Just days after Dell announced it was to enter the software asset management (SAM) market with the acquisition of Asap Software, Microsoft services specialist Teksys has bolstered its own SAM portfolio with the launch of a new on demand service.

Based on Centennial Software's Discovery SAM software suite, Teksys said the new managed suite aims to provide firms with a fixed cost service for optimising the discovery, procurement and management of their software estates.

Teksys said that under the new service plan its staff will use the hosted version of the Discovery suite to gain remote visibility over a customer's network and use the information to provide a range of SAM services, including software inventory analysis, license position development and maintenance, vendor audit response, licensing help desk, vendor reporting and process and policy implementation.

Shaun Fröhlich, chairman of Teksys, said that the managed service delivery model is ideally suited to the growing number of firms that are concerned about software license compliance but often lack the resources to cover the up front costs involved in implementing effective SAM policies and systems.

The company said it is offering the service on a per-month per-device basis with prices for firms with over 1,000 user devices starting from £2.04 per device per month.

Matt Fisher, vice president of marketing at Centennial, said that the hosted model would allow IT chiefs to deploy SAM best practices without "having to go to the board to ask for £40,000".

He added that the version of the Discovery suite used by Teksys had been specifically tailored to suit the managed service model. "The software is run on Teksys' servers and as long as we can get an internet connection to the customers' network we can get all the data we need," he explained. "The solution is also tailored so that the data is compressed and encrypted on the user's PC so IT chiefs don’t have to worry about the solution leading to bandwidth overload or security problems."

The announcement follows news that hardware giant Dell is to bolster its own SAM services through the $340m acquisition of Asap Software. The company said the deal would allow it to simplify customers' procurement processes and allow Dell to bolster its software licensing, purchasing and compliance services.