Software Vendor Audits are Increasing

Gartner has recently published the study “The Software Vendors That Are Auditing Now and What to Do About It”.

At Gartner's IT Financial, Procurement and Asset Management Summits in September 2011, they asked 228 attendees about software vendor audits. That survey revealed that 65% of respondents reported at least one software vendor audit in the previous 12 months, up from 61% the year before. Back in 2007 only 35% of respondents had been audited.

The vendors doing most audits were IBM, Adobe, Microsoft, Oracle and SAP and during recent years the audits has increased. Other vendors mentioned were McAfee, Attachmate, HP, Autodesk and VMware. Even WinZip Computing was included (if you can’t afford or want to pay for WinZip there is the 7-Zip open source).

Gartner recommends that CIOs and IT managers should proactively look at SAM and license compliance as ongoing disciplines, to manage audits and improve financial responsibility and accountability, rather than leaving them as audit-driven projects when it may be a case of too little, too late. There is also the recommendation to identify the significant financial risks facing from software license compliance issues to help justify investment in the software asset management (SAM) discipline.

One solution that can help with companies SAM is JTB World’s JTB FlexReport.

JTB FlexReport is a report tool for applications using the FlexNet / FLEXlm (flexlm license manager), IBM LUM (IBM License Use Management), SPLM (Intergraph SmartPlant License Manager), SLM/Sentinel LM/Sentinel RMS, LM-X, Solidworks SNL License Manager, T-Systems license manager product LICMAN, Primavera from Oracle or 12D software licensing.

See also our free JTB FlexReport LT that can easily be distributed within your company to anyone that needs to see current usage of FlexNet/FLEXlm based products.