Software Asset Management (SAM) Blog

With the vast majority of commercial organizations still shunning any widescale roll-out of Windows Vista, Microsoft will be hoping for better things from Windows 7. The latest and greatest operating system will now officially ship on October 22 2009, according to multiple news reports.

Windows 7 will come in five different editions including Starter, Home Premium, Professional, Enterprise and Ultimate.

Following its claim that businesses in London UK use as much as £149 million (US $244.3m) worth of unlicensed software, the Business Software Alliance (BSA) has announced that it is launching a new campaign aimed at the British capital. This follows similar campaigns in other parts of the UK.

The two-month campaign will encourage London businesses to audit their own software use to determine whether they are safely within legal boundaries.

According to London’s ‘Metro’ newspaper, this news comes as the BSA has reached a £10,000 settlement with a London-based architects firm which was found to have illegal software on its network.

Meanwhile, in the USA, the BSA has announced a $205,000 settlement with a Nevada-based civil engineering company which was found to be using illegal copies of Autodesk software. According to news reports, the company first refused to co-operate with the BSA on a software audit, which led to the licensing watchdog filing a lawsuit in the Californian courts.

According to the Business Software Alliance (BSA), the Manufacturing industry is the worst sector in the US economy for effectively managing its software assets. The BSA investigated confidential reports of software piracy across the US to determine the top-ten market sectors for software mis-management. The top five industries emerged as Manufacturing, Sales/Distribution, Service, Financial Services and (perhaps somewhat ironically!) Software Development.

The inclusion of Financial Services in the top five will surprise many, as this industry is no stranger to codes of practice and strict regulations. However, it is the ease with which an organization can find itself in breach of compliance laws that is perhaps the key consideration here - it is all to easy to install unlicensed software on the network or to purchase appliations through illegitimate means.

This highlights the need for effective SAM within end user organizations - not only to check the volume of licenses held against the number of applications discovered on the network, but also to ensure that software is being purchased through the correct channels and that organisations are not over-paying for software they don’t need, or is no longer in use.

Microsoft has joined forces with the Linux Foundation to draft a shared letter to the American Law Institute (ALI) on the subject of software licensing laws.

Both software providers are concerned that ALI is considering a guideline that would make the assumption that all software should be shipped with no defects, and that this should be considered a de facto warranty.

TYhe ALI is made up of members from the American legal establishment, which draws up guidelines for judges that explain how the law should be applied in legal cases. This week the group meets to finalise the Principles of the Law of Software Contracts.