Businesses that have endured software audits from industry groups like the BSA and the SIIA or from software publishers like Autodesk likely are familiar with the basic audit process of counting the total number of installations for audited products and comparing those installations against the number of licenses previously purchased to support them. There are…
It is standard practice for software vendors to include clauses in their license agreements giving the vendors the right to invoke audits or some other mechanisms to ensure that the licensed products are used in a way that is consistent with agreed licensing restrictions. Most software consumers would agree – perhaps grudgingly – that such…
One of the most critical steps any business faces in any software audit is conducting an internal analysis of deployments to entitlements, preferably before any audit data is shared with the auditors. That internal review serves several purposes, including (1) identifying deployments for which a company’s license documentation may be lacking, thereby giving the company…
Each of the major software publishers has one or two tricks up its sleeve – tricks that often are missed by licensees – affecting how its server products may be used in virtualized environments. For example, Microsoft SQL Server requires a minimum of four core licenses per vCPU, even if the actual number of vCPUs…
IBM may be making it more difficult for IBM customers to qualify for sub-capacity licensing in virtualized environments. As many companies who have been audited by IBM have learned, it is sometimes difficult to demonstrate that the company has met all the criteria necessary to avoid licensing the full capacity of the virtualized environment. With…
Recent weeks have seen a number of news reports and announcements indicating that the Next Big Thing for audits – financial audits, at least, for the time being – is the use of artificial intelligence technologies to facilitate the analysis of large volumes of data in the context of audit-related activities. KPMG’s recent announcement was particularly noteworthy from my…
The software-audit language contained in IBM’s standard license agreements never has been anything that anyone would mistake for customer-focused or even very fair contract terms. However, in August 2014, IBM released a new version of its Passport Advantage Agreement (PAA) that applied immediately to all new business that now is in the process of being…
In April 2012, IBM announced that it had reached an agreement to acquire Varicent Software, Inc., an Ontario-based publisher of analytics software for compensation and sales performance management. According to the announcement, Varicent’s customers include Starwood Hotels, Covidien, Dex One, Manpower, Hertz, Office Depot and Farmers. While corporate acquisitions of software publishers do not necessarily…
One of the major changes in the latest version of IBM’s Passport Advantage Agreement is the requirement that customers maintain subscription and support (S&S) on either all of the licenses that are installed and in service or none of the licenses. Customers can no longer maintain subscription and support on only some of the licenses…
When first contacted by IBM for a “compliance review” (read: software audit), many business owners simply assume that the scope of the requested audit is within IBM’s rights under applicable licensing agreements. Alternatively, if they do request that IBM identify the basis for the audit demand, they take it at its word that those rights…
