Dennis Montanje on Softline Solutions becoming ITAM Forum Patron!
In my over-twenty-year career in the IT Asset/Software Management domain, evangelism and education have been at the center of it. The end users of software, the licensees, needed to understand the importance of proper management of their software assets. The suppliers of Software Asset Management technology needed to make their tooling more business oriented instead of technology oriented. Last but not least, we needed to get new employees interested to enter this small niche of the IT industry.
In my many discussions with different stakeholders, some saw the rise of SaaS as the fall of Software Asset Management. How wrong could these people be? The opposite is happening with the trend of hardware converting to software and therefore diminishing the border between these two, hence the introduction of IT Asset Management as the container definition. IT Asset Management is more alive than ever, but the need for evangelism and education remains!
This is exactly in line with the vision of the ITAM Forum: to promote the value of IT Asset Management. So, it didn’t take me long to give Softline Solutions’ support as a Patron to the ITAM Forum, especially after Martin Thompson explained the goals:
- Enablement - Enable ITAM professionals to communicate the value of ITAM
- Evangelism - Encourage more organisations to build an ITAM practice, attract more ITAM professionals into the industry
- Community - Build a global community of ITAM professionals, so they can learn from each other, share best practice and progress their careers
- Certification - Build a globally recognised framework for assessing against the ISO standard, for partners, tool providers and end user organisations
Next to our financial support, we will also provide support by leading the certification track. In our ten-year history as Softline Solutions we have been great supporters of the ISO/IEC 19770-1 standard for IT Asset Management. The framework has been the guideline for all our customer engagements, which we enriched with our best-practices in the areas of people, process and technology. In the many journeys we have embarked on with our customers, certification of the ISO/IEC 19770-1 has been discussed. Although never a goal by itself, the rubber stamp from an external auditor brings value both internal and external.
One of the first steps in the certification track is to identify the demand from the market of actually having an ISO/IEC 19770-1 certification as an end-user organisation. Therefore, the following survey has been published on the ITAM Review website: https://www.itassetmanagement.net/2020/12/03/t-shirt-giveaway/. By filling in the survey you support all people involved in the certification track.
Looking forward to discuss with you the development of ITAM directly or through the ITAM Forum, don’t forget to sign up! Visit the website to learn more: www.itamf.org
About Dennis Montanje
Managing Director Softline Solutions Northern Europe Valued partner in the Software Asset Management field for large enterprise organisations. Specialties: Software Asset Management (SAM) // IT Asset Management // License & Contract Management // Support with reviews & audits // Flexera FlexNet Manager Suite // ServiceNow SAM Pro // ServiceNow ITOM // Tanium // helping organisations to achieve compliance and realise cost savings |  |
