“Developing technological advanced pumping systems is our core business. b.lay has been essential for us to take care of our Oracle licensing , and helped us not to worry.”

- Axel Schings, IT Manager at Weir Minerals Netherlands B.V.

Weir Minerals’ comprehensive portfolio of high performance pumps and superior minerals processing equipment is designed and manufactured to meet the highest specifications – for robust and reliable use in the world’s most demanding environments. This is all backed up by an outstanding service and support programme – including installation and commissioning, equipment monitoring, emergency repairs, on-site or in-shop servicing, engineering consultancy, customer training and asset management expertise.

With packaged solutions from Weir Minerals, you can be assured of engineering excellence at all times. Software licensing, and especially enterprise software licensing, is a vital part of our services; We already understood that software licensing is complex and that establishing continuous software compliance requires in-depth expertise. b.lay was key to provide a solid insight in your license and deployment situation, technically and financially. The insight b.lay provided allowed us to keep cost efficient, but also creates the business case for ensuring to be in control in the future.

During the inventory process b.lay used their solution Zyncc, a single, secure platform where our organization could provide relevant information in a fast and accurate manner.  The data returned was reconciled by b.lay according to the rules and restrictions of the agreements. It allowed us to exchange this reporting with Oracle with confidence. Zyncc helped to realize the information delivery within the very tight deadlines we have given b.lay.

About Weir Minerals Netherlands B.V.:

Weir Minerals Netherlands develops, designs and manufactures technological advanced pumping systems under the trade names GEHO (piston, piston diaphragm and hose diaphragm pumps) and WARMAN (axial flow pumps). The service centre of Weir Minerals Netherlands is both locally and internationally engaged in the revision and repair of BEGEMANN, WARMAN, ROTO-JET and all other makes of centrifugal pumps. Service activities include f.e. design advice, turn-key project implementation, education and training programs. emergency service, maintenance contracts, total cost management, on-site repairs or at the well-equipped workshop, pump modifications, technical support during failures and plant standstills, safety and environmental solutions.

Weir Minerals is committed to delivering market-leading products and services. Our whole project, whole process solutions are designed to meet both the technical and commercial challenges of customers operating within the global mining and minerals processing industry.

Oracle Licensing Baseline Service

Oracle licensing is complex. To get a complete understanding of your licensing position you need an accurate, complete and up-to-date view of your Oracle software deployment, coupled with independent and confidential expert license analysis. The Oracle Licensing Baseline Service provides you with the data and expertise you need to rapidly achieve this. The combination of Baseline License Management from b.lay, coupled with iQSonar of iQuate delivers a service designed to ensure peace of mind. Combining tools and knowledge.

Click here for more information about the service.

about iQuate:

iQuate is a privately owned company established in 2002, with its HQ in Dublin, Ireland.  iQuate developed iQSonar a complete and accurate inventory technology. This technology delivers complete, continual and accurate visibility of highly complex physical, virtual and cloud environments. iQSonar is the first tool to be verified by Oracle’s License Management Services team as providing data which Oracle will accept as an alternative to Oracle’s own LMS measurement tools. Their verifiably accurate inventory improves the critical business decisions that control costs and mitigate risks for organizations, such as Barclays, BT and PWC. For more information www.iquate.com.

“Facts power our decision making on Oracle and JDE.  Strategically but also with regards to the day-to-day operations. b.lay was able to supply both them quickly, accurate and efficient.”

- Joep Kint, Gemeente Haarlem

b.lay was able to quickly and efficiently gather and analyse the facts around our Oracle technology entitlement and deployment and provide insight into future scenario’s. During the process they also handled an Oracle JDEdwards review requested by Oracle. Without delay we are able to include this analysis in our data centre strategy to the benefit of the Council. It helped us talk to Oracle in an effective manner.

About Gemeente Haarlem:
Haarlem is a municipality and a city in the Netherlands. It is the capital of the province of the northern half of Holland. By the end of 2010 Haarlem had a total population of 150,611. For more information www.haarlem.nl.

Both Vijfhart as b.lay aim to provide training to Oracle Professionals. By broaden the Vijfhart portfolio and to fulfill their demand for more Oracle Licensing training both parties seized the opportunity to jointly offer  b.lay’s Oracle License Management Services recognized Licensing Training.

When talking about Oracle, most people fail to fully comprehend the product and licensing diversity and the opportunities it offers. With this training Oracle Technical Professionals will be given an overview of the Oracle product strategy and portfolio as the type of product and its place in the IT architecture are closely related to the licensing of that product and the price. Understanding what to license and how empowers you to better build and recommend architectures.

