Aspera
Pushing the Sam Frontier

 
Imagine a perfect world! A world where managing the discovery of software assets, the capture of license entitlements and optimization of an organization’s software usage and compliance situation would be a single-click operation. Marvellous, isn’t it? Luckily for all the software asset management (SAM) Managers today, a dynamic trio thought about this perfect world, long before anyone even knew the true value of the SAM process.

Twenty years ago, three friends noticed businesses couldn’t keep track of their software or its costs. So they built the first SKU catalog-based library to help businesses control their software costs. They were the first into SAM. The rest, as they say, is history. Since then, their concept—which the world today knows as Aspera—has been leveraging the same energy to help hundreds of enterprises and over fifty Fortune 500s to assess cost and risk within their IT environments. Mel Passarelli, the newly appointed president and CEO of Aspera mentions, “Aspera’s focus on enterprise SAM, strong market presence, and robust product portfolio have made us a trusted solution for the world’s biggest organizations. The team’s dedication and vision in solving the complexities of the ever-changing software landscape are impressive, and I am excited to help our customers gain transparency into their businesses through our solutions.”

“Aspera’s focus on enterprise SAM, strong market presence, and robust product portfolio have made us a trusted solution for the world’s biggest organizations”

Today, Aspera has offices in the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Japan, and operates worldwide across a growing partner sales network. The Aspera product portfolio provides insights into all major software vendors and SaaS applications. In addition, the company’s solutions support companies throughout their SAM journey, providing active control of license costs, cloud transition, and data centre optimization.

Aspire for a Seamless SAM with Aspera

Through Aspera’s SAM tools—which includes SmartTrack Platform, Aspera SmartCollect, SmartTrack Simulation, and SmartTrack FlowControl—companies are enabled to shape and strategize the shift between traditional on-premises licensing and optimizing SaaS and cloud costs.

The SmartTrack Platform covers all the important vendors like IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, and Amazon and accurately calculates complex metrics for servers, cloud, clients, and mobile. It optimizes software licenses and empowers companies with huge savings. At the core of the platform is a specific metric engine, which calculates the licenses needed for the individual usage situation. The Metric Engine technology handles all the complex calculations, such that the companies know exactly the licenses that they need.

To support their tools and platform, the company strengthens clients’ internal resources by handling important daily tasks with expertise and speedy results. They expertly map out the client’s license and entitlement data, and focus on quality assurance and high-quality data. Aspera’s service team analyzes the vendors that are needed for the clients to manage and the tools they own.

Aspera’s Managed Services ensure that the clients spend less time reacting to the data, and more time acting on its insights. Further, through its License Management as a Service (LaaS) programme, the company unites products and services into one customizable, full-service solution. The clients can not only get scalable staff resources, any time they need, for a cost-effective investment, but also consolidate all publisher, supplier, licensing, and entitlement data in one web-based platform.

Simulation and the Future

To enhance its SAM solution set even more, Aspera has also introduced new Simulation capabilities of Aspera Optimization and Simulation which are proving to be a breakthrough in financial forecasting. These powerful tools for strategic IT forecasting give companies an accurate preview of the future. The solution analyzes the best “what-if” scenarios for the best choice of license type at the best price. At the heart of the simulation is the new Topology Designer. Through these tools, the licenses and contracts of all device types can be planned, optimized and compared on all platforms and for every infrastructure. Unlimited “what if?” license scenarios are created real-time in a sandbox, and managed without any impact on the production environment through a node-based interface.

The company has indeed carved a unique space for itself in the SAM space and standing testament for that is the fact that the company were named a January 2019 Peer Insights Customers’ Choice for Software Asset Management Tools by a global research and advisory firm. “We’re honored to be named a January 2019 Customers’ Choice for Software Asset Management Tools. Customer-first is one of our core values. Aspera is committed to providing world class SAM solutions and services that support an outstanding customer experience”, says Olaf Diehl, the business unit manager of product management & marketing, Aspera. “We will continue to innovate while we execute on our product roadmap to meet the needs of our customers, and are grateful for the feedback they share with us.”

Aspera has also strengthened its leadership team as Mel Passarelli has been named President and CEO. In this role, he will expand the company’s market presence as the leading provider of Software Asset Management (SAM) solutions and services. Passarelli joins Aspera with over thirty years of experience in corporate strategy and growth. Prior to joining Aspera, he led the successful turnaround and growth of Attunity from an early-stage company to a NASDAQ listed corporation. He has a history of increasing growth and profitability in several private and public software companies. “Mel’s expertise in software and cloud computing makes him the perfect fit for Aspera,” informs Bernhard Boehler, the chairman of USU Group. “His focus on strong revenue growth will lead the company to new horizons in a highly competitive market space.”