Gartner analyst Patricia Adams published a new ‘MarketScope’ for IT Asset Management Repositories last month. View a reprint here. In case my link sets off the Gartner intellectual property fire alarm (as it appears to have done in previous years) you can also view a reprint via this blog post from Jon Hall at BMC). The analysis is split into two parts: an industry synopsis followed by a broad-brush... 

The ‘Barium Manifesto’ back in December stated the need to ‘Shake things up’ in the software licensing industry and create an industry regulator. We’ve been busy building since then. I’m pleased to share with you that since January we have: Created a legal entity (not-for-profit limited by guarantee) Written a manifesto (Thanks to Kylie Fowler, Rory Canavan and Martin Chalkley for their... 

Jens Rugseth, CEO of Inmeta Crayon Norwegian licensing reseller and SAM specialist Inmeta Crayon has acquired FAST Limited. InMeta Crayon, with headquarters in Oslo, has presence in Northern Europe, Germany, France and the Middle East. The team has over 600 employees, over 10% of which are said to be ‘SAM Experts’. The company provides licensing, SAM services and consulting and claim that ‘SAM... 

Time to change the record? The BSA and other trade bodies such as FAST and SIIA have traditionally used a ‘Stick’ approach to raise license compliance up the corporate agenda. The CEO going to jail and fines are the usual battle cry (despite no executive responsible for license management going to jail in my knowledge for the last decade). Is it time for the BSA to change their tune? Especially... 

ISACA has this month released news of more than 40 customisable IT audit/assurance programmes, which have been developed to help IT auditors who are facing increasing challenges brought about by “Bring Your Own Device” (BYOD) trends that occur as part of the so-called consumerisation of technology. NOTE: Previously known as the Information Systems Audit and Control Association, ISACA now goes... 

Enterprise Software Mega-Vendors Dodging Tax? Some of the biggest names in the UK technology industry have been operating under rather perplexing tax arrangements recently. It appears that Oracle, Xerox, Dell, CSC and Symantec all paid “no corporate tax” in the UK last year. This non-payment is despite the fact that the firms earned what is said to be almost £500m from public-sector IT contracts... 

Australian IT software asset management accolades don’t come along every week by and large, so good news this week comes from Filipa Preston who is CEO and founder of Software Optimisation Services, a boutique IT and Software Asset Management (SAM) consultancy practice. Preston has become the first SAM practitioner “outside of Europe” to meet all of the requirements of KPMG’s SAM Expert Assessment,... 

Last month ITAM Review readers kindly spared a few minutes to complete a survey in conjunction with Stephen Mann from Forrester Research. Thank you to everyone who took the time to participate. Not wanting to ignore the vendors, partners and consultants in The ITAM Review community we also ran a SAM Supplier Survey at the same time. This article looks at what types of Products and Services Suppliers... 

The Emperor's New Clothes is a short tale by Hans Christian Anderson about two weavers who promise an Emperor a new suit of clothes that is invisible to those unfit for their positions, stupid or incompetent. When the Emperor parades before his subjects in his new clothes, a child cries out, "But he isn't wearing anything at all!" I was fortunate to attend the EMEA Gartner IT Financial,... 

SAP UK MD Tim Noble: “standardise our terms, software rights and conditions globally” SAP this week holds the US leg of its TechEd 2012 developer and user conference and exhibition in Las Vegas. The firm used its opening keynote sessions to detail a set of extended developer services to sit under the umbrella of its HANA brand, the company’s in-memory Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)-centric...