#SoftwareAssetManagement SAM ITAM SoftwareLicensing

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Swimming With Crocodiles

When is a politician lying? When they open their mouth - enough about politics.

But what about marketing?  

If you listen to the marketing hype - probably the best lager in the world, or the Ultimate driving machine you would be led to believe that there is nothing else worth having, but the counter to that is if I don't like lager or rear wheel drive cars then there must be something as an alternative that is better suited to my requirements. 

When software marketing companies start telling you software that you purchased won't live up to expectations (and Gartner have an interesting statistic about this), are the marketing machines telling you that you were sh*t at selecting the tool you thought needed, or are they saying that they aren't being truthful?  And when the answer is "export it, do it in Excel and re-import it" - That's not automation! 

The so called "trough of disillusionment" can be applied to anything - new car when you find you only have one coffee cup holder.... 

When the marketing machine gets going is it the equivalent of the crocodile saying come and swim in my part of the river? Not many people in SAM made a career decision to go into SAM - I did, although it was partly by accident and I know one or two others that did the IT route into SAM, good technical backgrounds, in my case database development and management, network management and end-user computing, but still retaining a strong technical knowledge.  Since Y2K when the majority of tools first saw the light of day, the industry has exploded.   For many, the route into SAM has been through licensing / resellers, others are self-taught through being in the wrong place at the wrong time - there is going to be gaps in knowledge and it is the gaps in knowledge that you have to accept and remember to ask the "stupid questions". 

Consider the following when diving into SAM. 

If you are building a rocket in-house then you will need rocket scientists or outsource it. But how do you know they know their stuff if you don't?  Get help!

Secondly - don't believe the crocodiles who say it's safe to swim in their pond.

Get either wrong and you find yourself in the trough of disillusionment without a leg to stand on. 

If you are looking to recruit new people into your SAM team or selecting a toolset and need genuine independent advice please get in touch.