Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Illinois)

In spite of the escalating intensity of the rhetoric surrounding the upcoming presidential elections, I do think there’s one thing we can all agree on no matter what our political leanings: the government should make every effort to cut wasteful spending.

Illinois congressman, Joe Walsh, has taken steps to root out waste within a relatively small, yet still significant, portion of the government’s budget: $40 billion in annual software spending. Congressman Walsh recognizes what companies in the private sector have known for a long time: that establishing some very simple software license management processes can help eliminate significant amounts of waste. According to Walsh, “There is a tremendous amount of waste currently institutionalized in the federal government’s current system (or lack thereof) in procuring and using software… Adopting best practices from the private sector around software asset management and license optimization is a painless and efficient way to eliminate this wasteful spending, while increasing the value being delivered to government employees.”

As such, Walsh has proposed a House amendment to the 2012 Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) authorization bill, which holds the department accountable for reigning in superfluous software spending. The amendment contains specific language requiring that the CIO:

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For those of you interested in the legal aspects of license compliance and software audits, here’s an interesting development that took place in the D.C. Court of Appeals just a few weeks ago:  After an anonymous employee filed a bogus piracy claim with the SIIA against his/her company, Solers Inc, the firm filed a defamation lawsuit against the “John Doe” informant and tried to subpoena the SIIA to reveal the defendant’s identity. Unfortunately for Solers (and fortunately for the defendant), the Court of Appeals ruled that because Solers couldn’t provide sufficient evidence that it had suffered economic or other losses as a result of the false accusation, the subpoena would be quashed and the case dismissed.

Although the ruling doesn’t apply to areas outside the District of Columbia, it still potentially serves as a precedent both to businesses and would-be whistle-blowers. First, businesses may be more or less inclined to pursue the identity of a John Doe depending on their ability to furnish evidence of economic damages, and the perceived strength of such “proof.” Perhaps more interestingly, employees considering filing a confidential license infringement claim to the BSA or SIIA may think again if they know that under certain circumstances, particularly when economic harm results, their anonymity may not be protected in the event of a subpoena.

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For those of you who may have noticed a lack of blog entries over the past month, we’ve been very busy working on some exciting product enhancements! Today we’re pleased to announce the official release of Express Software Manager for SCCM, a new asset management offering that enables IT staff to leverage their Microsoft SCCM implementations for more effective oversight of and management of their hardware and software investments.   

In recent months, we’ve been hearing from a lot of prospective customers that they want to take advantage of inventory data stored in their SCCM database for their software license management efforts.  This is often the situation at companies whose network teams don’t want to deploy another client and/or can’t secure authorization to invest in a dedicated asset management solution when certain data already exists within the SCCM that has the potential to be transformed into more useful IT asset reporting.

With Express Software Manager for SCCM, inventory data is imported from SCCM and processed using our own catalog of normalized application titles, allowing not only for superior software recognition, but also a distinctly license-centric view of the desktop and server environment.  The resulting normalized software titles, along with hardware data collected by the SCCM client, can be enriched with an organization’s own purchasing data and reconciled with inventoried assets for the purpose of managing license compliance, IT budgeting and reporting, chargeback purposes, and other functions that contribute to better fiscal management.

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Happy holidays to all!  As we wrap up 2011, we have a final Report of the Month to highlight within Express Software Manager:  Software Installation by Version.  This report, while simple in conception, has a whole host of uses, from ensuring your users have successfully upgraded to the latest version of Application X to verifying the install path of your end users’ software. 

The Software Installation by Version report, depicted in the screenshot below, shows which versions of any given application title are installed across your organization, along with the specific machines upon which those versions reside.  The second screenshot zeroes in on Microsoft Office Professional 2007, revealing which of its components are installed on a particular user’s muchine, along with associated service packs. 

Screenshot #1)

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Jenny Schuchert, Content & Development Director, IAITAM

Every year around this time, asset management vendors like ourselves take to the blogs to share their opinions and takeaways from the IAITAM Annual Conference & Exhibition.  This year, however, I was interested in hearing the insights of an insider at the organization that actually hosted the event.  Specifically, I wondered how the conference has evolved over time in terms of attendee profiles, vendor participation, and topics of interest.  

I reached out to Jenny Shuchert, Content & Development Director of the International Association of IT Asset Managers (IAITAM), and she was kind enough to share her observations about this year’s conference, as well as those of years past.  Enjoy!

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