2019 - Year of Compliance or Complacency?

With a New Year ahead it's a good time to reflect on your IT Licensing status and Compliance Position - Are you confident that it's all under control?

While the costs of non-compliance are well documented companies continue to relegate software licensing and compliance to a 'will get to' task sometime in the future. With 2019 now upon us, is it time to perhaps resolve this once and for all?

Start by considering the reasons it's not been addressed as yet, or do you believe it is under control? Ask by whom - the respective teams who manage their software domain? Rarely do we see operational teams have an in-depth and expert understanding of the actual licensing requirements let alone an accurate deployment record. Unfortunately the only time this tends to become apparent is when the auditors roll in and put it to the test.

QUICK POLL

Or does effective management of IT licensing just seem too vast and perhaps cost prohibitive to implement and maintain? It can seem that way - there are numerous and ever changing products, platforms, and models to complicate the situation, so how do you keep up?

And what about the cost? - yes, Software Asset Management and Licensing Compliance to many executives can seem like an unnecessary spend, much like the early days of Disaster Recovery where the prevailing thinking was typically "why would we spend so much on hardware that's just going to sit idle?". Well compare that to the contemporary thinking today where Service Recovery is a given with any robust application - the spend is seen as a worthy investment, not just additional cost.

At Software Compliance we recognised these factors as the perplexing problems the majority of organisations with broad IT solutions faced, and we decided to develop a solution that would work - and scale - to a vast array of companies, particularly SME's.

​So how did we do it?

First and foremost we developed a tool to enable organisations to capture, contain and maintain that vast amount of software information important to them - their contracts, deployments, and licensing - the tool - ComplianceWare.

Not only does ComplianceWare discover and track your software deployments, but it removes layers of licensing complexity by automatically tallying installations, performing product bundling where appropriate, and providing direct links to vendor licensing information to help you decipher whats relevant - all kept current for you by the team here at SWC.

So if that solves the complexity issue, what about the next inhibitor - cost? 

Again, that was something we were very aware of. While there were existing solutions in the market they are typically high-end, bloated products aimed at large enterprises at a cost to match. We took a different approach - build a lean, cloud delivered, simplified application that organisations could subscribe to based on their requirements, and be there to provide ongoing  support and expertise as those ever-changing products and platforms emerge and evolve. All at a such a compelling cost you'll wonder why you paid such exorbitant remediation fees in the first place (or perhaps might be about to!). 

So as holidays come to an end and we embark on another year it's a good time to reflect and ask yourself, in 2019 will we be:

Compliant!

or

Complacent.

It's not nearly as hard or as costlier a problem as you might believe it to be - find out more - get in touch and let's see how we might be able to help you gain more success in 2019.