Software Licensing Featured Articles

Software Licensing Mitigates Overspending

By Michelle Amodio, TMCnet Contributor

Commercially viable software packages are complex products containing many components. Licensing plays a critical role in their development and marketing. Software licensing is a complicated issue. There are many challenges associated with this topic, and it is up to the IT professionals to address these challenges and be cognizant of their role in not only keeping businesses compliant, but to help reduce overspending as well.

Flexera Software’s recent whitepaper highlights the latter issue in regards to SAP (News - Alert) licenses; according to the software licensing professional, an SAP user group survey revealed that “95 percent of SAP users think the company’s software licensing is overly complicated.” As such, users are prone to over-licensing, thus resulting in software audits, financial penalties, and other expenditures that can easily be avoided.

This “overbuying” is a product of a few instances, including consuming more than one named user license per user. Flexera talks about this specifically on its own website; too many times businesses would rather err on the side of caution and purchase more licenses than necessary. The converse situation here is that companies may, illegally at that, purchase only one license and distribute it across multiple computers in the workplace. This kind of company will find itself in a situation where it is not compliant with the licensing agreement terms of the particular software product.

While the latter situation is clearly to be avoided for financial and litigious reasons, the former can and should be avoided strictly for monetary reasons alone; why buy when you don’t even plan to use?

This is why companies like Flexera Software exist; to help properly license software and help those purchasing and using said software not only stay compliant, but prevent overspending as well.

A license management strategy can help companies and their IT managers sort out the often confusing licensing landscape. With the help of Flexera Software, IT managers can properly track information to help streamline the process of keeping tabs on their software and licenses.

Application authorization infringement cases can attract heavy fines, impoundments and even detention. Overbuying licenses means money lost on the bottom line. No matter the circumstance, a software licensing management solution will help keep your dollars where they belong and your software running smoothly.