Raiffeisenbank at the SAMS Europe Award 2017
The project for the effective management of software assets in Raiffeisenbank ranked third in the category "Software Solution" at the European competition SAMS Europe Award 2017 , which was held in Berlin. And yes, this is the first project from Russia, which won a prize, and in general was nominated for this international prize.
At the beginning of the year, we completed a large project and implemented Software Asset Management (SAM) in our bank. A complex software solution was built on the basis of HPE Asset Manager, and the integrator I-Teco implemented the project. I will not go too deep into the details of the project itself, it is described in detail in my previous post . I will tell you about how the SAMS Europe 2017 conference and the SAMS Europe Award 2017 project competition took place, how they differed from the Russian ones, how it turned out that our project was nominated, and why it took the place that it took.
The Software Asset Management SAMS Europe Conference and the SAMS Europe Award is held for the sixth time. Of course, I heard about the competition before, but I never thought that we could get there with our project. And we got, it can be said, thanks to a lucky coincidence. At the SAMday-2017 conference on software asset management held this spring in Moscow, one of the invited speakers besides me was Jochen Hagenlocher , winner of the SAMS Europe Award 2016. He gave a very interesting lecture on his project, its process implementation. Having talked with Jochen on the sidelines, I made one important thought for myself: our project is quite worthy, and nothing prevents us from taking the risk and nominating him. In June, we submitted an application for participation, were selected for the voting stage, and in September I went to Berlin for a conference.
')
The goal of SAMS Europe is to gather professionals who are involved in managing software assets in their organizations in order to exchange experience in solving real problems that companies face in the field of software asset management. The event is organized not by a certain vendor, but by an independent consulting company we.CONECT Global Leaders from Berlin. And for this reason, the format of the event is different from all that I have seen before.
Firstly, most of the presentations at SAMS Europe are real stories of companies that have solved a problem inside, automated some processes, shared experiences, talked about the difficulties they encountered during implementation, and answer questions during discussions. Secondly, the main value of this event, at which its regular participants are going, is live communication and exchange of experience in the format of “round tables” on various important issues of SAM. Experts tell each other what they are doing in their companies, learn the details of other people's experience, ask questions and exchange business cards to continue communication outside the forum. This format seemed new, extremely useful and interesting at the same time.
Live communication with colleagues from around the world is the main thing that I learned from this event. Communicating, getting to know, finding out what is happening with colleagues from other companies is the most important part of the conference.
Before the conference, an independent jury of the competition, consisting of professionals in this industry, selects in two nominations (“Project / Strategy” and “Software Solution”) candidates who will present their projects during the event. The criteria are simple: cost and risk reduction, process improvement, interesting technical solution. Each presentation lasts only about 10 minutes, and during this time the team needs to tell the most interesting about their project. How the seats are distributed is decided by the conference participants themselves, of whom there were about 200 people this year. They vote directly during the event online. Their opinion is really independent, this is a completely Olympic system - professionals evaluate professionals, thanks to this, the reward is so valuable.
On the one hand, SAM is something that has already been implemented in many large companies. And from this point of view, there is nothing unique in our project, it is rather “banal” - we “simply” have implemented the best world practices in our bank. When a company grows, the number of software products used grows with it. When the number of software licenses reaches several thousand, and the processes of accounting, support, optimization of the software infrastructure, timely renewal or purchase of new licenses are still carried out manually, then the company is fully aware of the need to automate and implement the SAM system. First, it allows you to get a complete picture of all the software that is in the bank. Secondly, it helps to save resources: to abandon excess licenses, to find untapped "power". Thirdly, with its help it is easier to find pirated software, which could appear in various workarounds, and, as a result, avoid considerable fines. Fourth, SAM allows you to plan your budget for the next period of time.
In short, we could not qualify for a prize in the “Project / Strategy” category, since the correct “basic” SAM is what most companies have already gone through at the conference.
But there is a feature in our project that allowed us to pass into the top three in the category “Software Solution”. This is its technical implementation. Firstly, the product Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Asset Manager itself is a very interesting solution for a set of boxed functionality, and we made the most of its capabilities to automate SAM, and this is just one of the facets of its capabilities to account for IT assets. Secondly, thanks to our Asset Manager project, the vendor has been significantly improved, and the new features are now available to all its users - and this is an important feature of the project we have implemented. Thanks to the initiative of the bank team, any difficulty encountered in the course of the project was always discussed from three sides - we, I-Teco and the vendor’s support, together solved all the problems arising in the course of the implementation with such an eye that the HPE development team could immediately add to its product necessary changes. The final solution turned out to be interesting even for professionals of such high level who gathered at conferences from all over Europe.
Of course, the large scale factor played a project. Our solution is “local” and not as large-scale as the others in our nomination. First place was taken by the transnational Novartis for the project “SAM for the Salesforce cloud” (“Cloud SAM for Salesforce”), and second - by the global pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca for the project “The Software Store“ AZ Software ”(“ AZ Software Store ”). At the same time, the distribution of votes in our top three looked like this: 46, 33 and 29% - that is, the gap between the team that took 2nd place is very small. Our project next to such giants surprised people not with scale, but with beautiful architecture and perfect technical solution. And we are very proud of our result and are glad that we are among the top three winners and very worthily presented the Russian company at the international level for the first time.
