ITAA Licensing Consultant Man Hoe Nguy reflects on his time in the Software Asset Management industry and highlights trends that could impact end-user organizations in the future
Man Hoe Nguy is a multi-vendor Licensing Consultant, specializing in internal compliance assessments, deployment optimization, risk mitigation and audit defense. With a background in Software Asset Management (SAM) Managed Service providers, Man Hoe has assisted many FTSE 100 and Fortune 500 organizations realize cost savings through consolidating software deployments, contractual reviews and renewal support. Man Hoe’s broad publisher knowledge and experience of various client sectors including healthcare, engineering, manufacturing, finance and investment banking allows him to provide pragmatic advice to IT teams of all shapes and sizes.
Man Hoe recently joined ITAA as Licensing Consultant and we took the opportunity to find out more about what brought him to SAM, his experiences and where he sees the industry going in the future.
What is your role within ITAA?
I’m a Licensing Consultant, which means I assist clients with their software licensing requirements. These can range from fairly straightforward activities such as clarifying terminology through to complex deployment scenario modelling to establish optimal licensing requirements in line with the client’s IT strategy.
How did you become Licensing Consultant at ITAA?
I’m naturally drawn to situations requiring problem solving and logic, so data analysis appealed as a specialism when I left university. My first role was with a SAM Service provider, analyzing client software utilization and identifying potential counterfeit software. I had the opportunity to get involved with licensing reviews, including formal reviews on behalf of Microsoft, and through this have developed broad knowledge of many different vendor licensing models and processes over the last 7 years.
ITAA differs from the previous organizations I’ve worked for in that it brings together specialist vertical practices to form one independent alliance. My knowledge and experience enhance the breadth and depth of support we can offer our clients, whilst I’m able to develop my own skillset through working with recognized industry experts on new and diverse projects. It’s a unique opportunity and I’m very excited to be part of it.
What is your area of expertise?
While I have a wide range of vendor experience including T2 vendors such as Adobe, Micro Focus and VMware, I would consider my specialist vendor to be Microsoft.
With a background of conducting formal reviews on behalf of Microsoft; I have transitioned to supporting organizations ranging from SMBs to multi-billion dollar revenue businesses with their Microsoft renewals, identifying potential savings opportunities or risk mitigation activities; in particular for SCE agreements where cost reduction opportunities of 20%+ of annual spend are not uncommon.
Which part of being a Licensing Consultant do you enjoy most?
Being detail oriented (some might say overly pedantic) I particularly enjoy the data analysis work involved in assessing license requirements. Modelling various license scenarios for renewals is especially interesting as it allows me to use my full skillset to provide tangible value to clients.
What has been the most satisfying project outcome that you have achieved?
Unfortunately I can’t go into detail due to client confidentiality. However, the stand out project in recent memory has been assisting a major institution with their preparation for a significant IBM WebSphere Application Server renewal.
It was one of the few projects to fully utilize my skillset and it was rewarding to see just how impactful my support has been from the initial license modelling to the implementation of suggested ideas to minimize the PVU consumption.
What do you think has been the most significant thing to affect the Software Asset Management industry in last 5 years?
The boring answer of Cloud technology becoming a viable solution. This has significantly shifted SAM focus from traditional in-house compliance and vendor audits to migration planning, maximizing license re-harvesting and forecasted spend. In general, SAM has become much more process driven and forward looking now with a key factor being the focus on cloud migrations by both clients and vendors alike.
What emerging trends do you think could impact the industry – and potentially the role of Licensing Consultant – in the future?
In a positive manner, the advancements in neural networks could assist SAM consultants focus more on the advisory and “real analytics” rather than getting bogged down in data quality concerns, cleansing and other repetitive tasks.
In a negative manner, the move to microservices and containerization has left many “traditional” discovery and licensing models behind, often times leaving no pragmatic ways of licensing environments/deployments until vendor licensing and inventory tools catch up.
Man Hoe Nguy is one of many specialist licensing consultants at ITAA, including IBM, Oracle and SAP experts. If you would like advice or support with your software licensing please contact us.
