A new study, by KACE, a systems management appliance company, revealed that nearly two- thirds of IT executives and managers believe their companies have not taken appropriate steps to ensure compliance with the license agreements for software they have deployed. These same IT executives believe their companies are ill- prepared for a software license compliance audit. The reasons cited are insufficient software discovery capabilities and manual license tracking processes.
The survey showed IT organizations have not taken adequate measures to track whether or not deployed software is in compliance with license agreements. In fact, over half of the organizations polled revealed they track software license assignments manually, or not at all.
"The thought of software license compliance can often generate images of big software companies coming after their clients with stringent audit processes in order to wring money from them and find unlicensed software in use," said the study's author Diane Hagglund of King Research. "In reality, most IT organizations want to be in compliance, but they are struggling with the effort to discover software assets, track license assignments, reconcile purchased licenses to installed software, and take the necessary steps to ensure compliance."
A summary of the key findings from the study include:
- 69% of respondents are not confident that they are fully in compliance with software license agreements;
- 60% believe they have unlicensed software deployed;
- 56% track software license assignments manually or not at all;
- Only 8% of participants have a fully automated process for tracking software license compliance.
The King Research "Software License Compliance: A Survey of Corporate IT" report is available at: http://www.kace.com/pdf/AR-King-Software-License-Compliance.php.
Interested in information related to this topic? Subscribe to our Information Technology eNewsletter.