At the beginning of the year, we completed a large project and implemented Software Asset Management (SAM) in our bank. A complex software solution was built on the basis of HPE Asset Manager, and the integrator I-Teco implemented the project. I will not go too deep into the details of the project itself, it is described in detail in my previous post . I will tell you about how the SAMS Europe 2017 conference and the SAMS Europe Award 2017 project competition took place, how they differed from the Russian ones, how it turned out that our project was nominated, and why it took the place that it took.
How did we get there?
The Software Asset Management SAMS Europe Conference and the SAMS Europe Award is held for the sixth time. Of course, I heard about the competition before, but I never thought that we could get there with our project. And we got, it can be said, thanks to a lucky coincidence. At the SAMday-2017 conference on software asset management held this spring in Moscow, one of the invited speakers besides me was Jochen Hagenlocher , winner of the SAMS Europe Award 2016. He gave a very interesting lecture on his project, its process implementation. Having talked with Jochen on the sidelines, I made one important thought for myself: our project is quite worthy, and nothing prevents us from taking the risk and nominating him. In June, we submitted an application for participation, were selected for the voting stage, and in September I went to Berlin for a conference.
')
International Conference, what is the difference?
The goal of SAMS Europe is to gather professionals who are involved in managing software assets in their organizations in order to exchange experience in solving real problems that companies face in the field of software asset management. The event is organized not by a certain vendor, but by an independent consulting company we.CONECT Global Leaders from Berlin. And for this reason, the format of the event is different from all that I have seen before.
Firstly, most of the presentations at SAMS Europe are real stories of companies that have solved a problem inside, automated some processes, shared experiences, talked about the difficulties they encountered during implementation, and answer questions during discussions. Secondly, the main value of this event, at which its regular participants are going, is live communication and exchange of experience in the format of “round tables” on various important issues of SAM. Experts tell each other what they are doing in their companies, learn the details of other people's experience, ask questions and exchange business cards to continue communication outside the forum. This format seemed new, extremely useful and interesting at the same time.
Live communication with colleagues from around the world is the main thing that I learned from this event. Communicating, getting to know, finding out what is happening with colleagues from other companies is the most important part of the conference.
How to choose projects?
Before the conference, an independent jury of the competition, consisting of professionals in this industry, selects in two nominations (“Project / Strategy” and “Software Solution”) candidates who will present their projects during the event. The criteria are simple: cost and risk reduction, process improvement, interesting technical solution. Each presentation lasts only about 10 minutes, and during this time the team needs to tell the most interesting about their project. How the seats are distributed is decided by the conference participants themselves, of whom there were about 200 people this year. They vote directly during the event online. Their opinion is really independent, this is a completely Olympic system - professionals evaluate professionals, thanks to this, the reward is so valuable.
Why us?
On the one hand, SAM is something that has already been implemented in many large companies. And from this point of view, there is nothing unique in our project, it is rather “banal” - we “simply” have implemented the best world practices in our bank. When a company grows, the number of software products used grows with it. When the number of software licenses reaches several thousand, and the processes of accounting, support, optimization of the software infrastructure, timely renewal or purchase of new licenses are still carried out manually, then the company is fully aware of the need to automate and implement the SAM system. First, it allows you to get a complete picture of all the software that is in the bank. Secondly, it helps to save resources: to abandon excess licenses, to find untapped "power". Thirdly, with its help it is easier to find pirated software, which could appear in various workarounds, and, as a result, avoid considerable fines. Fourth, SAM allows you to plan your budget for the next period of time.
In short, we could not qualify for a prize in the “Project / Strategy” category, since the correct “basic” SAM is what most companies have already gone through at the conference.
But there is a feature in our project that allowed us to pass into the top three in the category “Software Solution”. This is its technical implementation. Firstly, the product Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Asset Manager itself is a very interesting solution for a set of boxed functionality, and we made the most of its capabilities to automate SAM, and this is just one of the facets of its capabilities to account for IT assets. Secondly, thanks to our Asset Manager project, the vendor has been significantly improved, and the new features are now available to all its users - and this is an important feature of the project we have implemented. Thanks to the initiative of the bank team, any difficulty encountered in the course of the project was always discussed from three sides - we, I-Teco and the vendor’s support, together solved all the problems arising in the course of the implementation with such an eye that the HPE development team could immediately add to its product necessary changes. The final solution turned out to be interesting even for professionals of such high level who gathered at conferences from all over Europe.
Why third place?
Of course, the large scale factor played a project. Our solution is “local” and not as large-scale as the others in our nomination. First place was taken by the transnational Novartis for the project “SAM for the Salesforce cloud” (“Cloud SAM for Salesforce”), and second - by the global pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca for the project “The Software Store“ AZ Software ”(“ AZ Software Store ”). At the same time, the distribution of votes in our top three looked like this: 46, 33 and 29% - that is, the gap between the team that took 2nd place is very small. Our project next to such giants surprised people not with scale, but with beautiful architecture and perfect technical solution. And we are very proud of our result and are glad that we are among the top three winners and very worthily presented the Russian company at the international level for the first time.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/340290/
All Articles