Licensing the unlicensed
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- S Magazine, August 2006
Businesses of all sizes can avoid financial and commercial consequences by ensuring their business software licences are up-to-date and are valid for all users.
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Indeed, Steve Attwell of Sage says the company tries to avoid a ‘big stick’ attitude to enforcing licence compliancy. “If we can across a mid-market company that had to legitimise say £30,000 of licences, we’d try to work out a phased payment for that company. We treat customers with respect because very few customers are actually trying to pirate software themselves – the software is mission critical and they don’t want to rely on pirated software that could bring the business grinding to a halt.”
While auditing a business to find out what software it has installed on its machines can be “onerous”, according to FAST’s Lovelock, there are a number of ways to reduce the burden. Software asset management (SAM) tools can help if there are a large number of PCs that may be running illegal software. These typically work by scanning each computer for executable files and then reporting back which software is installed. The BSA also provides a downloadable set of tools at http://www.justasksam.co.uk and a number of more complete tools are available from companies such as CA, Novell and Centennial Software, some of which have demonstration versions that can be downloaded and used for a short period. They typically cost £8 per seat and upwards to use on a more permanent basis.
After determining who is running which software – since it’s typically only running the software rather than having it installed that counts as requiring a licence – the organisation then needs to determine how many licences it actually has. In some organisations, that may just involve “a quick check in the cupboards” according to Lovelock, or simply ringing the vendor and asking how many licences the company has on record for the organisation; Sage’s dedicated number for licence enquiries is 0845 111 9988.. Software resellers should also keep records of sales; invoices are often sufficient, both for the BSA and for law courts, as proof of purchase of a claimed number of licences, even if the licences themselves can’t be found.
However, organisations should never rely completely on vendors to keep complete records, according to Gartner analyst Jane Disbrow. “A software vendor has the same problems tracking licence sales that a company has in tracking licence purchases.”
Once the correct number of licences and applications installed is discovered, the organisation can either pay for additional licences or decide if it needs all the instances of the software it has. Campden was able to scale down from 11,000 fonts to just 3,000, reduce the number of its servers fivefold and upgrade to the latest versions of some software. This not only saved it money in the long-term, but made the company more efficient.
Once organisations have rationalised licences, they need to ensure that the problem doesn’t occur again. That requires imposing discipline on the workforce and setting down clear policies about what can and can’t be installed on machines. Using various management tools, organisations can lock down desktops and laptops so that it’s not even possible to install new software without the authorisation of the IT department. Gartner’s Disbrow recommends conducting an annual inventory of licences and software to ensure compliancy. She also advises establishing guidelines for maintaining the inventory records so they are consistently recorded, preferably in an asset management system, although the BSA’s SAM tools will also suffice. Policies can also be established as part of a wider management framework, the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL), which Forrester Research analyst Richard Peynot says provides “tangible cost savings”.
Ensuring software licences are up-to-date has benefits for both customer and software vendor. Although it may involve some work at first, with proper planning it can become a good way to save money and ensure employees aren’t doing anything that could land the company in trouble. Without it? Just ask John Pettifor what can happen.
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