The recent Inventory and Discovery Tools Group Test featured an independent review of BDNA, FrontRange Solutions, HP, iQuate, NEXThink, Numara Software and ServiceNow. The assessment criteria are listed below. You might find these useful, as a starting point, when developing your own assessment criteria. If you need clarification on any of the points below or if I have missed anything that you think... 

Are Companies Underestimating IBM Audits? I recently interviewed Alan Swahn, VP of Product Management at Flexera Software. We discussed IBM Licensing and the IBM audit program. Q. Why IBM? Shouldn’t companies spend more time focusing on Microsoft, Adobe or Oracle audit compliance? Many of IBM’s customers are facing significant software audit risk, as IBM has implemented a comprehensive audit program.... 

Root Cause Analysis not Bandaids If organizations are to escape the painful cycle of firefighting against software audits and progress towards fully-fledged software asset management the focus needs to be on managing and acting on exceptions. That is, identifying where leakages in management of software occur, taking action, and refining processes accordingly over time. No grand true up, but gradual... 

I conducted a brief straw poll on vendor audit activity back in July. Thank you to everyone that took part, I apologise for the delay in publishing the results. In a nutshell: 78% experienced a vendor audit in the last year, average 2.5 audits, most helpful Microsoft, least helpful Oracle. The aim of the straw poll was to gauge sentiment amongst readers of The ITAM Review. There are no great surprises... 

WHAT Software vendor audits are some of the biggest challenges faced by multiple groups within the enterprise – starting with the internal IT organization to legal department to the C-suite. These audits divert as well as exhaust internal resources due to the complexity, discovery process and often the nuances in software licensing agreements (SLAs). Industry experts will discuss: What to do... 

Gartner mentioned an interesting concept in their April 2010 Marketscope for ITAM tools. In the section on Software License Compliance they state that some organisations view their ITAM program as an insurance policy against the threat of software audits (Invest fixed costs in one to prevent larger unplanned costs in the other). “Savvy IT organisations recognise that, when an audit occurs, the...