GOVERNING A LICENSE TO NOWHERE USEFUL

Whereas massive shifts in licensing models, and the manner in which they are consumed, across major technology players, underpinned by the hybrid-workforce induced need to reconstruct organisational models, are enabling organisations to take charge of a new digital destiny - avoiding all 3rd party interests, clipping-tickets, high-margins, tie ups with nested-contracts and any number of hands in the pie.

However, focusing solely on licensing without a digital strategy, a symptom of unlicensed misgovernance, is a 'license to nowhere useful' for organisations.

Indeed, license first approaches, are symbol of a fundamental and serious break down in proper and integrity-based IT governance. Where interests in doing so are often revealed in understanding the clip-the-ticket, rebate and license-kick back relationships of the promoter of such approaches, the net effect of such approaches, devoid of digital strategy, can lead to severe implications for organisations, often resulting in what is often termed a "digital train wreck.”

Strategic misalignment through license based fragmented Technology Landscapes

Without a digital strategy to guide human-focused technology decisions, organisations tend to end up with a deeper, more fragmented technology landscape and a position that severely impedes downstream recoverability. As a major concern from a governance perspective, where “licensing” leads the argument, this often leads to major implications. This can include deepening incompatibility issues, data silos, and inefficiencies as different departments or teams adopt from an inappropriate prescription of disparate, license-driven or limited technologies without considering the real organisational needs; let alone what is required nor how they integrate with each other.

Digital strategy is a human sport

There is no escaping the risks of forming Digital Strategy without engaging the organisation or representative groups within an organisation.

Thus, a digital and maturity-based strategy, when defined in human-to-technology terms, helps align technology initiatives with strategic objectives that can be achieved by humans.

Without this alignment and approach, organisations tend to be led into investing in licensing (often includes establishing vendors to embark on a doomed solution-first approach) that don't directly contribute to achieving strategic goals. In separating “digital” as a technical or licensing discussion, from the organisation and it’s need, this results in wasted resources, risk-creation and missed opportunities for innovation and growth.

Indeed - In a world where licenses are rapidly evolving away from various ‘this-for-that per seat, per month, or feature-based packages’ towards consumption-metering based approaches, where “digital” services (including human-services) are tending towards “as-a-service” (through consumption), focusing on licensing types absent of digital strategy means IT initiatives  run the risk of misalignment to with the organization's strategic objectives, resulting in wasted resources on projects that do not contribute to organisational value.

Opportunities for innovation and competitive advantage may be missed, and the organisation may struggle to respond effectively to changes in the organisation’s environment.

Thus, the core feature of a license and security-based technology approach is the late 1990’s era within which such IT-god complex approaches heralded from. As written across numerous world wide digital and IT programme failures, decision-makers, through method that discount Digital strategy, are separated from and lack visibility into IT activities, making it difficult to assess the impact, service and performance implications and; ultimately, are unable to make informed decisions. This lack of transparency can result in serious “surprises” when it comes actually forming a digital strategy, dissonance, conflicts, and resistance to change due to the limitations and constraints created, undermining the organisation's ability to adapt, transform and innovate.

Uncontrolled Costs; accelerating strategic drift

Without a digital strategy, that sets out the human-to-technical construction of the organisation, through states of maturity, guiding or leading with licensing and security decisions, organisations tend to be lead into selecting and inappropriately investing in software licenses, unnecessary tools and solutions. As the “problem” and “direction” has not been devised to make such choices, this lack of governance and control over costs can very quickly strain budgets, leading to financial inefficiencies and wasted resources – and indeed accelerate strategic demise.

Security Vulnerabilities

While focusing on security is absolutely crucial, without a digital strategy, organisations may fail to address security vulnerabilities comprehensively or be led into applying the solutions-first approach to an ill-formed view of the current-state (that may otherwise be better replaced had digital strategy been formed). Lacking alignment to the real organisational need, as a glaring symbol of absent governance, this can leave systems and data exposed to yet to be defined use-cases; consequently cyber threats, increasing the risk of data breaches, compliance violations, and reputational damage.