From experience we have learned that if Oracle Technical Professionals are aware of the logic behind Oracle licensing they will be able to provide significant additional added value to their companies. Judging the impact their choices in the daily operations, enables the Oracle Technical Professional to be clear to their organization about financial consequences and risks.

Click here for more information about the Oracle License Training or click here to register to the training

about Vijfhart:

Originally Oracle software Training is their specialty. Over the years they have become one of the leading IT Trainers in the Netherlands. Meanwhile, their expertise extends far beyond Oracle with an assortment consisting of training in the areas of: Oracle, Java, Microsoft, Business Intelligence, Data Warehousing, Internet, Linux, SOA, XML, etc..

Vijhart stand for:  flexibility, responsiveness and independence in a flat organizational structure. This makes being flexible possible. Their approach is personal and professional.

B-lay and Emerset have merged Clear Licensing ® and Baseline License Management Methodology to change the world  of Microsoft license administration.

This allows us to offer our customers a wider range of high quality services. With these expanded services next to Oracle and Adobe, we will also be able to provide the facts around Microsoft licensing.

What does that mean for you?

• We help you evaluate your specific Microsoft environment from a financial point of view and from a technological stand point. Resulting in a comprehensive licensing report stating current installed software vs. purchased assets.
• We can perform an in-depth analysis of the financial and business advantages of your Microsoft agreements. The deliverable is a 3-6 year financial analysis. This outlines the various licensing options available and the ramifications of each option (Technology projects, financials and agreements).

Learn more about the results of our work.

• Banking Case Study
• Health Care Case Study

Agreement Background:

The customer has been party to an Enterprise Agreement Subscription (EAS) from 2002 starting off initially with only the basic platform products (Office, Windows O/S upg & Core Cal previously known as BackOffice Cal), subsequently since then additional products were introduced to the organisation changing the entire scope and importance of the ESA.

In 2008 the agreement was up for renewal and the customer wished to evaluate the options Microsoft presented both from a financial point of view and from a technological stand point.

Download The Case Study in PDF Format

Our baseline license management partner Emerset provides a case study on Microsoft in the Health Care Industry.

Background:

Over the past decade, the client has purchased all licensing through a Select Agreement as part of a long term strategic decision to work with Microsoft as a strategic vendor and to implement a wide range of Microsoft technologies over a 6-year period. The client has decided to perform an in-depth analysis of the financial and business advantages of an Enterprise Agreement.

• Annual Revenue: £1 billion
• Employees: 15,000
• PCs: 15,000 +

Download The Case Study in PDF Format

So if we say we think it is important to provide transparency to the ecosystem we move in, we also need to demonstrate it to help educate you…

An  important part of b.lay’s core values is that we believe in keeping things simple. It is a basic yet beautiful challenge.  If we want our community to embrace this core value, what is the best way to do it? How do we spread the message?

We therefore decided to start addressing one of the core elements of making and keeping things simple; education.

You can educate people in many ways, and with todays advanced technologies on the web or on devices it seems to be more about the transport of delivery than the message itself. Our experience is that learning on the job, within your own work environment and addressing topics relevant to you works best. Understanding all the rules from all software vendors or even 10 rules from one vendor is not feasible and not even desirable. We believe seeing the logic behind the licensing, how the complexity has grown over the years and knowing where to find the right sources when you need them is the only way to simplicity.

And to keep it simple it is best to call us, explain your need, and we will configure a suitable training to your need for you to get educated.

Available Oracle trainings:

• Oracle licensing made clear: 2 days.
• The insights of Oracle licensing: 3-4 days.

Do you want to b_updated on new training offerings please subscribe here.

Whatever your perspective we invite you to review the findings in our latest document “Communication Pitfalls – Bridging the gap is the key to stopping IT polarization”

Software Asset Management is a well developed and mature industry. There is an ISO standard, hundreds of tools and thousands of consultants devoted to SAM and yet many people are sceptical about the efficiency and value of traditional Software Asset Management? The ideas are compelling but perhaps the experience and the delivery has been less satisfactory.

We at b.lay decided to review the 5 most frequently raised issues and the subsequent results that we encounter in our engagements with software licensees. We decided to consolidate their experiences into a discussion document and look at ways that these issues can be addressed.

You can download the document “Communication Pitfalls – Bridging the gap is the key to stopping IT polarization”.

