The BSA, Software Privacy and Optimised Licence Management
12 December 2011
By Laura Stevens
The Business Software Alliance (BSA) has ordered a Stoke-on-Trent-based insurance firm to pay up £3,000 in settlement fees for allegedly using unlicensed software. The anti-piracy body has also instructed Autonet Insurance Services to make corrective software purchases, after a BSA investigation suggested the firm was using unlicensed products.
Phillipe Briére, chair of BSA UK Committee, said settlement fees are not the only risk businesses face by using unlicensed software. "Unlicensed software will often not benefit from the services, support and upgrades that are provided by software publishers that help protect against security vulnerabilities," he said. "This could expose a company to data loss, file corruption and downtime - all of which could harm the bottom-line of any company."
Julian Swan, director of compliance marketing EMEA at BSA, added: "The use of unlicensed software is not always deliberate and mistakes tend to happen when a company's management perceives software licensing as an IT Problem, without recognising that failure to manage software properly could expose their company to legal redress."
In 2009, the BSA launched a pilot scheme focusing just on firms in Birmingham writing letters and emails to encourage business bosses to think about compliance and the risks they were running using unlicensed software. The success of that pilot then spurred a similar effort in the North West and the North East has now become the focus.
Gartner research indicates that organisations that have effective ITAM disciplines will reap the benefit of cost savings, even in the current economic climate. More than 25% of the 66% respondents that measure ITAM savings indicate that their ITAM programs saved 10% to 20% of their IT spending in both the first year and over years two to five of their programs.
10% to 20% savings on IT spending (not just on software spending) every year for five years sounds pretty good. But in many cases, organisations can do even better through careful management of their software assets to achieve an optimised licence position (OLP)
By using SAM to its full potential, organisations can not only avoid the costs of being under licensed, but turn their software into assets.
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