FAST Corporate Services has released a standard it hopes will help UK businesses stop using illegal and unnecessary software.
Created in conjunction with the British Standards Institute, the document lists all the things businesses must do to become 'software compliant' and then offers guidance on how to achieve these goals.
Peter Kay, director of services at FAST, said: "What we're trying to do is put out a definitive standard so if you follow these steps, you will be compliant."
The organisation's mission is to make corporate UK "completely legal" in terms of software use, Kay said. Given the potential legal penalties for violating software copyrights or licences, Kay believes the standard will make it easier for British businesses "to get where they want to be".
According to research from FAST, over half of UK companies are vulnerable to legal action due to the use of unlicensed software. About a third of respondents said they had no way to control which applications are on their networks and nearly two-thirds do not lock down systems to prevent installation of unwanted software.
The standard provides advice on how to establish software usage policies for employees, carry out an audit of all systems, make sure you have rights to use all software and manage application usage on an on-going basis.
FAST points out that carrying out such an audit not only eliminates potential lawsuits and legal fees but also could cut costs by making sure businesses are not paying for unnecessary software licences. A third of UK companies do not monitor how often software on their networks is used, according to FAST.
The standard, called the FAST Standard for Software Compliance -- FSSC-1:2004, is available to all FAST members. Companies can sign up for membership on the organisation's Web site.
Talkback
Great. They better teach their members about the more finer print within, say, Microsoft license agreements because else their members will have no clue about things like: distinct input, multiplexing, downgrade rights, crossover licensing, OEM versus FPP, EC versus CAL licensing and a bunch of other 'definitions' designed to make licensing much more complex then it should be.
I'm guessing that 90%+ of companies are not compliant and don't have a clue as to why they're not compliant.
Mistake number one is to actually believe what your advisor/salesman is telling you and not have him put that in writing complete with heavy fines if things turn out to be different in reality.
Advise: dig up all the finer print details about licensing from vendor so and so via the Internet and then confront your advisor/salesman with various detailed questions. If they respond along the lines of: that's just crazy, that's not how we do that, we've been doing things differently for years without problems, I'll talk to them myself and clear this up and so on then do question if your advisor/salesman suddenly represents the legal department of vendor so and so.