Warning to readers: this blog post, while inspired by a true story of a license agreement gone awry, is not really about license agreements.  Rather, it’s a reflection on what an impressive living those attorneys in the business of writing legal contracts must make. While I don’t necessarily think there’s a global conspiracy, it’s no joke when they say that lawyers craft language in such a way as to guarantee their own job security.  It takes a lawyer not only to draw up a license agreement in the first place, but another lawyer to interpret the agreement for the signing entity, and yet more lawyers to testify for, litigate against or defend parties who obviously didn’t hire the best lawyers to perform the previous two duties. 

If I’d been aware of this brilliant ponzi-like scheme back in my early twenties, heck, I might have applied to law school to learn the fine art of “legalese” (lawyer-invented jargon that leads the average person to question their own intelligence or assume the caffeine hasn’t yet kicked in from their morning coffee).  I mean, did someone really get paid to come up with this gem?:

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You may have heard rumblings about this, but it’s now official:  today we announced the spin-off of a new business entity that will focus its development efforts exclusively on further expansion and enhancement of the software catalog used within Express Software Manager. 

We’re all very excited that our software recognition offerings are receiving additional resources and focus; this is great news both for Express Software Manager users, as well as for our OEM partners.  For our end-user customers, the shift guarantees that improving and expanding of Express Software Manager’s software recognition will remain a top priority, as there now exists a dedicated business infrastructure to support exactly that.  For our OEM partners, it means there’s a business that’s 100% committed to maintaining the catalog, supporting their implementations, and responding to their unique needs.

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An article caught my eye this morning in Manufacturing Business Daily summarizing the results of a recent Ernst & Young survey that focused on software asset management philosophies and practices among software vendors and their customers.  

Before discussing the results, I should point out that I’m pretty skeptical about studies conducted and published by firms with a commercial interest in the topic being explored.  Because Ernst & Young dedicates part of its business to IT governance, internal auditing, and compliance services for large enterprises, it’s virtually impossible for the firm to be objective in its research methodology or interpretation of results–in fact, they offered no information about their approach to the survey.  (For example, is there inherent bias among those selected to participate?  What were the roles with respect to compliance of those individuals or teams that actually completed the survey?  Why did they recruit end-user organizations that averaged over 10,000 desktops [organizations of this size comprise only 0.1 percent of all US companies over 100 employees]?  Is it possible to draw conclusions relevant to the marketplace with so few participants?  The list goes on and on.)

Nevertheless, the results are interesting and at least on the surface validate what we’ve long suspected to be the true motives behind vendor audits; software publishers are far more interested in revenue generation than they are in protecting their intellectual property or helping customers be successful in managing their software estates.  Only four of the eight “major” software publishers surveyed stated that protection of intellectual property rights is an objective of their compliance programs, flying directly in the face of the very legal platform software vendors and the BSA claim as the basis of their actions.  It’s also ironic that only 38% of vendors suggested that their compliance programs, which are generally advertised as “SAM” programs, have customer education and/or process improvement as a stated goal. 

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The following bylined article can also be found in the April issue of IAITAM’s ITAK Magazine and the April edition of FAST IiS Kaleidoscope.

Since the dawn of the desktop era, IT departments have struggled to keep track of software installed across their corporate networks.  Accurate software inventories are crucial to ensuring installed applications are properly licensed, understanding whether or not they’re being used, and budgeting for future software purchases.  Unfortunately, no standard methodology exists across applications and manufacturers for correlating installed program executables with actual application titles.  This leaves asset managers and the software discovery tools they utilize with any number of half-complete approaches to application recognition.

Driven by licensing challenges stemming from inaccurate and incomplete software identification, the ISO/IEC 19770-2 software tagging standard has been developed, providing publishers with guidelines for “tagging” their applications in a standard way that makes identification straightforward, automated, and virtually foolproof for discovery tools.  Yet despite the technical ease with which software tags can be implemented, publishers have been painfully slow to adopt the standard, and end users have not pressed vendors hard enough to spur them to action. 

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Just a quick note to get word out that the window of opportunity for providing feedback on the ISO/IEC 19770-1 revisions will close on the first of March.

Much discussion has circulated the ITAM media and blogosphere regarding the goals and substance of the ISO/IEC 19770-1 SAM Standard, as well as the opportunity to provide feedback on the draft of its four-tiered approach to SAM processes released last November.  For background on the topic see the press release issued by the SAM Standards Working Group. 

The survey itself can be accessed here:  https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/7PX8RX5