Don’t Get Caught Out By a Software License Audit

A common pain point that some organizations have expressed to us is the inability to prepare for or counter software license audits. There are two major concerns for any organization that are experiencing these occurrences, there is a lack of information regarding the network and there is not enough information to challenge a software vendor when given a bill.

Knowing what software is installed on your devices is more than a good practice for managing your network, but good practice for managing your budget. There are a lot of vendors who take an aggressive stance on license audits, an example of a bill for one extra license for a contract length of 6 years is below;

List License	USD 47,500
List Support	USD 10,450
Standard Discount:	10%
Net License	USD 42,750
Net Support	USD 9,405
Back support (6 years)	6 years x 9,405 = USD 56,430
Total fees	42,750 + 9,405 +56,430 = USD 108,585

 

To be over licensed by one unit and get a bill that high should act as a clear deterrent and should provide motivation for organizations to ensure they are maintaining their license levels.

The best way to stay ahead of these surprises is to have extensive information about your network and be able to monitor the software licenses that you have entitled to your organizations. Open-AudIT can do this with very little information and at a very manageable cost, especially compared to the figures mentioned above. Once devices are discovered using Open-AudIT they can then be audited if licensing levels are configured then reports can be generated daily/weekly/monthly on software levels giving you genuine insight into your levels; this will mitigate the surprises that can occur if there have been three years between license audits.

Above is a demonstration of what the result can look like and of course, this process can be scheduled and a monthly report is generated. The process to configure this and get ahead of license audits is outlined in this wiki article. If you would like more information how to configure these features, you would like to see a demo of this in action or want a discussion on how to optimize your network, contact us and we will be happy to help.