Ineffective Resource Allocation

The absence of a digital strategy leads to inefficient resource allocation, bad investments and wrong partnerships/vendor engagements. Organisations, without digital strategy, allocate resources disproportionately to licensing and security efforts without considering broader technology trends, needs or alignment with strategic priorities. As would be a key feature of any governance risk-register, or more concerningly not on it at all, license-based resource allocation risks can seriously hinder innovation and limit the organisation's ability to adapt to changing market dynamics and would be appropriate responses.

Lack of Integration & regulatory impairment

Focusing solely on licensing and security without or ahead of digital strategy often results in creating or deepening disparate systems, legacy applications and inappropriate technologies that lack integration. This fragmented IT environment makes it difficult to modernise, share data, collaborate effectively, and leverage synergies across the organisation. It can also impede strategic agility and hinder decision-making processes. In industries with strict regulatory requirements, such as healthcare or finance, the absence of a digital strategy can increase the risk of regulatory non-compliance, service, or funding adaption. Without proper governance (or as a clear sign little exists) and oversight, organisations leading with a licensing argument over digital strategy, tend to overlook regulatory obligations related to service provision which will or do drive different licensing agreements, data security, and privacy protection, exposing themselves to legal and financial penalties – as well as service impediments.

Vendor Lock-In

Most credible vendors, for their own risk assurance and brand purposes, will, upon engagement, request a review of Digital Strategy. However, there are those that do not.

Driven by the "clip-the-ticket", rebate, kick-back and associated silver-bullet services, scrutiny of these and the relationships, often reveals the nature of proposals as well as the procurement decisions. Indeed, failing to align licensing decisions with a digital strategy runs the risk of vendor lock-in with the wrong vendor contracts through preferential vendor selection (sometimes for any number of undisclosed reasons). Organisations may become overly reliant on specific vendors or platforms, making it challenging to switch to alternative solutions or negotiate favourable terms. As the consumption IT world enables organisations to take charge of their own destiny, contracted license agreements as a component of, often, other services - lacks of flexibility limits the organisation's ability to adapt to changing organisational needs or take advantage of emerging technologies.

IT Governance

IT Governance is not about IT per se nor controlling the organisation through IT aka the IT God complex.  Licensing is not an IT decision per se.

Summarily, weak IT governance can manifest in or with various characteristics that indicate a lack of effective oversight, control, integrity to-the-cause &\or alignment of IT activities with organisational objectives.

All to often, organisations are mis led into focusing on the “dealing with the noise”, “licensing”, “reviews” and new-vendor engagements as the excuse for avoiding digital strategy to entrench the yester year IT control paradigm. Thus, as the MSP/Vendor world is rife with clip the ticket, rebates and subtle behind the scenes interests – conflicts of interest are an all to common symptom of licensing-first approaches.

Ultimately, such a lacking in IT governance and strategic direction can seriously and rapidly erode an organisation's strategic advantage or posture.

Addressing these characteristics of weak IT governance requires a concerted effort to establish integrity based motives, clear roles and responsibilities, improve communication and collaboration, define and enforce processes and procedures; aligning IT initiatives subservient to organisation interests and goals, strengthen risk management practices, enhance transparency and oversight, and optimise resource management. Failure to address these issues can lead to significant challenges and setbacks for often cash-strapped organisations.

Conversely, well IT-governed organisations have a clear digital strategy and effective governance frameworks are better positioned to leverage technology choices for innovation, efficiency, and growth. IT governance, in this world, should insist on this, rule 1 as the crucial translation of market, organisational and human-needs, into technology choice and direction; such that for organisations that neglect these aspects, for license-or-solution first approaches, risk falling behind in the marketplace and losing relevance to more agile and digitally mature competitive threats - whether organisational or technological.

To mitigate these implications, modern IT governance is about rethinking what is IT governance. In doing so, key features include prioritising and governing the development of a comprehensive digital strategy that technology investments, with human-focused organisational objectives; that which establishes clear governance structures and processes consistent with this.

Modern IT governance, therefore, addresseses only then the types of licensing constructs and security measures proactively to achieve effective alignment to the human-enabled organisational strategy; as a board / exec level construct where licensing is not (or no longer) a IT choice, but a strategic imperative that promotes a culture of continuous improvement and innovation where technology is an integrity-based enabler not the control mechanism.