Tuesday 19 January 2016 BCS Configuration Management Support Group Minutes of Meeting held

BCS Configuration Management Support Group
Minutes of Meeting held Tuesday 19th January 2016
38 people (including organizers, presenters and members) attended the meeting held in the BCS
London office.
Agenda
6:00 pm Coffee and networking
6:45 pm SAM Networking Introduction
7:00 pm Session 1 – Mobile SAM – Managing software consumption on any device,
wherever the user is - Alan Giles, Snow Software
7:40 pm Refreshments and networking
8:00 pm Session 2 – What does it mean to be truly independent? – Andrew Harcourt,
SAMGarde
9:00 pm Close (Pub and discussion)
Introduction
Marilyn introduced the meeting and walked through the agenda for the evening.
Marilyn and Ian explained that in order to reduce the workload on the committee and treasurer, a
decision has been made to explore longer term sponsorship options rather than event by event
sponsorship. As a result, the committee has decided to negotiate an annual sponsorship package
with up to 3 sponsors - 2 SAM and 1 Configuration Management. Snow and Flexera have both kindly
agreed to commit to sponsor the SAM meetings throughout 2016 whilst conversations continue
regarding a Configuration Management partner. Package details are available through the committee
or the BCS.
Attendees were requested to let a member of the committee know if there were any suggestions for
presentation topics (including speakers) or sponsors for future evening events.
Attendees were also reminded that the meeting is held under Chatham House rules
(https://www.chathamhouse.org/about/chatham-house-rule#) and whilst things mentioned in the
meeting could be discussed outside of the meeting they should not be assigned to any individual or
company. Attendees were also warned of the potential issues of “tweeting” things discussed in the
meeting.
Andrew Harcourt introduced the SAMGarde Pro Bono Friday initiative, a corporate policy that has
been running for several years where SAMGarde employees can give up some of their Fridays to do
Pro Bono SAM work for registered charities. The benefits have been considerable for the charities significantly greater than the cost of the time donated and more and more charities are interested in
taking advantage of the scheme SAMGarde would like to explore ways to extend the programme
beyond their own employees and are in discussions with the BCS CMSG to see how this could be
facilitated. Watch this space (and the BCS website) for further information.
Presentation / Discussion
The evening comprised one presentation and one discussed session:
Session 1 – Mobile SAM – Managing software consumption on any device, wherever the user
is - Alan Giles, Snow Software
Alan leads the UK Mobility team at Snow Software. He has been active in the Enterprise
Mobility market for the past two decades, and is helping Snow Software extend the critical
capabilities of SAM on to mobile devices, helping organisations attain software licence
compliance across any device a user may interact with during their working day.
The way users consume software is changing every day and with or without the
organisation’s permission, today’s IT consumers are accessing data and software anytime and
from anywhere. With software no longer residing solely on desktops and servers
organisations are required to manage software and licenses across all devices,
desktops/laptops and major mobile platforms including iOS, Windows Phone and Android.
Alan explained how Snow’s Software Device Manager (SDM) is an enterprise mobility
management solution that handles the full lifecycle of tablets and phones. He also explained
how SDM also achieves all four of Gartner’s defined core technologies that make up an
Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) solution namely, Mobile Device Management
(MDM), Mobile Application Management (MAM), Mobile Content Management (MCM)
and Mobile Identity (MI).
Session 2 – What does it mean to be truly independent? – Andrew Harcourt, SAMGarde
Andrew is CEO and Managing Consultant at SAMGarde, the Lisbon based SAM and
Software Procurement Services provider. Andrew has a particular expertise in negotiating
multi-million pound software contracts for some of the world’s largest companies, as well as
a deep understanding of how the people, policy & process components of SAM must be
leveraged against robust, reliable inventory data & commercial skills to deliver great
outcomes for its customers.
Andrew facilitated an interesting discussion on how the SAM world is full of conflict of
interest – companies that provide licensing advice also sell you the licenses, consultancies
which provide SAM advice also carry out vendor audit
Even SAM Managers in end user organisations need to be aware of conflict of interest –
should we really accept that lunch date with an account manager? But on the other hand,
vendor account managers are human too, and getting to know them better means they are
more likely to fight our corner internally for that contract amendment we really need.
Next Meetings
The next meetings of the SAM group for 2016 will take place on 8th March, 10th May, 12th July, 6th
September and 8th November. All meetings will be held at the BCS London Office. The agendas will
be advised in due course.
The annual conference will be held on 14th June at the BCS Offices in London.
The BCS Configuration Management Support Group AGM will take place on 6th December. This
event will be combined with the group’s usual Christmas festivities.
Please keep these dates free in your diaries.
Summary
Our thanks to Alan and Andrew for interesting presentations and discussion and to Snow and Flexera
for their sponsorship.
Finally, many thanks to all the attendees for their contribution, look forward to seeing you again at the
next meeting.
All minutes and presentations are published on the BCS website at
http://www.bcs.org/content/ConWebDoc/55031
About SAM Networking
SAM Networking is an independent event for SAM practitioners to create an environment for healthy
debate, but it is not for commercial gain.
End user organisations, vendors, market analysts, service organisations and others attend this event,
and we welcome new participants.
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