By Simon Quicke1 August 2008
The awareness among customers over the need to take
intellectual property seriously is fuelling an interest in Software Asset
Management (SAM).
Recent changes to the law, which strengthened the ability of
Trading Standards to go in and search for unlicensed software without a
warrant, are one of the factors in the improving attitude to software but there
are also financial benefits from looking after assets.
Jason Allaway, CEO of SAM Practice, said there were risks to
not taking intellectual property seriously that had been highlighted by the
recent activities of the Business Software Alliance (BSA) and the Federation
Against Software Theft (FAST) but there were other reasons for getting on top
of the software estate.
“We often see a reduction in spend in software of around 20%
which is then put back into the IT budget to be spent on other projects,” he
said.
He said that there was a disconnect between the technical
people and procurement specialists in a business and as a result the management
of software assets had often been overlooked.
“The people making the procurement decisions are not the
ones making decisions over what’s happening [overall to the software estate] and
that has not really been bridged,” he added.
Ansgar Dodt, EMEA director of sales at SafeNet said that the
industry had to make licensing simpler and more transparent and vendors should
be providing more SAM tools.
“Because software vendors don’t provide you with the tools
to do it yourself it can be a struggle,” he said.
“Maybe some vendors like it because it makes it more likely that
people [will spend too much on licensing] but that would be short sighted,” he
added.
In its recent campaign in Manchester to combat unlicensed software the
BSA promoted SAM.
“We are already seeing more interest from people going to
the site to find out information about software asset management,” said Julie
Strawson, chairwoman of the BSA's UK committee, when speaking to MicroScope about the campaign
last month..
