10 ways software licensing will impact your business

By Vikas Bhonsle, CEO, Crayon Software Experts

Nothing can safeguard your company’s repute and credibility from a surprise software audit like a strong software licensing practice. Software licensing gives you the legal liberty to use and redistribute the software’s licensed/bought by your company. Software licensing also includes giving permissions and imposing restrictions on the use of the software and at times, also cover limitations of liability, warranty disclaimers and even compensation if the software violates rights of others.

According to a BSA Global Software survey in 2013, around 43% of software installed in the computers around the world aren’t properly licensed. The survey also highlights the pressing need of practicing effective software licensing and asset management. Implementing efficient Software Asset Management (SAM) in the company will aid in managing your software assets and maintain software compliances, license agreements and operations.

Software Asset Management has gained prominence more than ever. Companies that have been previously caught off-guard with software audits for failure of compliance will agree and wilfully opt to go with SAM. Through SAM, the companies will also be able to efficiently gauge the requirement and need of right softwares avoiding costs. Software licensing can affect your company in a big way. Here are some ways in how software licensing will affect your business.

1. Growing Surprise Audits

Surprise audits can put the reputation of your company at stake, bringing you expenses from unlicensed softwares at your company. Other than safeguarding your company from such audits, SAM will also assist companies in forecasting software use and predict intelligence and value for money for the company’s software assets.

2. Keeping Away Hackers

Software licensing will reduce the risks of hacking and guard intellectual property of the company. Licensing will also take care of piracy and detect hacking

3. Redundant IT assets

Adopting a robust IT asset management strategy in the organization is essential. The inability to effectively monitor your organization’s software assets can lead to spending more or facing fines over not having the right licenses. It is important to weed out unwanted softwares which only drive up costs in the company.

4. MDM manages BYOD

Mobile Device Management (MDM) tools track technology accessed from a variety of devices, creating precise end-user access profiles, through which they will help the organizations manage their technology, while allowing device usage within the company. Routine scheduled audits are helping companies understand the resources they have, give feedback and avoid licensing issues.

5. Reduced risks with mobile applications

The use of mobile apps has been increasing making their licensing much common. This means reduced risks and greater security.

6. Enterprise’s app stores

Not as organized as Google Play Store or Apple, but enterprise app stores can be of a great advantage. The app can tell a lot about the employees’ devices and improvise on the enterprise’s software license compliance and asset management strategies.

7. The advent of SaaS

Software as a Service (SaaS) is a software distribution model wherein a service provider hosts applications which are then made available to other employees over a network. SaaS significantly reduces licensing costs and can be crucial for growing companies. SaaS helps you to scale up and cut down costs as per your company needs.

8. Predicting licensing impact to calculate budgets

Software Licensing has come a long way. Today, companies have technologies intact to gauge the state of licensing. Companies are growing competitive and cautious and are analysing the potential impact of various factors and tools on their IT assets. For instance, Cloud has the ability to manage and reduce software licensing costs significantly. With the help of analytical techniques, companies can now control complex software assets and reduce related costs as well as risks.

9. Impact of Internet of Things

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a universal concept where objects, animals or people are presented with unique identifiers and data can be transmitted using a network without any human-to-human communication. As more companies approach this concept, it is possible that it may lead to ensuring that more of your IT assets are tracked. IoT also ensures revenue to vendors as they inspect to check if the companies have apt licenses. However, there are possibilities for indirect usage by Vendors where IP addresses are externally accessed. IoT could also lead to an increase in such licensing requirements.

10. Cloud adds complexity

The system of software licensing in the cloud is influenced by several factors such as user, per core, processor or by usage levels. All these serve the purpose of capitalizing the revenue outflow of Software Publisher. It is quite unlikely to expect the utilization of pre-cloud software-licensing contracts in the cloud domain. It is of uttermost importance to clearly understand license rights and usage needs prior to the operation of either a portion or the entire technology estate to cloud. In case there are drawbacks in execution of cloud technology, it is advisable to recruit a reliable and skilled SAM Partner like Crayon to considerably reduce the intricacies of implementation.