IBM Software Portfolio Audit: A Practical Guide to Reducing IT Spend

Assessing your existing software environment can be a daunting prospect, but one that has the potential to uncover meaningful cost savings and operational efficiencies. 

Currently many companies find themselves in a serious conundrum with their software. Forced upgrades and vendor-driven agendas mean they find themselves saddled with a huge amount of potential technical debt, however committing to a full assessment of their current IT environment is often not much more appealing a prospect.

Software audits can be time-consuming and difficult, but a better understanding of your existing IT environment can be the catalyst to some serious cost-savings for your business. It can feel like you’re faced with only two paths, both of which have some serious drawbacks, but thankfully there is a third path that can lead you to true progress.

Why Effective Software Audits Matter

A software audit gives enterprises the visibility they need to make smarter, data-driven decisions about their IT investments. Over time, most organizations accumulate overlapping licenses, unused applications, and maintenance contracts that quietly drain budgets. A structured audit shines a light on these inefficiencies — revealing where costs can be reduced and where systems can safely stay in place without unnecessary change.

Traditional software vendors often promote upgrade cycles that benefit their revenue more than your performance. By auditing your IBM software portfolio, you can separate essential updates from vendor-driven upgrades and build a clearer, more cost-effective roadmap for your IT environment.

Key outcomes of an effective software audit include:

• Identifying redundant or underused licenses to reduce support and renewal costs
• Improving compliance visibility to minimize legal and financial risk
• Uncovering opportunities to extend the life of stable systems and avoid disruptive migrations
• Enhancing security and performance through focused investment in what truly matters
• Strengthening your negotiation position with accurate data on what you own and use

A successful software audit transforms technical debt into opportunity — helping IT and procurement leaders optimize spend, strengthen governance, and extend the value of existing software assets.

Where to Begin With Your Software Audit

It can be a tricky task to effectively tackle an assessment across your entire software estate, and many businesses can find themselves chasing their tail during the undertaking. The first and most important step is to ensure you have identified and inventoried all software and licences within your business. Creating a comprehensive list of all software programs, applications and subscriptions used across your business and consolidating all the information is vital begin managing your technical debt.

The next step once all your systems have been identified is to track your software usage. By tracking your usage you can then identify which systems are still being used regularly and successfully and which ones are no longer being used, often referred to as ‘shelfware’. Once you know which tech is still trusted throughout your business on a regular basis you can begin to optimize.

Now that you better understand the software spread across your business, you can start taking steps to optimize your systems. You can eliminate any redundant software, by scrapping any software that is no longer mission-critical you can clear space for more integral integrations. You can also look into your licences and contracts and ensure that you are getting the support you need at a price that makes sense. Effective optimization, combined with independent expert support, means consistent cost-saving for your business.

Finally, you need to ensure you avoid any compliance issues and mitigate risk. Be confident that your software usage aligns with your license agreements to avoid legal and financial penalties and be prepared for any potential vendor audits that may come your way.

There are many moving parts to help maintain your business momentum through software auditing, and this is where expert independent support can be a real ally to your business moving forward.

Optimizing Your Environment With Origina

Understanding and assessing your support options can be just as important a piece of the puzzle as understanding and assessing your software. More and more businesses are moving to independent support to help mitigate the painful procedure of undertaking a lengthy internal software audit. Origina, independent experts in software maintenance and support for IBM, HCL, and VMware, support your internal teams in assessing and optimizing your software environment, providing insights and expertise that make the audit process more efficient.

Maintaining complete oversight over your software license usage is crucial to avoiding risks that may arise. Companies can collaborate with Origina to gather insights into their software usage and better understand their contracts, helping to mitigate risks. It’s vital to ensure software asset managers have full clarity over the technical details of deployed applications. Origina’s role is advisory, which means you retain full control over your license records and any required downloads.

Companies can also face steep fines for breaching an enterprise software OEM contract regarding license and entitlement usage. Origina’s independent enterprise software licensing experts give you clarity over your license inventory to help identify and mitigate any potential risks.

Origina provides you with security expertise to ensure you don’t wander into any unwanted risk during your internal audit and a partnership style support model that means you won’t be alone during your journey to optimization. Origina leverages deep technical expertise and a customer-first philosophy to go above and beyond what’s available in a vendor software support model. So, if you’re looking to assess and optimize your existing software environment today, then a partnership with Origina may payoff for your business.

Get modernization through optimization. Talk to Origina today.