If you recognize the issues or wish to comment on the findings please join the debate and leave a reply below.

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With ever tightening budgets and governance; with software vendors seeking to protect intellectual property rights, those responsible for spending and protecting public money face a continuous challenge.

b.lay helps. contact us or read our ‘Public Sector’ whitepaper

b.lay has helped many Government organisations gain control of their  licence administration which has enabled them to maximise the value of their investments and protect against compliance related issues. But, even more importantly, understanding how this works has enabled  better decision making. Often resulting in an architecture fit for the future, at equal or lower cost.

We also provide an adaptable methodology for the administration of software assets. The aim of this is to turn short term improvements into long term benefits that remain with your organisation helping to consolidate the efficiencies and improve the way you work.

If you hold any of these IT responsibilities you should talk to b.lay:

• Providing better value for money
• Protecing against costly audits
• Take advantage of previously underused IT assets
• Reduce spending on unnecessary maintenance and upgrades

If you want to know the facts about the use of software licenses, b.lay can give you the insight into your software license and contract administration that you require. We can help you identify opportunities to discover and exploit.

b.lay helps: contact us or read our ‘Public Sector’ whitepaper

Other available resources:

• Zyncc
• baseline license management
• whitepaper Delivering on the Theory: Reassessing the value of Software Asset Management to a sceptical world.

Check out how Zyncc can help you…

In the last few years the market has developed several standards around managing your licenses and review processes. We, at b.lay aim ‘to make the complex, simple’. We strongly believe in efficiency and that a customer should have a clear understanding of what needs to be executed in order to achieve  practical results.

Our philosphy is supported by the development of our solution Zyncc. This solution helps you to collect relevant data and communicate with the people responsible for it inside or outside of your organization. In our many years experience doing reviews we continuously had to deal our clients internal communication challenges. Our smart assessment modules are focussed on helping you capture data for multiple software vendors and translating it into easy to understand and relevant information.

Zyncc functionality provides a combination of addressing the right people and asking the key questions in a smart way whilst allowing you to simplify the data gathering within your company. We streamline the communication and synchronize the data flow for all involved. This optimizes interaction flows and combines it with the population of a central repository in a structured way supporting the entire data gathering and interpretation cycle helping you to become efficient.

Let us highlight the key benefits of Zyncc:

# Efficient Process

• Your environment will be assessed by a trusted partner with the help of our first class solutions and license experts
• We provide Transparency by knowing each step of the process
• The process and content can be geared to support existing processes or tools.
• You are in control

# Smart Data Gathering

• Use of intelligent setup assessments in order to question your organization.
• Easy to combine with discovery software by finding relevant data
• Retrieve a complete license and deployment picture per software vendor
• Data gathering is done with the highest standards and through non-intrusive processes

# Reliable Fact based Reporting

• Insight into what you own by gathering contractual software agreements and license records centrally and/or by requesting from distributed sources
• Know what you are entitled to use by translating your acquired licenses into your ‘right to use’
• Relate the results of Smart Data Gathering to your entitlements in the optimal way
• Deliver a reliable fact based report to provide to a software publisher in advance

# Financial

• Have appropriate controls for internal cross charges
• Be ahead of the vendor: negate the internal audit cost
• Demonstrable cost prevention: reorganize your allocation to match entitlement

We deliver Zyncc as a white-label and in the future will launch our own brand ‘your zyncc’.

Contact us for more information or register here for us to update you.

“To maximize the cost efficiencies of nowadays IT infrastructures we believe companies like b.lay are vital to empower you with control and insight”

- Ton Arrachart, Staff Manager Information Technology at Van Oord

The IT industry is characterized by a large number of software suppliers/distributors and wide variety of products and services. In software licensing, and especially enterprise software licensing, all IT choices are vital; hardware, infrastructure and project demands. Further technological enhancements happen on an ongoing bases. This makes software licensing complex and treacherous and establishing continuous software compliance near to impossible.

Companies like b.lay are vitial to ensure we keep control and insight, especially when IT is not your companies core business. The insight they provide allows us to keep cost efficient, but also creates the business case to use today’s technology in an effective manner.

About Van Oord:
Van Oord is a Dutch based world-wide operating dredging, marine and offshore contractor. Van Oord has realised many infrastructural projects throughout the world like the artificial islands Palm Jumeirah and The World in Dubai. The company is a partner in the construction of Maasvlakte 2, the Rotterdam port expansion project in the Netherlands. For more information www.vanoord.com.

