The future of SAM – Challenges and opportunities within a complex matrix of cloud vendors

At the 2018, SAMS Europe, Taco Rensink, Global Procurement & Software Asset Manager form Skanska gave an insightful presentation on the future of SAM. What are the opportunities for SAM professionals, what changes are they faced with today? Taco Rensink sees a whole field of new challenges and risks opened up by the transition to cloud systems. This is why he believes a competency is shift required going forward.

In most companies today, the list of used cloud vendors is long. The difficulty for Rensink lies in the fact that procurement processes and usage have changed. Software is no longer just procured through the company but also through the individual users signing up for a service. This gives cloud vendors the chance to gather detailed information on its users. A related issue is then how a company can differentiate between its staff is using the services privately or commercially (such as google drive or dropbox). These changes bear risks not only for information security but also non-compliance between private and commercial use. Therefore, the new elements in SAM today are usage analysis and data protection. Managing cloud systems is now all about compliance and security.

Watch his presentation in full to see his expert assessment.

About Taco Rensink

Originally educated as an electronic engineer, he later on added marketing, management and economy to his background. After 25 year within the financial industry in a number of roles such as IT Manager, European Support Center Manager and Global head of Service Management, he joined Skanska nearly 3 years ago. His focus is now Procurement & Software Asset Management at the corporate level. In this role, he is responsible for managing and procuring global software and cloud agreements and as well as driving the global SAM practice and related work within Skanska.

Skanska is one of the world’s major project development and construction groups which combines expertise and financial strength, develops offices, homes and public-private partnership projects. Skanska creates sustainable solutions and aims to be a leader in quality, green construction, work safety and business ethics.