The Business Software Alliance and the Federation Against Software Theft promise to ensure that companies are compliant. Do companies need to use their standards and pay for them, or is there another way they can stay compliant?
The BSA tends to focus on enforcing the rights of vendors, such as Microsoft. FAST take a different approach — both enforcing the rights of members such as Conputer Associates, Novell, and others, but at the same time issuing and auditing a standard [FSSC1:2004].
The advent of ISO 19770 will allow companies to select a standard that is independent from any enforcement body and is internationally recognised. It's important to understand though that obtaining and maintaining a standard is not a necessary part of being compliant — it is perfectly acceptable to set your own internal standards and adhere to them. We would recommend that before a company commits to a standard they look at ITIL's guidelines for best practice.
Companies such as Oracle license software on a per-processor, and now on a per-core basis. This makes licensing very complex for users. How can they make this easier? How can users ensure they are getting best value from their licences?
To be honest, there is no magic wand. If companies are going to do this themselves then they need some in-house expertise, and they also need to ask the right questions of their vendor.
There are specialists and consultants out there, but be careful to ensure that they are not a reseller — if they are, be sure to get a second opinion. Having an independent software asset management (SAM) partner that understands your needs and works with you to meet your requirements will allow you to turn the tables on your reseller and negotiate from a position of renewed strength.
Your company specialises in providing services to help companies achieve their software asset management goals. From your experience, what are the main hurdles that companies encounter during a SAM project?
There are three main areas where most organisations stumble. The first is with file reconciliation, being able to tie up which applications files belong to. Audit tools will leave a lot of unreconciled files to be sorted and this can be a very time consuming process.
Second is locating licence documentation — many organisations have not been as careful with their licence documentation as they would be with other assets, thankfully proof of purchase will be OK in most cases, though this can still be problematic and time-consuming to obtain. And finally, interpretation of the licence grant: licences can be complex to understand and interpret — most organisations to not have the time or expertise to fully understand the documents that they have in their possession.
At face value, your approach appears to be one of outsourcing software asset management. Are there extra risks to an organisation from using a hosted solution such as yourselves?
Firstly, we need to stress that overall responsibility for SAM is always maintained by the organisation. The Liken service has been designed around providing hosted solutions to the problem areas of SAM — we can undertake as much or as little of the work as is required, it's a very flexible approach.
Outsourcing implies that an entire function is being given to the external party, and this does not accurately describe what we do. We believe that effective SAM can be a source of competitive advantage for the organisation and as such should be seen as something of a core competency. Our aim is to support our clients in achieving their SAM strategy with tools, experience and resources that would not be available to them internally. If anything is "outsourced", it is the administration- and labour-intensive tasks that do not add value to the organisation in themselves.
