7 ways to get the most out of your SAM

Launching and running a Software Asset Management programme can be a daunting prospect.  Follow these top tips to make sure yours is a success.

1)      Get buy-in from senior management

Before launching a Software Asset Management programme, make sure you get buy-in from the Board.   This shouldn’t be difficult once you’ve explained the benefits that Software Asset Management can bring (such as increased efficiencies, cost savings and compliance) but it is an essential step in creating a successful programme given that it will involve every software user across the organisation.

2)      Set your goals

Setting business goals is essential to the success of a Software Asset Management programme.  They will help measure your success at various points along the line, keeping you on track and focussed.

3)      Break down into phases

Embarking on a Software Asset Management programme can seem like a mountain; difficult to climb and full of impossible obstacles.  Breaking down the project into specific phases will help it seem like a less daunting task and give satisfaction to all involved when each phase is completed.  This will help you build towards your ultimate end goal. 

4)      Select appropriate Software Asset Management tools and providers

There are various Software Asset Management tools on the market which can significantly help facilitate and drive your Software Asset Management programme.  These tools can make Software Asset Management a much less manual and time-consuming task.   For most programmes, there is a need for several tools to be implemented, including asset inventory tools and licence management tools.  When choosing a Software Asset Management specialist to help with your programme, ensure that they can provide the correct tools for your business, rather than you trying to fit your needs to their unsuitable tool. 

5)      On-going Management

After the initial implementation of your Software Asset Management plan, you need to develop an on-going management plan.  From its initial purchase to its retirement, every aspect of each piece of software should be managed and recorded as part of a good Software Asset Management programme.   You also need to create policies and procedures for effective deployment of software plus training programmes for certain pieces of software to help staff get the most out of their tools. 

6)      Check the authenticity of new software

Make sure you only buy software from reputable providers and resellers in order to avoid buying counterfeit products. 

7)      Share your success

Promote your achievements so that the entire company knows about your Software Asset Management successes. Sharing your triumphs with other departments and levels of the organisation will not only ensure you get a pat on the back for all your hard work, but make sure you receive on-going support and confidence in your Software Asset Management programme.

Written by License Dashboard

Brain doesn’t need vision at all in order to ‘read’ material, report Hebrew University, French researchers

The portion of the brain responsible for visual reading doesn't require vision at all, according to a new study by researchers from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and France. Brain imaging studies of blind people as they read words in Braille show activity in precisely the same part of the brain that lights up when sighted readers read. The findings challenge the textbook notion that the brain is divided up into regions that are specialized for processing information coming in via one sense or another, the researchers say. ''The brain is not a sensory machine, although it often looks like one; it is a task machine,'' said Dr. Amir Amedi of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, head of the team of researchers whose work on the topic is reported in the latest issue of Current Biology. ''A particular area fulfills a unique function, in this case reading, regardless of sensory input modality,'' he said. Amedi is affiliated with the Institute for Medical Research Israel-Canada and the Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Brain Sciences in the Faculty of Medicine at the Hebrew University. Unlike other tasks that the brain performs, reading is a recent invention, about 5,400 years old. Braille has been in use for less than 200 years. ''That's not enough time for evolution to have shaped a brain-module dedicated to reading,'' Amedi explained. Nevertheless, brain scans have shown that a very specific part of the brain, known as the Visual Word Form Area or VWFA for short (first discovered in sighted people by Dr. Laurent Cohen of Paris, a co-author of the current article), has been co-opted for this purpose. But no one knew what might happen in the brains of blind people who learn to read despite the fact that they've had no visual experience at all. In the new study, Amedi's team, which included his doctoral student Lior Reich, used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure the neural activity in eight people who had been blind since birth while they read Braille words or nonsense Braille. If the brain were organized around processing sensory information, one might expect that Braille reading would depend on regions dedicated to processing tactile information, Amedi explained. If instead the brain is task-oriented, you'd expect to find the peak of activity across the entire brain in the VWFA, right where it occurs in sighted readers, and that is exactly what the researchers saw. Further comparison of brain activity in the blind and sighted readers showed that the patterns in the VWFA were indistinguishable between the two. ''The main functional properties of the VWFA as identified in sighted are present as well in the blind, and are thus independent of the sensory-modality of reading, and even more surprisingly do not require any visual experience,'' the researchers wrote. ''To the best of our judgment, this provides the strongest support so far for the metamodal theory of brain function,'' which suggests that brain regions are defined by the computations they perform. ''Hence, the VWFA should also be referred to as the tangible word-form area, or more generally as the (metamodal) word-form area.'' The researchers suggest that the VWFA is a multisensory integration area that binds simple features into more elaborate shape descriptions, making it ideal for the relatively new task of reading. ''Its specific anatomical location and strong connectivity to language areas enable it to bridge a high-level perceptual word representation and language-related components of reading,'' they said. ''It is therefore the most suitable region to be taken over during reading acquisition, even when reading is acquired via touch without prior visual experience.'' Amedi said he and his research associates plan to examine brain activity as people learn to read Braille for the first time in order to find out how rapidly this takeover happens. “What we want to find out is: how does the brain change to process information in words and is it instantaneous?''

Hebrew University Professor First Israeli to Be Appointed to European Scientific Council

Prof. Danny Dolev of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem is one of seven new members appointed by the European Commission to the Scientific Council, the governing body of the European Research Council (ERC). He is the first Israeli to serve on the council, which is composed of 22 distinguished scientists and scholars. 



The Hebrew University consistently ranks among the top recipients of European Research Council grants, along with Oxford and Cambridge universities in Britain. 

Prof. Dolev holds the Berthold Badler Chair in Computer Science at the Benin School of Computer Science and Engineering at the Faculty of Science at the Hebrew University. He is the chairman of the Authority for Computation, Communication and Information at the Hebrew University and has been the chairman of the National Committee for Information Technology and Infrastructure of Israel, as well as chairman of the Israel Inter-University Communication Center. He co-authored with Knesset Member Michael Eitan the position document on Israel’s readiness to the information era. 

The European Research Council (ERC) is the first pan-European funding organization of its kind. It aims to stimulate scientific excellence in Europe by encouraging competition for funding between the best creative researchers of any nationality and age. The Scientific Council, the ERC's governing body, defines the scientific funding strategy and methodologies and acts on behalf of the scientific community in Europe to promote creativity and innovative research.