No one likes to be audited. In most cases, there is little that a business can do at the outset of an audit to avoid licensing exposure, if that business has historically inadequate software asset management processes. However, there are steps that all audited companies usually can take – regardless of which publisher is conducting…
Software audits can be intensely frustrating ordeals for businesses to navigate. Many publishers will go to great lengths to cajole their customers with assurances of amicability and license-optimization opportunities, but most IT managers know that the reality of audits in almost all cases is anything but friendly and fraught with pitfalls. However, the first things…
Most businesses that try to plan for software audits and to estimate the potential exposure they could incur in the event of those audits know that the primary cost components of that exposure typically are the prices associated with any licenses they may have failed to acquire. For example, if a company determines it has…
Software auditors such as KPMG, Deloitte and PriceWaterhouseCoopers like to have things their way. It’s an understandable impulse – with likely hundreds of audits pending at any one time, the natural inclination is to standardize the process around a single set of tools and processes with which the auditors are most familiar. However, those tools…
For many businesses, the allure of moving their software platforms, applications and/or databases to The Cloud lies substantially in the promise of ridding themselves of license-compliance concerns. The pitfalls of a Cloud-based architecture are worth accepting for many businesses that do not want to expose themselves to the risks of hefty penalties or compliance purchases…
Most software license agreements used by major publishers like Microsoft and IBM are in many ways vague with respect to license restrictions and metrics. This leaves licensees in the position of having to interpret the agreements based on whatever guidance may be available from the publisher or, often, simply based on the licensees’ own experience…
There is a set of related questions our software-audit clients frequently ask us that boil down to variations on one or more of the following: Why am I being audited? What if anything did I do to cause this? How can I avoid it in the future? Unfortunately, those questions often do not have clear…
Enterprise-level software solutions often are very complex products requiring a level of expertise that may be outside the experience or skill sets of generalist IT teams. Many businesses therefore rely on the services of independent software vendors and consultants to evaluate their needs for particular solutions, to procure the required licensing, and to deploy and…
While the over-arching concept underlying a software audit initiated by a publisher like Microsoft or IBM is the same as that in an audit initiated by the BSA | The Software Alliance or the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) – a comparison of software entitlements to software deployments in an effort to identify any…
In the software licensing world, all audits are not created equal. On one hand are the “true,” contractual audits. Here, the applicable license agreement gives the software publisher the right, usually upon notice and sometimes limited in frequency or scope, to demand access to the systems where its products are installed or a report of…
