Big problems with licensing in the UK

Businesses in the U.S. aren’t the only ones suffering, according to a new study, less than half of UK businesses believe their software is correctly licensed. An overwhelming 71% of those businesses admitted to having licensing problems in the past. A further look at the respondents showed that 26% were over-licensed, 12% were under-licensed and the remaining 13% were unaware. The study asked over 100 IT directors in the UK about their software licensing. The results are quite eye-opening and similar to the experiences we are having here in the U.S. So many organizations recognize the risk of non-compliance and the realities of increased spending for over or under licensing, yet they continue to put a software asset management (SAM) program to the wayside. Here are some more interesting findings from the survey:

37% have experienced over-expenditure by paying for more licensing than they use

29% have experienced downtime as a result of too few licenses

11% don’t monitor licensing at all and 31% don’t monitor licensing renewals

7% faced fines for under-licensing