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What if you had to pay for your software licenses?
30 Dec 2008I’ve learned the hard way and have since touted the benefits of automating as much as you can when it comes to IT and security management. Software licensing is no different. Here’s an interesting story about a time-consuming costly software license audit from Microsoft and AutoDesk that could happen to any given organization at any given time. I suspect the outcome would’ve been much less painful had this gentleman been automating his software license auditing.
What I see in my work underscores the issue: many network managers don’t really know what’s taking place on their networks and running on their computers much less have automated solutions that can provide a real-time look into the enterprise bits and bytes.
With the forthcoming lie-low-and-get-caught-up-on-some-stuff slowdown of 2009, now may be the time to start looking into to software licensing audit tools – including Microsoft’s SAM. Don’t get me wrong – this isn’t a call for the open source movement – but rather getting your arms around what you’ve got, cleaning up house, and doing what’s right.
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I’ve written/co-written 12 books on information security including:
