Deloitte - SAM Studio

Description of the company
SAM Studio is a new major player in the market of Software Asset Management (SAM) tools. SAM Studio is a revolutionary tool that combines cutting edge data warehousing algorithms and machine learning software, that enables your company to automate the management of your software portfolio, accurately capture IT infrastructure and store all technical and commercial data in a designated database. Amazing, right?

Initial situation
With the increasing digitalization of technology, one of the biggest operational risks that companies (especially large ones) are facing is related to the good management of software assets. In other words, ensuring compliance, mitigating risk of penalties, avoiding security breaches, reducing risk of unplanned costs, and optimizing investments are the main goals of a good SAM program.

Problem
Imagine a company with 50.000 employees worldwide. Let’s name it Company X. In order to successfully perform its daily operations, Company X has a large and complex IT infrastructure and deploys hundreds of different software programs that need specific software licenses, depending on the vendor and licensing model. The whole environment proves itself very difficult to manage in order to constantly be compliant, as per the contracts and legal agreements. The risk of incompliance triggers significant penalties from the vendors and also reputational damage on the long run, both having a negative financial impact on Company X.

Aims of the project
SAM Studio’s aim is to help Company X and other companies to automate their software assets licensing processes. We envision a solution that will allow our clients to maintain accurate and structured technical and commercial data and to be able within a couple of clicks to generate up to date compliance reports in case of vendor audits.

Scopes
-    Collect technical  data (e.g. usage on applications installed on devices) from different sources (e.g. software inventory system) via customizable agents
-    Collect commercial data (e.g. information about purchased licenses) via from different sources (e.g. software license reseller web API)
-    Develop a data warehousing solution that will transform the technical and commercial information to be further loaded to the data consumers (e.g. the dashboard described below, SAM Tools like Aspera SmartTrack or Flexera Flexnet  Manager Suite)
-    Develop a dashboard that based on the technical and commercial data will be able to generate charts with current situation (e.g. number of Microsoft SQL Server installations in EMEA region)
-    Develop a system capable of assessing the data quality and quantity stored in the data warehouse (e.g. through key performance indicator system) and able to communicate measures to be taken by the company (e.g. through artificial intelligence)

Target group
Students from the majors Computer Science, Computational Science and Engineering, Business, International Management and Engineering preferred.

Dates
Please reserve these dates:

• 17 October: Information event with te companies, from 10am to 12pm, mainbuilding A; LuK
• 24 October: Kick-off event, from 2pm to 6pm (obligatory attendance)
• 27 October and 3 November: Project management course, full day (obligatory attendance)
• Order clarification meeting, Friday, 02.11., 14:40 Uhr - 16:00 Uhr, Deloitte, Dammtorstr. 12, 20354 Hamburg