BSA combines carrot with stick - enforcement & education
The Business Software Alliance (BSA) has announced that it intends to invest in both enforcement and education activities in the second half of 2009. In addition to continuing with its regional licensing ‘clamp downs’ (which have concentrated on Glasgow and Manchester recently), the vendor-funded watchdog will also push a program it calls ‘SAM Advantage’.
This program will be trialled initially in Canada, the US and Australia before being imported to the UK before the end of 2009.
While many will appreciate the BSA’s efforts to complement its enforcement activities with preventatitve training, it is also possible that the latest program will be seen as uneccessary additional noise in an increasingly crowded SAM market. Many other vendors and SAM specialists already offer training - and while choice is undoubtedly a good thing, too many voices offering different approaches could lead to confusion (and therefore a lack of adoption) among end user organizations.
