Software Asset Management (SAM) Blog

The Business Software Alliance (BSA) has announced that it has received $175,000 in damages from two US companies accused of using illegal software.

One of the two companies is involved in the gaming sector, which the BSA pointed out is ironically often a target for software piracy. The BSA hinted in its press announcements that the software developer market itself may well become a target for future anti-piracy action.

Microsoft’s Steve Balmer has rejected calls from UK users to simplify the vendor’s software licensing schemes, stating that the last major change to Microsoft’s licensing caused a dramatic downturn in customer satisfaction, reports Computing.

One questioner went as far as to suggest that Microsoft had been guilty to tripping up its customers with licensing fine print, especially around areas such as virtualization.

Despite a number of calls from the audience at the recent Windows 7 event, Balmer said he did not anticipate any licensing changes in the near future. He did however make an open invite to the user gathering: “If people have specific things that they think were just complicated, or we have provisions that seem to drive cost that is unnecessary, I encourage you to email me.”

With around 20 percent of the enterprise IT budget being spent on software, Gartner has identified license optimization as a key area in which businesses can make significant savings. Gartner recommends building a framework to continually manage and improve the SAM process - mapping how to take efforts from the discovery of software assets and recording of software licenses through to a strategic approach to vendor management and license analysis.

The report identifies five levels of maturity, from ‘Nonexistent’ to ‘Optimzed’. The stages are not hugely dissimilar to those used by Microsoft in its ‘SAM Optimization Model‘ - although Microsoft refers to four, rather than five stages of maturity.

The Gartner research can be purchased online at Gartner.com

As of December 9, 2008, the VLSC licensing dashboard includes a notification area for site alerts, a Volume Licensing news and announcements section and links to key tasks.

Accessing VLSC

Designed for midsize and enterprise businesses that accessed their Microsoft License Statements through Microsoft Volume License Services (MVLS) and Microsoft eOpen websites, VLSC provides a simpler interface and more robust features to help reduce time spent on licensing-related administrative tasks.

VLSC offers key benefits for licensed software management: Licensing information, composed of the Licensing Summary and the Relationship Summary.

Licensing Summary

You can use VLSC to view current and past Microsoft License Statements across programs and agreements—all in simple format. 

Volume License Relationship Summary

VLSC includes a report that shows all Volume Licensing agreements associated to a user’s profile.

Downloads
Accelerated download speeds and a simple, secure user interface make it easy and safe for you to use VLSC to find the right product, based on your licensing entitlements.

Product Keys 
 
VLSC makes it easy for you to request product keys for the Windows Vista operating system, enables retrieval of volume license keys for all Microsoft licensed products, and provides access to technical support.