This thesis contains an outline of the foundational understanding of SAM and the topic around licenses. The work aimed to determine the current license and software-related issues that businesses face, showcase some of the SAM tools currently available on the market, demonstrate how a SAM tool might be used, gain understanding on how banks manage their licenses and assess contracting partners obligations.

By defining and answering six different research questions, an overall understanding about SAM and the related obligations was achieved. The questions were divided into a conceptual phase and an analytical phase. The conceptual phase contains a systematic literature review that was used to collect and organize reliable data by conducting information of peer reviewed articles and books with predefined criteria and keywords. For the analytical phase, the activities included conducting an interview with a service provider and a survey that was further distributed to other Kantonalbanken.

Tracking licenses without proper tools leads to many struggles for companies such as over- and underlicensing, non-transparent overview of their license usage or lack of security. With the implementation of a SAM-Tool, many regulation aspects and compliancy can be improved. Up-to-date data and a clear overview are provided with a SAM-Tool which assists in decisive next order purchases or for potential sales pitches. The magic quadrant of Gartner assists in the localization of the SAM-Tool within the global market and with the SAM maturity items a well-prepared decision can be made, covering important parts that might have been overlooked. The survey covered challenges, benefits and the current approach to license management, suggesting that there is still room for improvement in license management. Lastly, the involvement of third-party companies where tasks or infrastructure is outsourced also play a major role when implementing a SAM-Tool. Each party has obligations to cooperate, where communication is key for success, requirements must be defined and finalized within the initializing phase and knowledge gaps must be deduced through proper documentation and training.