This is a b.lay technique which we have developed through many years of working with the complexities of software asset management. It is a response to the inevitable consequence of over reliance on discovery and technical solutions that leave an incomplete picture of the true state of affairs.

Baseline License Management emphasises that if you wish to establish the facts you must bring together complete data from all the relevant sources. A software publishers record of license grants, the end users records relevant to the grants and the usage data that has been discovered from an end users technical environment. Data that does not include these key indicators of entitlement does not establish the baseline and therefore is not a true and reliable representation of fact. In the context of software asset management this means one cannot effectively manage their assets without knowing the full facts regarding the entitlement and its usage.

Having and sharing a clear baseline with others has an immediate positive effect. It increases operational efficiency, but even more importantly, it allows your staff to make decisions that allow the use of the latest software at minimal cost.

Baseline License Management is a practical solution for what in the SAM ISO standard (ISO/IEC19770-1) is referred to as  ‘Core SAM Processes’ (the so called: Inventory processes for SAM, Verification and Compliance Processes for SAM and Operations Management Processes and Interfaces for SAM).  b.lay is not a SAM company, we provide the hands on solutions to enable you with a solid base to practice SAM.

b.lay analyses and represents baseline data in its data repository called Zyncc.

Zyncc is the first business utility of its kind to bring all of these data sources together and represent them for the overall value of a business. It serves to allow end users right through the business spectrum the visibility of software assets in the context of the role they perform.

Read more about: Zyncc or keep me up to date

The name: Lictionary, your online License dictionary

After testing many of storage models it turned out no existing repository model could store data the way we would like. Especially not if you want to keep relational structures to create rules and scenarios and store timelines. This led us to build entire new software with the help of fantastic business partners. We call it a cross over between a relational database and wikipedia. This software is unique in simplicity and has already surprised people involved in the project.

Lictionary will not be on the market until early 2011, but we are starting to use it internally and are looking for people that would like to be part of this early phase of exploration and beta testing that should take place in the last quarter of 2010. So, if you are interested, let us know at info@lictionary.info.

Follow the progress on twitter

b.lay will share their solution with you in the next generation of Zyncc.

Being sharp and staying up to date in the digital world is a minimum prerequisite for the continuity of your business.

Keeping track of products, services, IP, licensing, maintenance upgrade paths and related rules are a challenge for your internal team, your partners and your customers.

For a supplier this means you are unable to access seemingly obvious means of creating value added opportunities with your customers and for your customers difficulties accessing complex data from multiple and frequently changing sources mean that they experience negative perception and are less inclined to make positive buying decisions in favour of your products or services.

b.lay Zyncc technology creates clear product structures associated with the appropriate licensing rules and applies them to your customer’s usage, deployment and entitlement.

As a result Zyncc technology opens up multiple levels of previously inaccessible Business Intelligence about your customers. Open your eyes to the opportunity.

To learn more about Zyncc or to enquire about our beta testing program please contact b.lay on…..

info@b-lay.com

Or call us on +31 30 320 0140

Their new Zyncc allows end-users to assess their compliance at their own time, by themselves, using an online methodology and support; Synchronizing vendor and customer.
We wish them all the best with their pilot over the next few months and are anxious to see their customer’s feedback.

It is there: the visualization of the Trust that the Oracle Global License Management Services team has in our work.

In December 2009 b.lay B.V. obtained as the first in the world the “Trusted Advisor” status from Oracle. Now an official Oracle branding is made.

You will be seeing more of this image.

• Oracle’s software licensing is seen as complex and treacherous. The number of products and acquisitions has resulted in numerous pricelists and a wide array of licensing possibilities and extended definitions. Keeping track of the changes that effect your organization might seem an impossible undertaking. In addition, failure to properly cope your business needs with the correct Oracle licensing structure may negatively impact your efficiencies and finances.

• For Oracle, as for many ICT companies, the technological possibilities of today determine the licensing of tomorrow. At first glance (or review), the perception is that licensing strategy is driven by commercial objectives. However, when closely observing the changes made over the last decade, there is logic behind the changes and an ongoing effort to make licensing transparent and accessible becomes evident.

The objective of this 2-day training is to provide you with this logic, a thorough insight in Oracle’s historic technology licensing, and a thorough guide for Oracle licensing and license management.

• At the end of this course delegates will be able to:
  • Understand the logic behind Oracle’ licensing history.
  • Apply the core elements of the Oracle Licensing and License Management process.
  • Oversee the complexity of Oracle licensing by addressing it step by step.