Software Asset Management (SAM) Blog

The Business Software Alliance (BSA) has announced that firms across EMEA have paid more than $23 million in damages and resorative license purchases, having been caught using illegal software. The BSA claims that it received 5,546 leads in Europe in January 2009. In the UK, firms paid £400,000 ($570,000) in damages to the licensing watchdog, and a further £1.47 million ($2.09 million) in costs to acquire new legal licenses.

The Business Software Alliance (BSA) has announced that it has reached a settlement with Utah-based, CaseData Corporation, for $250,000 after the company was found to be using unlicensed copies of software from Microsoft, Adobe and Symantec. As part of its settlement, CaseData has agreed to delete all unauthorized software, purchase new licenses and implement tighter Software Asset Management (SAM) practices going forward.

According to Jenny Blank, BSA’s Senior Director, Legal Affairs. “When services firms… fail to develop and implement an effective Software Asset Management plan, they can ultimately learn a hard lesson. In the end, it’s significantly cheaper to purchase legal software in the first place than risk getting caught by the BSA.”

The BSA has said that the company worked closely with them to identify missing licenses and co-operated fully through the compliance audit.

The BSA claims to receive over 2,500 reports of software piracy to its website and hotline 1-888-NO PIRACY each year. The majority of BSA’s leads come from current or former employees who had information relating to the unlicensed software activity.

According to an article published in CIO Magazine, the Student Loans Company saved itself £85,000 ($124,000) in just one year by implementing Centennial Discovery and other Software Asset Management (SAM) tools. By working with the tools and the FAST program, the public sector company estimates that it has saved an addition £50,000 ($73,000) annually in subsequent years.

While the Student Loans Company accepts that SAM is not a simple process, it claims that automated discovery and license management are critical to uncovering cost savings across the organization.

View the article here.