A lack of control of your IT assets can lead to both under and
over-licensing of software - avoid the risks and costs of getting
it wrong!
FAST has really helped us to understand so
much more about licensing and compliance. We have to do regular
audits, but it's money worth spending and avoids unnecessary
costs and risks to the business.
Pan Credit Ltd
If you don’t know what you have, how can you ensure you
are properly licensed?
Our extensive experience, gained
through working with thousands of UK organisations for over 25
years, indicates that organisations are typically over and/or
under-licensed by an average of £200 per
device.
Software
Licence Reviews we have carried out show the extent to which
organisations are under and over-licensing their software.
|
Devices |
Industry sector |
Overspend |
Overspend
per device |
Publisher |
| 3,500 |
Engineering |
+£1.3 million |
£371 |
Microsoft |
| 3,000 |
Local
Government |
+£400,000 |
£133 |
Microsoft |
| 21,000 |
Government |
+£1.8 million |
£85 |
Microsoft |
Average overspend per device =
£196!
| Devices |
Industry sector |
Overspend |
Underspend
per device |
Publisher |
| 350 |
Transport |
-£260,000 |
£742 |
Microsoft |
| 450 |
Logistics |
-£63,000 |
£140 |
Microsoft |
| 2,000 |
Highway maintenance |
-£80,000 |
£40 |
Autodesk |
| 3,500 |
Government |
-£60,000 |
£17 |
Adobe |
Average underspend per device =
£235!
The risk of under-licensing
If you received a request to audit from a software publisher,
would you be able to prove that all your software is properly
licensed?
52% of companies have been subject to a vendor audit or review
in the past 12 months, while 23% have been subject to 3
or more.
Source: IDC October 2008
It is only by taking control of your software that you can avoid
the significant disruption to your business and damage to your
reputation that could result from a vendor audit. You can also
mitigate the risk of fines, settlement charges and potential
prosecution associated with using unlicensed software.
With 27% of software in UK organisations being used
illegally, the cost of non-compliance is a major concern. But the
implications of getting software licensing wrong extend not just to
your bottom line, but to your corporate governance, network
security and the performance of business-critical applications.
The cost of over-licensing
In the past, we have tended to always buy
licences when we install software on new equipment rather than
recover the licence from the old computer. Now we can swiftly and
easily work out where there are deficits or over-purchasing.
Leonard Cheshire Disability
Read the full case study
Failing to keep on top of your software assets may mean that you
are paying again and again for software you have already bought or
which has become obsolete.
Over 41% of UK businesses are wasting thousands of pounds every
year through software over-licensing their software - ensure you
are not one of them with FAST!
For many organisations, managing software licensing is not only
difficult to achieve without the relevant knowledge, but is costly
and time-consuming to carry out in practice.