Karnataka trains her public enterprises in software asset management

23rd September 2011
Karnataka trains her public enterprises in software asset management
Jeetendra Singh, Officer on Special Duty, Dept of IT, BT and S&T, Govt of Karnataka & Lizum Mishra, Director, BSA at the Closing ceremony of the Software Asset Management initiative for PSUs in Karnataka, September 23 2011

Bangalore, September 23: The Business Software Alliance (BSA), a global nonprofit trade association created to advance the goals of the software industry and its hardware partners,  has  partnered with the Karnataka Government's Centre of E-Governance,  to help train 10 state- owned enterprises on the business benefits of adopting good and robust IT Governance practices. The programme which concluded Friday,  makes Karnataka the only state in India to have engaged PSUs on the principles of Software Asset Management.
M.N. Vidyashankar, Principal Secretary, IT and E-Governance, Government of Karnataka said “PSU’s play an important role in providing critical products and services to citizens, hence, it is important that they are educated and trained on optimization and proper deployment of software assets which are a critical tool for production and citizen transactions. This will protect PSUs from tangible risks such as security breaches, system breakdowns and liabilities associated with usage and deployment of illegal software. Karnataka is a leading state in the usage of IT and we are extremely pleased that we have also led the way for PSU’s to avail the full benefits of the internationally recognized ISO Standard of Software Asset Management.”

Added Lizum Mishra, Director, Business Software Alliance: “The core objective of this programme was to ensure that Karnataka state owned enterprises understand the importance of software in their everyday functioning and are able to better manage their software assets to stay competitive, secure and productive. We have been fortunate to get the Center of E-Governance, Government of Karnataka’s undivided support in this initiative and are certain that the learnings will enable state PSUs to use the benefits from these trainings to perform efficiently and create significant cost savings on software as well as IT processes and infrastructure.”

The program exposed state- based PSUs in Karnataka to the principles of the internationally recognized ISO Standard of Software Asset Management (SAM), its salient features and its core business benefits to government organizations. These principles involve building capabilities on optimizing the purchase, deployment, maintenance, utilization, and disposal of software applications within an organization, reducing information technology (IT) costs and limit business and legal risk related to the ownership and use of software, while maximizing IT responsiveness and end-user productivity.

Useful links: www.bsa.org  

http://www.karunadu.gov.in/egovernance/Pages/home.aspx    

 Sep 23 3011