wider public sector.
The Trustmarque Work Smart Cost Savings Campaign was launched on 1st September 2010 and is geared towards helping public sector organisations drive out costs. For more information visit www.trustmarque.com/worksmart.
Trustmarque has been providing value added services to customers since it was founded in 1987 and is now one of the UK’s largest Value Added Resellers. Trustmarque brings together years of knowledge plus a strong track record of delivering successful IT enabled projects for customers that realise positive business outcomes. Trustmarque delivers solutions across six key areas: Business Solutions, Information Security, Infrastructure Services, Technology Optimisation Solutions, Managed Licence Services and Unified Communications.
Trustmarque is also a Microsoft Large Account Reseller (LAR) with Microsoft Gold Certified Partner status, as well as partnering with many other major vendors in the IT market, such as: Adobe, Business Objects, CA, Citrix, McAfee, Novell, Nuance, Sophos, Symantec, Trend, VMware and Websense to name but a few.
Trustmarque Solutions has worked with The CarbonNeutral Company (formerly Future Forests) leaders in the field of carbon management and climate change solutions to become a CarbonNeutral® company.
Source: C8 Consulting Ltd
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