Software License Management Explained

Software License Management is a critical process for the functioning of any organization, be it or IT or non IT. All organizations purchase software licenses, and the penalty to be paid by exceeding the procured licenses is painful. If found guilty, organizations falter and are forced to put two steps backward before they can start to correct things. Fines for violating license norms could exceed $100,000.

I have worked extensively in the area of software license management, and have successfully implemented it from nothing in organizations working under complex environments. To illustrate how the entire process of software licenses work, I took to writing a two blog series on Tech Republic – called as the Best Practices for Software License Management.

In the first blog piece, I explained the nuances of software license management and explained how software compliance can be achieved by illustrating it with a process map.

Achieving software compliance is not an one time activity. It needs to maintained at all times, adhered to in real time. In the subsequent article, I presented another process map which explained how software license management can be maintained on a day to day basis.

The essence for maintaining status quo in operations is the balance that is achieved between pro-activeness and acting when necessary. But, in software compliance, due to the nature of penalties (where in some CIOs have been imprisoned), it is preferred to pre-empt than react.