On July 7, news hit the wire that Attachmate are allegedly suing Mobistar to the tune of $6.12m for the illegal use of their ReflectionX product. It’s not surprising when Attachmate is regarded by many as one of the more aggressive software vendors when it comes to software auditing. It isn’t solely Attachmate that is seen as aggressive: The big five (Microsoft, SAP, IBM, Symatec, Adobe) are all upping their auditing activity, and why not when there is big money to be made? As I’ve said previously ('Software License Audits – Reputation is Everything'), the average audit cost to an organization being audited is around $100k, and then there’s the potential true-up that could run into millions. Anecdotally I’ve heard that unless vendors can make close to $500,000 then they tend not to bother with auditing, so it is big business.
The only thing you can do is be prepared; if you can demonstrate that you have your application licensing position in order, you are likely to find that the relevant vendor will leave you alone to pursue an easier target. It just so happens that AppClarity can help you in your efforts to keep the auditor at bay. AppClarity can consume the data that already exists in your environment, which means that as soon as AppClarity is implemented you can get an instant view on what is installed in your estate as well as what is being used. In the case of the alleged legal action, Mobistar would have been in a position where they would know that ReflectionX was installed but that it wasn’t licensed, and could have ascertained usage levels to determine how many licenses they needed to purchase. Furthermore it would have been able to automatically remove the copies of the software from the machines where the product wasn’t being used.
So in order to ensure that you are protected, take a proactive approach, not only for the short term but also for continual piece of mind and protection. 1E can help you; to find out more, please download our white paper Getting Started on Building Your Vendor Audit Defense Program, follow our LinkedIn Showcase pages for AppClarity and Software Audit Defense, or contact us at info@1e.com