License Management Basics

There is almost no company left that can do without IT equipment. Employees use PCs productively; a network is established necessarily and the responsible persons purchase licenses as they think best.

In practice, license management often begins only after the IT environment has already grown substantially. Potential problems may have been postponed until an external audit, vendor request, or internal review makes them urgent.

The trigger may be advice from external consultants or a request from a software vendor for a license self-assessment. Vendors usually present such initiatives as support for improving compliance and future licensing structures.

Incorrect software licensing can expose companies to substantial legal and financial risk. Vendors may enforce the applicable license terms, and serious disputes can affect the continued use of business-critical software. Maintaining a documented and defensible license position is therefore essential.

Networks and situations might be individual and even special - there is a basic process in managing licenses. This process has been established as a base for an individual strategy. To respect the existing IT landscape, VisLogic recommends the following steps:

A)  Inventory discovery / determine the as-is state

B)  Reviewing purchased or rented licenses / studying agreements

C)  Reconciliation and identifying license deltas

D)  Optimization of agreements or purchase additional licenses

Up to this point, the process can establish a reliable view of the current license situation. License management must then continue as an ongoing process because the IT environment, software versions, contracts, and license models change over time. New licenses and agreements must be incorporated into subsequent reconciliations.

You need to check if new agreements and licenses harmonize with old ones before you purchase them. New hardware, virtualization or cloud solutions have to be checked if they are legally compatible with existing environments.

It is definitely not enough to rely on the statements of corresponding vendors.