75% of SAM Pros agree “SAM Skills Gap Exists”
The ITAM Review held a joint SAM Skills workshop event with the BCS on 14th July (See our original event listing here).
Thanks to everyone that came along, special thanks to Gemma Walker of Livingstone and Greg Hallam of SoftwareOne for hosting excellent workshop sessions and thanks to Rory Canavan of SAM Charter for helping on our panel.
3-Minute Video Overview – SAM Skills Workshop with the BCS
SAM Skills Workshop Review
The ½ day event was held at BCS offices on The Strand with two introductory presentations before delving into two specialist workshops on software licensing and audit defence.
Dave Kelsey, the man recently appointed to develop a roadmap to improve the SAM Essentials and SAM practitioner courses, began with an overview of recent research from the BCS.
Research Highlights:
- 75% of SAM pros agreed a SAM skills gap exists
- Raising awareness of SAM to the rest of the IT department and the business as a whole was cited as the biggest challenge
- See the full presentation below
SAM essentials has been the de-facto standard for SAM education for many ITAM Review readers, especially in Europe, and it’s great to see Dave’s appointment and investment from BCS in this area.
I then provided an overview of how to benchmark your organization for SAM maturity and assess the capabilities of your SAM team using the ITAM Review 12-box Model (Presentation below). To receive an independent benchmarking, capabilities heat map and prioritized action list please give me a shout.
Dave Kelsey, Product Manager for ITAM Education at BCS.
Gemma and Greg then led two interactive workshops on licensing and audit defence. Feedback on the format has been positive and we hope to repeat similar events with BCS in the future. Gemma and Greg’s slide decks are below.
Tweets
Greg Hallam of @SoftwareONEuk in full flow yesterday, leading an excellent session on audit defence #SAMskills pic.twitter.com/nd4iyM2TrZ
— Martin Thompson (@itammartin) July 15, 2015
Gemma Walker of @LivingstoneTech in full flow in our licensing workshop #SAMskills pic.twitter.com/pw3Q9MYvjN
— Martin Thompson (@itammartin) July 14, 2015
Corporate tweet: Fantastic event by a @bcs @itamreview JV. Feel like I gained a lot from the first of hopefully many workshops #SAMskills
— Luke Whittaker (@Whitmate) July 14, 2015
.@SAMBeastDavid my big takeaway from today's @bcs #samskills workshop. Stakeholders need to see value of SAM & know how to talk to vendors
— Alan Head (@kil0ran) July 14, 2015
The winners of the day at the @bcs @itamreview #samskills workshop. Congratulations to all. pic.twitter.com/z65NZuay9c
— Dave Kelsey (@dave1kelsey) July 14, 2015
Slide Decks
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Related articles:
- Tags: bcs · British Computer Society · Dave Kelsey · Gemma Walker · Greg Hallam · Martin Thompson · rory canavan · SAM Skills · Skills Gap · Software Licensing · The ITAM Review
About Martin Thompson
Martin is also the founder of ITAM Forum, a not-for-profit trade body for the ITAM industry created to raise the profile of the profession and bring an organisational certification to market. On a voluntary basis Martin is a contributor to ISO WG21 which develops the ITAM International Standard ISO/IEC 19770.
He is also the author of the book "Practical ITAM - The essential guide for IT Asset Managers", a book that describes how to get started and make a difference in the field of IT Asset Management. In addition, Martin developed the PITAM training course and certification.
Prior to founding the ITAM Review in 2008 Martin worked for Centennial Software (Ivanti), Silicon Graphics, CA Technologies and Computer 2000 (Tech Data).
When not working, Martin likes to Ski, Hike, Motorbike and spend time with his young family.
Connect with Martin on LinkedIn.
My perspective is that there is a definite lack of skills in SAM. Even with most “SAM” practioners it’s about counting licenses… Higher level more experienced SAM (at least in North America) are missing. I really wish we had more folks we could share audit defence scars, tactics for large scale SAM adoption, and specific negotiation tactics with for particular vendors.
I agree Kris. Furthermore, like you said a number of the SAM ‘Experts’ aren’t actually experts. How can you claim to be an expert with 2 years experience? Some of the vendors and MSP’s provide misleading job titles! There is a massive skills shortage in our industry, and we (the SAM Geeks) need to try and promote it’s awesomeness and importance!