The original article discusses how the software piracy landscape hasn't changed much in the past few years. Licensors continue to use unnecessarily complicated licensing schemes & licensees continue to fail to understand as well as fail to manage licenses & licensed products. We CAN, however, change this distressing software piracy trend, but we have to wake up & smell the decaying business processes that expose us to punitive software industry players & their predatory compliance enforcement auditing friends.
It's time to move our
outdated software asset management mentalities out of the dark ages
& into the next generation of software life cycle management,
systems life cycle management, & over-all IT life cycle management.
I've spent nearly twenty years studying the enforcement industry players & their games & it has become evident that our training programs are less than optimal in their approach to compliance assurance (& nearly empty in terms of effective life cycle management). Each & every issue listed in this article & my response could have been minimized by intelligent asset management. Unfortunately, our asset managers frequently are not given the knowledge they need, nor the executive support necessary to address the problems up front - where they could have avoided the confrontation.
For an example of what I'm saying, look through the technician comments on the discussion thread noted in my previous post.
What you'll see, if you can make it all the way through the thread, is that these front line IT personnel DO NOT generally have a clue about compliance or license management. If these people do not understand, or if there is no well-trained/empowered software asset manager in their enterprise, their companies are defenseless - & ripe - for punitive compliance audits.
You want answers? I'll be glad to provide them, along with pointers to the next generation of strategies & tactics for compliance assurance & software life cycle management professional development. Feel free to connect with me at any time.
The Institute for Technology Asset Management publishes its Guide to the Technology Asset Management Body of Knowledge - TAMBOK - the planet's only cost-effective guide to the competencies asset management practitioners need to succeed in the front lines of SAM & ITAM.
- As long as business technology consumers permit the software publishers to control the entire licensing process, we will continue to be targeted by predatory compliance enforcement industry players.
- As long as the enforcement industry publicity teams use “piracy” as a synonym for "non-compliance", or "honest licensing errors", we will continue as targets.
- As long as the "compliance landscape" is constantly shifting, we'll be easy targets.
- As long as the enforcement industry-sponsored "studies" & media blitzes represent the smoke & mirrors world of piracy to the public & our legislators, we'll continue to be targeted.
- As long as we permit nebulous terms & conditions (such as the literally limitless "right to audit" clause) in licenses, we'll continue to be targeted.
- As long as our software asset managers are not trained, are being trained only to the enforcement industry perspectives, or are being "qualified" as "professionals" in over-night certification classes, we'll continue to be targeted.
- As long as the enterprise pays only lip service to software & license life cycle management, we'll continue to be very easy - even clueless - targets.
- As long as the technical "experts" in the enterprise continue to be in the dark about the realities of license compliance, we'll remain targets.
I've spent nearly twenty years studying the enforcement industry players & their games & it has become evident that our training programs are less than optimal in their approach to compliance assurance (& nearly empty in terms of effective life cycle management). Each & every issue listed in this article & my response could have been minimized by intelligent asset management. Unfortunately, our asset managers frequently are not given the knowledge they need, nor the executive support necessary to address the problems up front - where they could have avoided the confrontation.
For an example of what I'm saying, look through the technician comments on the discussion thread noted in my previous post.
What you'll see, if you can make it all the way through the thread, is that these front line IT personnel DO NOT generally have a clue about compliance or license management. If these people do not understand, or if there is no well-trained/empowered software asset manager in their enterprise, their companies are defenseless - & ripe - for punitive compliance audits.
You want answers? I'll be glad to provide them, along with pointers to the next generation of strategies & tactics for compliance assurance & software life cycle management professional development. Feel free to connect with me at any time.
The Institute for Technology Asset Management publishes its Guide to the Technology Asset Management Body of Knowledge - TAMBOK - the planet's only cost-effective guide to the competencies asset management practitioners need to succeed in the front lines of SAM & ITAM.
