Governance and Compliance
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Software License Compliance – is it part of IT GRC?
Posted by CB on January 13th, 2010I’ve been exploring a very informative article on IT Audit techniques by Robert E Davis. It dives into a level of sophistication around the choices of testing methodologies that I am naive in, so kept me occupied for more than the regulation one mug of coffee per blog read. It also gave me a link … Continue reading Software License Compliance – is it part of IT GRC?
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Forrester Survey on Software License Audits
Posted by CB on November 23rd, 2009Just a quick note to encourage anyone who has had an unfortunate experience with a software license compliance audit in the last two years to complete the online survey posted by Forrester. They promise to share their results, which will include measures taken to deal with out-of-compliance situations. I hope they’ll make it available to a larger … Continue reading Forrester Survey on Software License Audits
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Licensing: a nightmare for customers only?
Posted by CB on October 8th, 2009It’s been my pleasure today to be talking with Jeff Gordon who runs a Web site dedicated to helping organizations understand the licenses to the software that they use, and encouraging them to take a more pro-active stance in negotiating with their software suppliers. I must be nuts to be publicising this, because the thought of … Continue reading Licensing: a nightmare for customers only?
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IT Asset Management now mainstream says Gartner
Posted by CB on August 6th, 2009One of the analysts who I have an alert set for has today issued a research note looking at the increasing acceptance of IT Asset Management in the corporate market. This is great news for ITAM vendors like us, but it does leave me very puzzled as to why it has taken so long. At … Continue reading IT Asset Management now mainstream says Gartner
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Very useful thread on realities and challenges of SAM
Posted by CB on July 7th, 2009I found this thread this morning, started by Uttam Kumar at KPMG in India. The thread takes the lid off the situations Uttam regularly uncovers, with very variable attention given the demands of full software asset management. One contributor to the thread talks about the realities of achieving comprehensive software identification, and the importance of … Continue reading Very useful thread on realities and challenges of SAM
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What do you do when you have just lost 75,000 customer details?
Posted by CB on June 19th, 2009So, here we are again, this time with 75,000 customers’ details out there somewhere. Could it have been prevented? If RFID tags had been attached, would the laptops have conveniently been taken past a sensor station – or did they leave through a point of forced entry anyway? What is particularly interesting here is the decision process … Continue reading What do you do when you have just lost 75,000 customer details?
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Software Asset Optimization – right for today
Posted by CB on June 8th, 2009For a long time, Vector has promoted the idea of Software Asset Optimization as a best practice approach to managing software assets. Our view is that management of software assets is never properly ‘joined-up’ until equal weight is given to the four elements of Quantifying what your organization really needs. So often, this is largely overlooked … Continue reading Software Asset Optimization – right for today
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Microsoft Audit: A Complete Response
Posted by CB on June 1st, 2009It’s been encouraging to hear that our Software Compliance and Optimization solution recently enabled another customer to respond comprehensively to the demands of a Microsoft license audit. With over 2,000+ PCs highly dispersed across the US, it was necessary to provide evidence of reliable and recent identification of every deployment of Windows, Office and other … Continue reading Microsoft Audit: A Complete Response
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“Unpleasant surprises” can be avoided, saving thousands
Posted by CB on May 27th, 2009I read, with interest, this blog post which claims many business are finding BSA and SIIA audits costing them thousands because of settlement claims. The post says expectations of some companies as to the settlement figure is far too low, resulting in “unpleasant surprises”. These can be avoid though, as can audits in the first … Continue reading “Unpleasant surprises” can be avoided, saving thousands
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Counting installs is not enough for software license audit
Posted by CB on May 25th, 2009I heard last week about an organization that had been asked by a major software supplier to cooperate with an audit. Some time later, the organization produced a tally of the total copies installed of each of the supplier’s applications. Turns out, that’s never going to be enough. Unless maintenance is totally up to date … Continue reading Counting installs is not enough for software license audit
