Technology Portfolio Management (TPM) Best Practices

Overview

The Software Licenses Inventory records the specific license agreements through which the organization has acquired the right to use each software technology. The Technologies Inventory records what software technologies the organization uses. The connection between them is what makes license compliance governance possible: knowing that an organization uses a technology is insufficient without knowing what license governs that use and whether actual usage is compliant with the license terms.

Best Practice

For every software technology record in the Software Technologies Inventory, maintain a connection to the corresponding Software Licenses Inventory records that govern the organization’s right to use that technology. The connection should capture: the specific license agreement; the scope of the license; the actual usage relative to the licensed scope; the license expiration or renewal date; and the compliance status. Use the connected data to perform regular license compliance reviews that compare actual deployment data — drawn from Technology Spread analysis — against the licensed scope of each software technology. Identify both over-deployment and under-utilization.

Benefit(s)

The Software Licenses connection produces license compliance visibility that neither inventory provides alone. Organizations that maintain this connection consistently discover both compliance risks they were unaware of and optimization opportunities they had no mechanism to identify without it.